“Mary Mahoney”
Description
Mary Mahoney is a servant maid in Indiantown. She rejects Archie, a "brisk young mutineer." The landlady resolves to help him and sends him to Newcastle to get jewelry. Mary rejects him again when the "gold" rings prove fake.
Supplemental text
Mary Mahoney
Partial text(s)
*** A ***
From Louise Manny and James Reginald Wilson, Songs of Miramichi,
#32, pp. 137-139. From the singing of Thomas W. Coughlan, South
River Bend, in 1947.
Come all you jolly lumbermen
And listen unto me.
I'll sing you of a pretty fair maid
That lived in Merrimashee.
Her name was Mary Mahoney,
A sweet and come-lye maid,
And the heart of many's the lumbermen
I'm told she has betrayed.
(7 additional stanzas plus a half-stanza)
Notes
Indiantown, now Quarryville, is near the junction of the Renous River and Main Southwest Miramichi River. Newcastle is about twenty miles away, down river, near Miramichi Bay.
Manny/Wilson: "'And THAT'S by Larry Gorman,' he [the singer, Thomas Coughlan] said.... One of Larry's devastating satires, this song is aimed at the 'silly young gaw gaw,' Archie Woodworth, and his unsuccessful love affair.... Sandy Ives ... says several people have doubted Larry's authorship of the song, saying 'It just doesn't sound like him' but we both think it is authentic Gorman." - BS
References
- Manny/Wilson 32, "Mary Mahoney" (1 text, 1 tune)
- ST MaWi032 (Partial)
- Roud #9186
- BI, MaWi032