The Banks of Newfoundland #4 (The Eastern Light) (Traditional) Video

NOTES IN GENERAL

This is a song I have never heard ... per se. I HAVE heard the variant recorded by Great Big Sea on the "Fortunes Favour Album" (see my take on that here ..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EzxwEXgE0 .....

I seem to be always looking down, Well, I am, this song is not in my repertoire so I am reading the lyrics which I have stashed off camera.

The good people at GEST Songs of Newfoundland and Labrador ... http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/ ... have recently featured a couple of my cover songs on their website. I have been humbled an honoured by their kind and helpful words. It was also mentioned to me that a lot of the songs they have in their archive do not have video/audio to go with them, I want this to
change! Over the next while, I will be recording these songs which may or may not be featured on the GEST site, but MUST be shared so they do not become forgotten footnotes in the music of the Atlantic provinces.

Most of the songs I will be recording, I have never heard, but rather, I have the chords for so I play them to myself and some up with my own style for it. If I am WAY off base, please record a video and respond to this, it's all about sharing the beautiful music.

NOTES ON THIS SONG

Here is some background information for those of you who are interested:

From GEST songs of Newsfoundland And Labrador:

" ####.... Author unknown. Variant of an American traditional, The Eastern Light [Laws D11] Native American Balladry (G. Malcolm Laws, 1964) ....####

Sung by James Rice [1879-1958] of Cape Broyle, NL, and published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). Ken Peacock also collected the same song from Jim Rice in 1951 and it
was published in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 1, pp.105-106, by The National Museum Of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved. Another variant was sung by Billy Wilson of Little Merasheen, Placentia Bay, NL. and published for the 1980 Merasheen Reunion in Placentia Bay, NL, by Loyola Pomroy and Bill Wilson.

Kenneth Peacock noted that this appears to be an American ballad of New England origin, though the composer could have been a Newfoundlander or Maritimer 'caught on a drunken spree' in Gloucester. Fishermen and seamen of the eastern seaboard are often more familiar with ports hundreds of miles away than they are with places near their own home port. Peacock also noted that Helen Creighton had
collected this ballad in Nova Scotia as The Gloucester Fishermen, and a fragment called Song About The Fishing Banks appears in Ballads And Sea Songs Of Newfoundland by Greenleaf and Mansfield."

I have "Songs and Ballads of Nova Scotia" in my collection of musical literature but unfortunately this song/variant was not alluded too so I can add no further information from that source.

Cheers.

Travis

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