"and we know every inch of the way / from albany to buffalo / low bridge, everybody down"

[larryhammer]

TBD is in a phase of demanding we sing to her frequently, and I've taken to ransacking leafing through our folk song collections for something, anything, that I remember from my childhood. "The Grandfather Clock" was a nice rediscovery, as was "Erie Canal."* Aside from the problem of not having the True, Correct Version of "Froggy Went a-Courting,"** there is a significant omission from all of them -- none seem to have this favorite:

White coral bells upon a slender stalk,
Lilies-of-the-valley deck my garden walk.
Oh, don't you wish that you could hear them ring?
That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Does anyone else know this round? Or other, similar bits of loveliness?


* Original title: "Low Bridge, Everybody Down." Huh. Also, originally three verses instead of two.

** The one from an old Pete Seeger LP with the chorus "Here's to Cheshire, here's to cheese / here's to the pears and the apple trees / and here's to the lovely strawberries / ding-dang-dong went the wedding bells."

---L.

Subject quote from "Low Bridge, Everybody Down," Thomas S. Allen.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Up-Singing-Group-Songbook/dp/1881322149/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422549238&sr=8-1&keywords=rise+up+singing) is the edition I have currently (my third! I wore one out and lost another somewhere in my many moves). THey claim it's large print but the actual print size doesn't seem annoyingly or especially big to me - the book itself is larger but it may be thinner.

There was a homemade Quaker songbook somewhere in the 1970s called WInds of the People. Someone in my college dorm had, not the book, but photocopies of most of it, and we used to sing from those. Rise Up Singing, an expanded version of Winds of the People, was first issued somewhere in the 1980s. I came across it on a table at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and was literally jumping up and down in glee when I realized what it was and that I could buy my own copy. It's been reissued a couple of times since, with improvements made to it (better indexing, for one thing). If you google Rise Up Singing Project, you can find the Youtube project I mentioned earlier (the guy's name is Matthew Vaughan) which should give you more idea of the songs in it.

(Disclaimer: I have no relationships with the songbook or its editors; I just love it.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

ETA: On their website, riseupandsing.org, the editors Annie Patterson & Peter Blood specifically say "We are working with many others to carry on the life-long work of Pete & Toshi Seeger, empowering people to create a better world through singing together. This site provides resources and support for this work. " THey're putting together another songbook, Rise Again, with another 1200 songs including some more modern ones, and Pete Seeger wrote the preface for that.

(THey will have a dilemma, though: if I recall correctly, Stan Rogers' song Mary_Ellen Carter, whence the "Rise Again" chorus comes, is in the *first* book!)

[larryhammer]

I met it at, well, Quaker Meeting (in St. Louis -- my local meeting is not much into songs). Been years since I thought of it.

---L.