“Peelhead”
Description
Peelhead owns the saw mill. "All the kind o' logs they got Was small rough saplin' pine." Hope for better times: "not like it was last summer When you said they'd be good times, And some o' your men you owe six months, And more you do owe nine"
Supplemental text
Peelhead
Partial text(s)
*** A ***
From Louise Manny and James Reginald Wilson, Songs of Miramichi,
#37, pp. 158-159. From the singing of Jared MacLean, Strathadam,
1948.
Come all ye jolly lumbermen
That lumber in the west,
Never hire a brindle feaster,
For the darkey, he's the best.
Chorus 1:
And hurray, hurraw for lumbermen,
Hurray, hurraw, hurreye,
Hurray hurraw for lumbermen,
For Peelhead, he's the boy.
He bought a horse from Whit-en-ey,
Another from Bob Waye,
And bought his sleds from Gabby Steward
All on that very day,
And he started for the lumber woods
To cut a hell of a shine,
But all the kind o' logs they got
Was small rough saplin' pine.
(3 additional stanzas, 1 additional chorus)
Notes
Manny/Wilson: "The song ... is a typical woods satire about a lumber operator, Isaac Anderson, nick-named 'Peelhead,' who flourished in the 1880's. There is a mention for everyone in the woods crew, including the horses, and the usual fling at the employer. Actually the reproaches in the last verse were not very serious complaints in the 1880's, when so much of the lumber business was done on credit." - BS
References
- Manny/Wilson 37, "Peelhead" (1 text, 1 tune)
- ST MaWi037 (Partial)
- Roud #9208
- BI, MaWi037