The Pinery Boy- Thomas Ward (WS) 1867 Rickaby
[From: F. Rickaby (1926) Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy. New York: Harvard University Press, p. 85. This is a localized variant. Notes by K. Veblen follow.
See also an abbreviated version (apparently a rewrite) in Wisconsin Lore, Antics and Anecdotes of Wisconsin People and Places by Robert Edward Gard, Leland George Sorden Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1962. No source is named and rewritten stanzas appear as such:
"O raftsman, O raftsman, tell me true,
Is my sweet Willie among your crew?
Oh. tell me quick and give me joy,
For none other will I have but my sweet Pinery Boy."
The Pinery Boy in Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania is not based on Sailor Boy but appears to be an adaptation of The Lumberman's Life (1903):
A pinery-man's life is a wearisome one,
Some think it's free from care,
Winding an axe from morning till night,
in the middle of a forest drear,
Sleeping in shanty bleak and cold,
Where the stormy winds do blow,
And as soon as the morning star doth appear,
To the wild woods we must go.
The opening line is still similar to "A Sailor's Life"
R. Matteson 2017]
Northern Wisconsin, once known as “the Pinery," was a site of logging operations from territorial days, which peaked in the late 1800s and then declined in the early decades of the twentieth century. In the early 1920s, Franz Rickaby, a Harvard-trained ballad scholar, documented songs through the upper Midwest. He collected “The Pinery Boy” from Mrs. M.A. Olin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who learned it in 1867 from a neighbour (Thomas Ward ). This song describes a logging accident on the Wisconsin River and draws upon local geography with map-like fidelity, under the mistaken assumption that it had originated in that state.
The Pinery Boy- learned in 1867 by Mrs. M.A. Olin of Eau Claire, Wisconsin from Thomas Ward as collected by Franz Rickaby in 1926.
[music]
Oh. a raftsman's life is a wearisome one,
It causes many fair maids to weep and mourn.
It causes them to weep and mourn
For the loss of a true love that never can return.
"O father, O father, build me a boat,
That down the Wisconsin I may float.
And every raft that I pass by
There I will inquire lat my sweet Pinery Boy."
As she was rowing down the stream
She saw three rafts all in a string.
She hailed the pilot as they drew nigh,
And there she did inquire for her sweet Pinery Boy.
"O pilot, O pilot, tell me true,
Is my sweet Willie among your crew?
Oh. tell me quick and give me joy,
For none other will I have but my sweet Pinery Boy."
"Oh, auburn was the color of his hair,
His eyes were blue and his cheeks were fair;
His lips were of a ruby fine;
Ten thousand times they've met with mine."
"O honored lady. he is not here,
He's drownded in the dells I fear.
'Twas at Lone Rock as we passed by,
Oh. there is where we left your sweet Pinery Boy."
She wrung her hands and tore her hair,
Just like a lady in great despair.
She rowed her boat against Lone Rock
You'd a-thought this fair lady's heart was broke.
"Dig me a grave both long and deep,
Place a marble slab at my head and feet;
And on my breast a turtle dove
To let the world know that I died for love.
And at my feet a spreading oak
To let the world know that my heart was broke."