“Just a Poor Lumberjack”
Description
Recitation. A youth pushes a drunken lumberjack into the gutter. Another lumberjack saves a child from a fire, but dies in the process. A third dies in the woods. All are mourned with the chorus, "'Twas only a poor old lumberjack"
Long description
Recitation. A drunken lumberjack is pushed into the gutter by a posh youth; a stranger warns the youth not to make wisecracks, or he'll get the same treatment. Another lumberjack saves a child from a fire, but dies in the process. A third, unknown, dies in the woods. All are mourned with the chorus, "'Twas only a poor old lumberjack."
Notes
Pieces like this are easy to deride as mawkish melodrama, but they contain a spine of self-respect among men who were often ill-treated by the "respectable" society whose needs they supplied. - PJS
Cross references
- cf. "Only a Miner (The Hard-Working Miner)" [Laws G33] (theme)
References
- Beck 64, "Just a Poor Lumberjack" (1 text)
- Roud #8846
- BI, Be064