"Chapeau Boys"

No personal notes.

I'm a jolly good fellow, Pat Gregg is my name
I come from the Chapeau, that village of fame
For singing and dancing and all other fun
The boys from the Chapeau cannot be out-done.

On your patience I beg to intrude
We hired with Fitzgerald, who was agent for Booth
To go up the Black River so far, far away
To the old Caldwell farm for to cut the hay.

Joe Humphreys, Bob Orme, Ned Murphy and I
We packed up our duds on the eleventh of July
Away to the Pembroke our luggage did take
We boarded the Empress and sailed up the lake.

When we came to Fort William, that place you all know
We turned up our fiddle and rosin'd our bow
Our merry strings rang with a clear merry noise
And Oiseau Rock echoed, "Well done, Chapeau boys!"

We headed for Des Joachims and got there all right
We walked sixteen miles up to Retty's that night
Where we were made welcome, the truth for to speak
It was our desire to stay there a week.

But we left the next morning with good wishes and smiles
The route to the Caldwell was forty-six miles
North over the mountains, Bob showed us the route
And when we got there we were nearly played out.

Now the board at the Caldwell, the truth for to tell
Could not be surpassed in the Russell Hotel
We'd good beef and mutton, our tea sweet and strong
And great early roses full six inches long.

We had custard, rice pudding and sweet apple pie
Good bread and fresh butter that would you surprise
We'd cabbage, cucumbers, boiled, pickled and raw
And the leg of a beaver we stole from a squaw.

Haying being over, we packed up our duds
We shouldered our turkeys and off to the woods
To fall the tall pine with our axes and saws
To terrify the animals, the Indians and squaws.

I hope we'll have luck, and on that we rely
The drive will be out by the eleventh of July
And if we're all spared to get down in the spring
We'll make the old hall at the Chapeau to ring.

I think I'll concluded and finish my song
I hope you won't mind me for keeping you long
Our cook's getting sleepy, he's nodding his head
So we'll say all our prayers and we'll roll into bed.
  

Could not find on the usual sites, including the Session Tunes and JC's Tune Get, so I had to do a general web search.

One version (CT) was found on the Great Canadian Tunebook (http://members.shaw.ca/tunebook/index.htm), but he claims copyright on the arrangement... and no source files, just the lyrics in text form (see above) and a midi file.

The Canadian Journal for Traditional Music review of the book "For Singing and Dancing and All Sorts of Fun", describes this song in the process;

"The book's title comes from a line in the song which is its subject, "The Chapeau Boys," which will be most familiar to folklorists as part of the Canadian lumberwoods tradition discussed in Edith Fowke's Lumbering Songs from the Northern Woods. The author's debt to another folklorist, who has looked at woods singing traditions, Edward D. Ives, is obvious not only in terms of the kinds of material Posen finds relevant, from the biography of the song's creator, Pat Gregg, to descriptions of cultural context, and in the attention to detail, but also in Posen's informal, conversational style. The study acknowledges "The Chapeau Boys" currently peripheral relationship to the lumberwoods; while the song is part of the memory culture of men who worked there, its primary significance is to the people in and around its eponymous community of Chapeau, in Quebec. Basically a moniker song outlining a trip to the lumberwoods taken by a named group of "boys" from the village, it is "the most popular traditional song in the Ottawa Valley" (p.4)."

I also found a Genealogy website that covers the history and people of the Ottawa area "Bytown or Bust: History and Genealogy in the Ottawa, Canada area". As an aside, it includes a link to a website The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project at McGill University with county maps from the mid 19th century... very cool. Anyway, the Bytown page includes a page dedicated to this song, via reference to Patrick Gregg; http://www.bytown.net/gregg.htm. It discusses the history of the tune, and attributes it's source as Patrick Gregg, (who, having expired in 1938 would have held the copyright until 1988). There I also found what appears to be a scanned page (see EF-chapeauboys.jpg) from Edith Fowke's book "Lumbering Songs from the Northern Woods"

Oh, and while I was at it, I came across this site, which is an index of the Canadian Folk Music Bulletin, (which can be found on-line at http://cfmb.icaap.org/ ) and includes this tune (see file 06-Tracking_Down_Chapeau.pdf ) as well as St. Anne's Reel and a whole bunch more.

Since the Fumblin' Fingers have yet to choose to use this song, let alone decided which version to use, I have not yet compiled a lilypond set for FF. I have, however, transcribed both the Edith Fowlke version and the one described in the Tracking Down Chapeau Boys article;

Midi of EF-Chapeau Boys

Midi of TDTCB-Chapeau Boys

All this to say that I will have to transcribe the song in order to get it in here...