“The Only Man”: Skill and Bravado on the River-Drive

Handling logs on Maine\u27s swift-flowing rivers demanded great skill and dexterity and it was a source of pride for those who could do it well. Not surprisingly, stories about river driving have become an important part of Maine\u27s heritage. Not the least of these stories involve the “only man” to accomplish some particularly dangerous or difficult feat of prowess and bravery. These tales were bound up with the coming-of-age process along the banks of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers, and the accomplishments they relate signaled a person’s acceptance into the select ranks of legendary loggers— if they didn\u27t go too far in testing their mettle against the fates. Edward D. “Sandy” Ives is professor emeritus at the University of Maine and former director of the Maine Folklife Center. His publications, concentrating on the oral traditions of Maine and the Maritime Provinces, Include Larry Gorman: The Man Who Made the Songs; Lawrence Doyle: The Farmer-Poet of Prince Edward Island; Joe Scott: The Woodsman Songmaker; and George Magoon and the Down East Game War

The Burning Ship of Northumberland Strait: Some Notes on That Apparition

During the summer of 1957, I was on Prince Edward Island and while collecting data on an entirely different subject, I heard The Burning Ship mentioned several times, especially in the area known as the Lot Seven Shore (Cape Wolfe, Glengarry, Burton, and Campbellton). Being occupied with other matters, I did not make anything like a thorough investigation, but I did begin asking questions. Some months after my return to Maine, I wrote letters to the chief Island newspapers asking for information, and I received replies from some fifteen people, most of whom claimed to have seen this ship. This paper is a report of the results of these researches, given in this admittedly incomplete form in order to make the material on this particular apparition more easily available to anyone doing work of a more general nature

The World of Maritimes Folklore

Dr. Edward Sandy Ives is Professor of Folklore and Oral History in the Department of Anthropology, University of Maine (Orono), and Director of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. He is also Editor of Northeast Folklore. One of the most distinguished and respected folklorists in the United States, and widely known in Canadian folklore circles, he was considered by his peers and by the Trustees of the Helen Creighton Foundation to be the obvious choice to give the inaugural address in the Foundation\u27s new biennial Helen Creighton Lecture Series. This Lecture was given in February 1992 at the University of King\u27s College, Halifax, N.S

Northeast Folklore volume 5: Twenty-One Folksongs From Prince Edward Island

From the introduction by Edward D. Sandy Ives: The twenty-one songs printed in this little volume are a representative sample of the songs I collected on Prince Edward Island during the summers of 1957, 1958, and 1963. ... As a matter of fact, I wasn\u27t even collecting songs in the usual sense of that term; I was very specifically looking for songs by Larry Gorman and for biographical. Information about him, and when L wasn\u27t asking about Larry Gorman I was asking about Joe Scott. Thus the present collection is neither the result of my general acquaintance with the traditions of the whole Island nor of intensive research in a limited area. It is made up mostly of the songs people sang me while I was looking for something else. Table of Contents: Edmund Doucette, Miminegash John Ladner Johnny Doyle The Old Beggar Man (Hind Horn) Dan Curry Pretty Susan, the Pride of Kildare The Ghostly Fishermen Mantle So Green The Shepherd Joseph Doucette, Miminegash The Miramichi Fire The Lost Babes of Halifax Mary Cousins, Campbellton The Millman and Tuplin Song Uncle Dan Charles Gorman, Burton Drive Dull Care Away The Banks of the Little Eau Pleine Angus Enman, Spring Hill Benjamin Deane When the Battle It Was Won Wesley Smith, Victoria West Guy Reed The Lumberman in Town The Maid of the Mountain Brow The Silvery Tide There Was an Old Woman in Our Townhttps://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/nf/1004/thumbnail.jp

Regional Folk Beliefs

This accession contains over 4,000 folk beliefs organized on individual, 4x6-inch index cards. A majority of the belief cards were collected by students participating during the 1960s as part of the American Folklore course taught by Dr. Edward D. “Sandy” Ives. Folk beliefs originate primarily from Maine and the Maritimes, but occasionally extend into other areas. Each download contains a copy of the 1965 syllabus for American Folklore, explaining the assignment given to students. Please Note: A significant number of these cards are handwritten and are not currently available as typed transcriptions. The belief cards are organized into categories noted below. The accession includes the syllabus for Ives’ 1965 American Folklore class, which includes instructions guiding students in the collection and recording of folk beliefs. Most folk beliefs are not cross-referenced within this collection. It is recommended that patrons search related subject categories. Example: information about black cats may be found with folk beliefs related to animal portents, animals, and luck

The Life and Work of Larry Gorman : A Preliminary Report

Lawrence Gorman, The Man Who Makes the Songs, was born in Trout River, Lot Thirteen, on the west end of Prince Edward Island in 1846. As a young man he worked on his father\u27s farm, in the many shipyards along the Bideford and Trout Rivers, as a fisherman, and as a hand in the lobster factories along the shore from Cape Wolfe to Miminigash. Up to about 1885 (age forty), he spent many of his winters in the lumberwoods and his springs on the river drives, mostly along the Miramichi River in New Brunswick. Then he would usually return to The Island in the summer. About 1885 he moved permanently to Ellsworth, Maine, bought a house there, was twice married, and worked in the woods and on the drives along the Union River. In the early 19oo\u27s he moved to South Brewer, Maine, just across the Penobscot from the great lumber port of Bangor. Here he worked mostly as a yard hand for the Eastern Corporation, a paper mill. He died in Brewer in 1917 and now lies buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Bangor

A General Interview Guide

What follows is in no sense exhaustive or complete. I started from O\u27Sullivan\u27s Handbook of Irish Folklore (that\u27s where the basic structure comes from), and then I adapted it to the scene here in the Northeast by adding some questions and changing others. For any one of the aspects covered here, you can get more suggestions by looking al O\u27Sullivan\u27s work. I don\u27t recommend trying to work straight through this guide with an informant. Nor do I particularly recommend interviewing with guide in hand, and I\u27m dead against it for the first interview. Read the Guide through a few times before you go out. Then, when you go back for further interviews, you can use this guide to help you work up good questions. And don\u27t forget to probe, to follow up, to get fuller explanations ( Did that ever happen to you? Can you give me an example? And, of course, Who, what, where, when, why? ) You will notice that this Guide has a clear orientation toward interviewing older people in a rural setting about how things used to be. That orientation is a function of my own lifelong historical interests. If you are more interested in present than remembered culture, you can adapt the questions to suit yourself. The compiling of a Guide like this is an on-going thing. Some of the questions will tum out to be absurd or even (God save the mark) counterproductive. And there are good questions that should be asked that aren\u27t in here. The whole thing is also very uneven. Some aspects of experience are covered rather thoroughly while others are barely suggested. Let us know how we can improve this guide. Meantime, here is something for those many people who have asked, What do I say then?https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/nf/1005/thumbnail.jp

Northeast Folklore volume 3 numbers 1-4

The third issue of Northeast Folklore was published in the spring of 1959 under the editorship of Edward D. Ives (known as Sandy) and Bacil F. Kirtley through the Department of English at the University of Maine. The four editions that year were later bound into a single volume. Table of Contents: Number 1 (Spring): The Legend of Molly Ockett by Joseph A. Perham A Penobscot Indian Story of Colonial Maine by Nicholas N. Smith The Maid of Tide Head Notes and Queries Book ReviewBluenose Ghosts (Creighton) by Horace P. Beck Number 2 (Summer): Bibliography of New England-Maritimes Folklore Marble-Playing in Lewiston Fifty Years Ago by J. W. Ashton Counting Out Rhymes from Shelburne County, Nova Scotia by Mrs. Donald Robertson Notes and Queries Number 3-4 (Fall/Winter): A Newfoundland Vocabulary by Bernard H. Porter A Sampling of Stories From the Area of Machias, Maine by George K. Smith, Jr. A Tremendous Pass in the North by Robert E. Pike Notes and Querieshttps://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/nf/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Bonny Earl of Murray : The Ballad as History

Andrew Lang Spoke of the murder of The Bonny Earl of Moray as a deed which for years influenced the politics of Scotland. It is also the subject of one of the most beautiful and stirring of the Scottish ballads (Child 181), compelling even to people hearing or reading it for the first time. A ballad should certainly not be judged on whether or not it is good history; either it tells a story well or it does not. Neither will our knowledge of its historical background make us see a poor ballad as a good one. On the other hand, such knowledge can and often does add another dimension to our enjoyment. In the present study of The Bonny Earl of Murray, for example, it can show us the ballad as both history and something that helped to make history—an expression of a people\u27s anger

Satirical Songs in Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada

Invective, ridicule, and insult are not uncommon ingredients in folk songs, and since songs containing these elements usually make us laugh, we speak of them as satirical. Sometimes the satire springs from a strong sense of social injustice, as it did with singers like Aunt Molly Jackson and Woody Guthrie. More commonly it arises from personal motives, such as a desire to annoy. This is a progress report on local songs-particularly those attributed to Larry Gorman-in Maine, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island