“Carcasho”

Author: unknown
Earliest date: 1960 (Leach-Labrador)
Keywords: rescue hunting ordeal animal
Found in: Canada(Newf)

Description

In winter 1916 a 73-year old Labrador trapper goes out to see to his traps. He gets lost and spends the night camping away from home and has a fight with a wolverine. The next day a search gang finds him and takes him home to Lelette.

Supplemental text

Carcasho
  Partial text(s)

          *** A ***

From MacEdward Leach, Folk Ballads & Songs of the Lower Labrador Coast,
#69, pp. 182-183. "Sung by Martin Hocko, Pinware, August 1960."

In the year of nineteen hundred sixteen in mid-winter time,
What happened here I think it fair should go into rime,
COncerning a bold old man whose age was seventy-three,
Who left his home one winter night his traps for to go see.

(3 additional stanzas)

Notes

Leach-Labrador: "This is a local song composed immediately after the event it celebrates." - BS

Leach adds that Carcasho (=carcajou) is Canadian French for a wolverine. - RBW

References

  1. Leach-Labrador 69, "Carcasho" (1 text, 1 tune)
  2. ST LLab069 (Partial)
  3. Roud #9985
  4. BI, LLab069
The Traditional Ballad Index is copyright ©2008 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle. The Digital Tradition is copyright The Mudcat Cafe.