Father, Dear Father Come Home to Me Now

[Mike Cleven]

>From: "rtwright at grassrootsgroup.com" <rtwright at GRASSROOTSGROUP.COM>

>Thanks to those who offered translations of the Chinook in this song.
>The words were found in the Cariboo Sentinel, Feb. 13, 1869.
>This is the original spelling.
>We are pretty sure we know who Mary and Yaco are.
>
>The recording of this and other songs from the period, along with a book
>about the songs and music, will be out by June.
>
>Any other feedback on these phrases would be welcome.

Or just on the tune, which has gotta be one of the oldest saws in the
Hollywood handbook of how to gussy up a frontier music-hall scene with
"period music".  I can hear it now, with the bewigged, petticoated curly
blond riding a swing back and forth across the stage, screeching away in an
off-key soprano "Oh father, dear father come home to me now"; an image from
countless cartoons from various studios as well as more than a few old
westerns and pioneer flicks.  I think it even makes it into Mae West's
'Diamond Lil'; I wonder if any of the movie versions used these Chinook
lines?

Like "Clementine" and "Sweet Betsy from Pike", this tune has become a
caricature that is rarely regarded with the respect and sincerity it may
have/probably did have in its own era; Clementine in particular is a
touching tragedy (really!) which can be sung rather beautifully as a lament
if you try (and I've got a case to make that it dates from the Fraser Canyon
Gold Rush rather than California's, but that's another story).  There's
heaps of these old songs that _sound_ like jokes now, but in their day were
state-of-the-art popular music, such as it was in those times.  And in the
auld ballad tradition, it was perfectly fine to adapt well-known tunes such
as "Father, dear father" to new sets of words; ref. the Child Ballads and
the history of many classic folk tunes whose roots are centuries old,
despite countless re-wordings......e.g. Barbara Ellen,
Greensleeves/Londonderry Air, and the Streets of Laredo......"Father, Dear
Father" was of course a teetotaller song in its most famous incarnation, but
I doubt that's its earliest form (teetotal movements weren't a big deal
until later in the 19th Century; and I suspect the tune itself is _much_
older).

BTW, Mr. Wright from Williams Lake - does the grassrootsgroup.com have any
connection to the old Cariboo Grassroots 'organization'; if it's who I think
it was, weren't at least some of you involved in the original founding days
of the BC Green Party back in '83-'84?  If so, I was a guest at one of your
houses on the western edge of Williams Lake, and I'm sorry I don't remember
any names; what I _do_ remember is some local elders you'd given shelter too
who were excellent fiddle players in the old Cariboo style; have I made a
wrong connection, or are you who I think you are?  If so, fond regards....

Mike Cleven
(former unpaid slave in the BC Green Party office during those years, once a
pilgrim-emissary to outlying branches of the party, hence my visit to
Williams Lake on that occasion)


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