Eugenia Garson

Our family treasured the Little House books of Laura Ingalls Wilder for family reading. Our children grew up with Laura, Mary, and Almanzo, following them from one home to another, from Wisconsin to Kansas, back to Minnesota and finally to De Smet, South Dakota. As we read the books aloud, we often came to passages in which Pa would take out his fiddle and play a tune, and the Ingalls family or their guests would join in singing a good old-time song. We tried to sing those songs rather than just reading them. That was easy enough with some of them; for example, “Oh, Susanna,” “Billy Boy,” “Buffalo Gals,” and “Old Dan Tucker,” for we had grown up singing versions of those same songs with our families and friends. Sometimes we sang our version, not Laura’s; we just couldn’t help it.

Ole Dan Tucker was a mighty man,
He washed his face in the frying pan,
He combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel.

Git outta the way, ole Dan Tucker,
You’re too late to git yore supper,
Supper’s ready and cornbread’s cookin’,
But ole Dan Tucker just stands there lookin’.

For others we would simply make up tunes and sing gustily as if we knew them. But some were beyond us. When Ma sang the romantic ballad, “The Blue Juniata,” we wanted to sing along. We looked up Juniata (probably in an atlas or encyclopedia) and found out that it was a little river in Pennsylvania. But we had no idea of the tune to the song.

But then we discovered The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook (Harper & Row, 1968), with words to all the verses as well as the refrain and with music arranged for piano and guitar. If the tune didn’t come easy to us, we could always pick it out on our old upright piano.

Wild roved an Indian maid,
Bright Alfarata,
Where flow the waters
Of the blue Juniata.
Strong and true my arrows are
In my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe
A-down the rapid river.

Years later, driving through Pennsylvania, I could not resist taking a side road to look down on the waters of the “blue Juniata.”

Fleeting years have borne away
The voice of Alfarata,
Still flow the waters
Of the blue Juniata.

As Eugenia Garson, the editor, says in her preface,

“The collection offers a fascinating cross section of songs that went westward with the pioneers. There are airs deeply rooted in the Scottish and English folk tradition, as well as some with a native homespun quality. A number of these tunes were used for dancing or singing games to be sung and stepped to without music at ‘play parties’ in areas where, for religious reasons, dancing was frowned upon. There are patriotic songs, sentimental ballads, and rhythmic minstrel-show and music-hall melodies. Old hymns are included together with the gospel songs of the nineteenth-century revivalists.”

In The Long Winter, “After Sunday dinner, Pa played hymn tunes on his fiddle. They sang all afternoon while icy snow beat down upon the house.” And, in our family, we harmonized along with him:

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar,
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet (in the sweet)
By and by ( by and by)
We shall meet on that beautiful shore (by and by)
In the sweet (in the sweet)
By and by (by and by)
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

Garson’s brief notes, give a little background for each song and locate them in the Little House books. Garth Williams’ classic illustrations are scattered through the pages. The book won a place on our piano that it still maintains.

Golden years are passing by,—
Happy, happy golden years,
Passing on the wings of time,
Those happy golden years.… (altro)