Title
Lost on the Lady Elgin
Alternate Titles: none
Subject
Folk songs, English -- New York (State) -- Adirondack Mountains Region
Folk songs, English -- Minnesota
Great Lakes (North America)--Songs and music; Shipwrecks
Description
Summary: The song mourns sinking of the Great Lakes steamer The Lady Elgin and the deaths of passengers who drowned when she went down in Lake Michigan.
Traditional Ballad Index Page: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/R692.html
Creator
Michael Cassius Dean
Source
Robert Winslow Gordon Cylinder Collection (AFC 1928/002) http://lccn.loc.gov/2009655325; Archive of Folk Culture; American Folklife Center; Library of Congress
Publisher
Brian T. Miller
Date
Sep. 1924
Contributor
Robert Winslow Gordon
Rights
Duplication of sound recordings may be governed by copyright and other restrictions.
Relation
Full song text taken from M.C. Dean's 1922 self-published songster The Flying Cloud And 150 Other Old Time Poems and Ballads: A Collection of Old Irish Songs, Songs of the Sea and Great Lakes, The Big Pine Woods, The Prize Ring and Others
Format
mp3
Language
en-US
Type
Music Recording
Identifier
Roud #3688
no Laws number
AFS Preservation Reel: AFS 19011A
Gordon Cylinder Record No.: G85
AFS Item No.: Misc. 142
Coverage
St. Lawrence County, New York; Minnesota
Original Format
Wax Cylinder
Duration
1:10
Bit Rate/Frequency
128 kbps
Transcription
LOST ON THE LADY ELGIN.
Up from the poor man’s cottage, forth from the mansion door,
Sweeping across the water and echoing along the shore,
Caught by the morning breezes, borne on the evening gale,
Came at the dawn of morning a sad and solemn wail.
Refrain—
Lost on the Lady Elgin, sleeping to wake no more,
Numbering in death five hundred that failed to reach the shore.
Sad was the wail of children, weeping for parents gone,
Children that slept at evening, orphans woke at morn;
Sisters for brothers weeping, husbands for missing wives,
These were the ties that were severed by those five hundred lives.
Staunch was the noble steamer, precious the freight she bore,
Gaily they loosed their cables a few short hours before,
Proudly she swept our harbor, joyfully rang the bell,
Little they thought ere morning it would peal so sad a knell.
Up from the poor man’s cottage, forth from the mansion door,
Sweeping across the water and echoing along the shore,
Caught by the morning breezes, borne on the evening gale,
Came at the dawn of morning a sad and solemn wail.
Refrain—
Lost on the Lady Elgin, sleeping to wake no more,
Numbering in death five hundred that failed to reach the shore.
Sad was the wail of children, weeping for parents gone,
Children that slept at evening, orphans woke at morn;
Sisters for brothers weeping, husbands for missing wives,
These were the ties that were severed by those five hundred lives.
Staunch was the noble steamer, precious the freight she bore,
Gaily they loosed their cables a few short hours before,
Proudly she swept our harbor, joyfully rang the bell,
Little they thought ere morning it would peal so sad a knell.