As Jimmie Went A-Hunting- Boutilier (NS) 1950 REC
[From Folkways: Maritime Folk Songs from the Collection of Helen Creighton; Various Artists FW04307 / FE 4307
Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
SIDE I, Band 5:
AS JIMMIE WENT A - HUNTING
The Maritime Provinces are rich in stories of the supernatural, and these appear as personal experiences, as yarns told for fun, and as songs. In some, like The Dreadful Ghost, a girl who has been abandoned dies of grief and then follows her lover to sea where in sight of all the crew she forces him to follow her and they both disappear in the deep, a terrifying thought. In others like The Silvery Tide and As Jimmie Went A-Hunting, a mystery is solved by a dream, in the former revealing the drowned body floating on the tide, and in this one explaining the facts of an accidental death and thereby saving a lover's life. Mr. Louis Boutilier who sang it was a small sprightly man of eighty- seven whose eyes were bright and alert, and he loved his little joke. After listening to his voice on my tape recorder, the first he had ever heard, he said, "Who sings better, that man or me?" Although this song has often been found in Great Britain and the United States as Molly Bawn or At the Setting of the Sun, I have it only from one other singer, also a Boutilier. One lived east of Halifax, the other west.
AS JIMMIE WENT A-HUNTING- Sung by Mr. Louis Boutilier, Tantallon, August 1950
As Jimmie went a-hunting
With his dog and his gun,
He hunted all day
Till the night it came on.
By her apron being round her
And I took her for a swan,
And I shot Mollie Laura[1]
By the setting of the sun.
A way to his father
He quicklie did run,
Saying, "Father, dearest father
Do you know what I've done?
"By her apron being round her
And I took her for a swan,
And I shot Mollie Laura
By the setting of the sun."
Up spake his aged father
Whose locks have been grey,
Saying, "Jimmie, dearest Jimmie,
Do not you run away."
"But stay in your own counteree
Till your trial do come on,
And you never shall be transported
By the setting of the sun."
'Twas early the next morning
To her uncle she did appear,
Saying, "Uncle, dearest uncle
See that Jimmie goes clear."
"By my apron being round me
And he shot me in the dark,
And it's to his great grief now
That he never missed his mark."
"My acushla averneen,
o it's cushla macree,
If you were a-living
It is married we would be.
"But since you are dead and buried
My poor heart it will break,
Through the lonely woods and valleys
I will wander for your sake. "
1. for Lowery/Lavery