Please see Chapter 1 in this volume for biographical in formation on Jennifer C. Post.
If you drive through Pittsburg, New Hampshire, today, you seem to pass quickly through this northernmost New Hampshire town. In fact, Pittsburg is geographically large compared to other towns in the state; its 364 square miles accounts for 4 percent of the land, yet less than 1 percent of the population resides there (867 residents in 2000). Many social, cultural, and economic changes that took place in other parts of New England reached Pittsburg much later partly because of its distance from the urban centers of Concord, New Hampshire; Portland, Maine; Boston, Massachusetts; and Burlington, Vermont. Ultimately, changes did affect Pittsburg, and it began to look like many other small northern New England towns. Many of its unique characteristics are hidden in the memories of people who were young in the earlier years of the twentieth century.
THE TOWN
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the most active social unit in this rural farming community was the neighborhood. As in other farm families throughout the United States at that time, Pittsburg's residents depended on one another for support; the resulting reciprocity turned into a pattern of farm mutuality that was crucial to the well-being of the family and community.
The character of the neighborhoods was affected by relationships to the local geography and by kinship ties. When social and economic changes altered connections to the land and family, the system began to break down. Today neighborhood schoolhouses are gone, replaced by a single regional school; the churches, grange hall, and stores that served as gathering places are weathered, and many are empty. Local businesses
cater to visitors who travel to Pittsburg to snowmobile in the winter, hunt in the fall, and fish and hike in the summer. The tourist industry plays a huge role in the Pittsburg economy, replacing a lifestyle that once included self-sufficient farmers and lumbermen as well as individuals who contributed to local industry.
The town today combines elements of the old and the new. Some of the long-term residents still recall events of the past and continue their cultural practices in the yearly Old Home Day celebration, occasional jam sessions, and senior citizen's gatherings. Fiddlers also attend nearby competitions, such as the annual Stark Old Time Fiddlers' Contest.
MUSIC
At one time relatively equal time was given to singing and dance music traditions in the community. Families and neighbors gathered in both organized and casual meetings of friends to share songs and dances. Community residents recall a broad spectrum of songs and dance tunes with little concern for category. Songs include Anglo-American ballads, American and British popular songs, play-party songs, and hymns. Dance tunes demonstrate influence from the British Isles, but many are part of a larger North American tradition that the media began disseminating in the early years of the twentieth century.
SONGS
When residents talk about musical practices of earlier years, they return again and again to certain songs, each time expressing similar memories about their community. In fact, specific songs seem universally to hold the sentiments of this once tightly-knit community, which is related by family and proximity as well as by common memory.
Among the songs once popular in Pittsburg, "Margery Gray" may be the one members of the older generation refer to most frequently. The ballad—actually a poem written by Julia Dorr in the nineteenth century—tells the story of a woman and her baby who become lost in the woods on their way home from visiting a friend. When Margery's husband returns at the end of the day to an empty house, he alerts his neighbors, and a community-wide search for his wife and child begins. Days later, Margery's baby dies, and she then wanders in the wilderness through the spring, summer, and fall. One day she arrives in Charlestown, New Hampshire:
Wondering glances fell upon her,
women veiled the modest eye,
As they slowly ventured near her,
drawn by pitying surprise.
"'Tis some crazy one," they whispered,
back her tangled hair she tossed.
"Oh, kind friends, take pity on me, for
I am not mad, but lost."
Then she told her pitiful story in a
vague despondent way,
And with cold white lips she murmured,
"Take me home to Robert Gray."
"But the river," said they, pondered,
"how crossed you to its eastern side?
How crossed you those rapid waters,
deep the channel is and wide."
But she said she had not crossed it in
her desolated course.
She had wandered so far northward 'til
she'd reached the fountain source.
Through the dark Canadian forest and
then blindly roaming on,
Down the wild New Hampshire valley
her bewildered feet had gone.
Even today, many Pittsburg residents feel that Margery began her journey in their community. They trace her path from Back Lake (near the Connecticut River) in town up above the Connecticut Lakes (Third Lake), where she could cross into New Hampshire without traversing the rapid waters. Residents also make a connection to the story through common life experience. Men who worked in the woods as trappers, guides, and lumbermen know how easy it is to get lost in the woods; those who worked in the lumber camps say that hearing the song drove men to tears as they thought about their wives and children at home.
Residents also refer to other songs that have played an important role in the community. In locally created "Bright-Eyed Etta Lee," one elderly singer helped renew his connections to family, the land, and the community of his youth in Pittsburg. These lines, along with his recollections of Etta
Lee, include geographical references, personal information, and genuine delight in the memory of an individual with whom his family had contact. His narrative expresses the sentiments of his family and frames his own memory of the world he grew up in:
In the golden vale of Pittsburg
Down by the Connecticut Stream
There dwells a maid that holds my heart
And haunts me like a dream.
At night my rest she does disturb
My mind is never free
All wishing her to be my bride
That bright-eyed Etta Lee.
Now Etta she is beautiful
Her cheeks are like the rose
The Connecticut River so full of fish
Down by her dwelling flows.
It's not the river, nor the fish
That has my dreams disturbed
I expect some day to make my wife
That bright-eyed Etta Lee.
Songs recounting tragic events and satirical songs commenting on individuals and their behavior were also popular in Pittsburg. "The Four Cousins," found in local manuscripts and still remembered by many in the community, preserves the details of a drowning accident that took place in the nineteenth century. In "The Bare Rock Song" ("The Rocky Road to Diamond") an entire road of families is described and satirized. Memories of these and other local songs play a role in continuing a collective memory of individuals and events in the community as well as expressing a common understanding of their sense of place in the geographic environment.
Recollections of British ballads also hold information on the community before the middle of this century. In earlier times, residents looked to individuals in the community to maintain singing traditions through organized and impromptu events. Evidence that ballads such as "Lord Banner" ("Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard"), "Lord Lovel," and "The House Carpenter" ("The Daemon Lover") were valued by some members of the community can be heard in narratives of some of the elderly residents. While recalling verses of "The House Carpenter," one elderly man sang this stanza choked with emotion by the last line:
Oh its neither for your gold that I weep
Its neither for your store.
Its all for the sake of that darling little babe
Which I never shall see any more.
His memories were of an older generation of singers, including his parents and family friends. "I used to like to hear them old-timers sing," he said. "Oh, they could sing it so nice. It almost brings tears to my eyes, because I used to like the whole of 'em.
Hymns were also popular and were sung by individuals at home, at neighborhood social occasions, and religious meetings, including camp meetings. Residents remember fewer titles or hymn texts, although references to hymn singing are made frequently. Several elderly residents remembered weekly religious meetings in nearby homes where hymns were accompanied by
fiddle, piano, or organ. "They went a lot, not only just on Sundays, you know, during the week they had meetings," explained one resident. "And the people made a point of going, and that was more or less their social get-togethers, really. And that's where [my mother] learned hymns, I think."
DANCE MUSIC
Early social dance practices in Pittsburg involved neighbors who gathered together on a Saturday night to socialize, share food and drink, and enjoy music and dance. The kitchen dance both entertained and reinforced social bonds formed through mutual help during times of need. At the neighborhood dances, the fiddlers and their accompanists (on piano) came from within the community. This practice, popular in many rural American communities before the mid-twentieth century, went through a gradual transformation during the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, when residents adopted musical practices from outside the immediate region and an ever-widening group of participants began to attend local events. Ultimately the character of the dances changed, and they were moved out of private homes to locations that could accommodate larger ensembles and bigger crowds.
At neighborhood gatherings guests took part in a variety of dance- and music-related activities. They danced contras, squares, and waltzes, sang songs, and played games, all accompanied by local fiddlers with organ or piano. One resident whose family held weekly dances for many years remembered some of the popular steps:
We used to have kitchen junkets. 'Course then we used to sing old time waltzes: "Alice Blue Gown" and "The Waltz You Save for Me." And then we'd have—they call 'em square dances now—we called 'em quadrilles then! "Soldier's Joy," "Boston Fancy," but we used to have a lot of galops, a lot of 'em call it polkas now—but it's two different dances.
Left foot, right foot
Any foot at all
Sally lost a bustle
Coming home from the ball.
Older members of the community also describe play-party games, such as "Go in and out the Window" and "On the Green Carpet." Adults and teenagers took part in these game songs, dancing from room to room of the large farmhouses.
Fiddlers learned dance tunes from members of their family, from other fiddlers in the community, and also from recordings. One fiddler who began playing for dances in the early 1930s recalled playing "Soldier's Joy," "Boston Fancies," and "Smash the Window," along with tunes such as "Buckwheat Batter," "Rippling Water Jig," and "Black Velvet."
House Dances and Kitchen Rackets
Nicolas Hawes was a freelance folklorist from 1975 until 1989, specializing in field projects and festivals (including the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife) and producing records and films. He then served for two years as deputy director and the National Council for the Traditional Arts before assuming the post of assistant director of the Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. The following essay originally appeared in a Smithsonian Festival of American Folk-life program guide (c. 1981).
It's Saturday night.
The second-floor ballroom over the town hall in the small Monadnock village of Fitz-william, New Hampshire, is filled with dancers. It's a mixed crowd: some old folks, some young, mostly people in their mid-twenties to early fifties. They are standing in couples, chatting restlessly, forming the long, double lines in which traditional New England contra dances are done. No one has announced that a contra is coming next, but then no one has to: all of these people have danced to Duke Miller before.
"I don't think Duke's changed his program in thirty years," my partner tells me. "Starts with a contra, three squares, a polka, and a break. Then the second set always begins with 'Chorus Jig'." She smiles happily. "He's just great!"
The small bandstand is crowded. Of the nine or ten musicians on the platform, only two have been hired to play—the lead fiddler and the piano player. These two sit back to back, the better to hear each other. Directly in front of them is Duke Miller's chair. There is no discussion of upcoming tunes. Like the dancers, the musicians know what's next.
Duke Miller works his way slowly across the bandstand. He is a solid-looking man in his eighties and wears a dark suit and tie and highly polished boots. He is rumored to be in poor health—in fact, it is said that this might be his last regular dance in Fitzwilliam—but there is no sign of sickness in his voice. It is surprisingly young and strong.
"All right. The first dance is 'Chorus Jig.' First, third, and every other couple is active. You all know how it goes: active couples down the outside and down the middle. Cast off. Turn contra corners…"
Duke nods to the fiddler; the fiddler nods to the piano player. The piano sounds out four chords "for nothing," and the dance begins.
"Chorus Jig" is a classic contra and a great favorite throughout New England. Each active couple dances the complicated figure through with the couple next in line—four movements, one to each eight-measure phrase of the music. After thirty-two measures, the tune repeats and so does the dance, but somehow each active couple has moved one place down the set and has a new couple with whom to do the figure. And so it goes, repeating again and again, until each couple has danced with every other couple in the set. Depending on the size of the hall, this may take up to fifteen minutes.
Once, twice, three times through the dance, Duke calls out the changes, reminding the dancers of the next move a measure or two ahead. Then, for a while, he just watches. Finally, sure that everyone's all right he settles back comfortably in his chair and closes his eyes.
This is not his first Saturday night in Fitzwilliam.
Each Saturday night, all across New England, in town and grange halls and church basements, people are dancing. There is nothing organized about these dances. They simply happen, a series of independent and very local affairs. Each is unique and is supported by a different community. The Fitzwilliam dance is one of the oldest and most old-fashioned in style. Duke Miller's mixture of contras, quadrilles, and singing squares dates from the late 1920s and early 1930s, and early 1930s, a period when the rural New England communities were more homogeneous and travel was more difficult than it is today.
Nowadays, most Yankee communities prefer a program of all singing squares like those called by Ralph Higgins of Chesterfield, Massachusetts. In a singing square, the dance directions are sung like lyrics to the melody of a popular tune such as "Darling Nellie Gray" or "Redwing." Unlike the contra or quadrille, where the dancers are reminded of the next figurea measure or two ahead, in the singing square the directions are given at the moment when the figure is to be danced. This makes it difficult to dance the figure in time with the appropriate music. Regular dancers solve this problem by memorizing the calls (in fact, many dancers sing along with the caller). Newcomers, however, have to stumble through behind the beat until they learn the dance.
Once special feature of the square formation is its exculisivity—each couple dances only with the other three couples making up their set. Since New Englanders always dance three squares in a row before taking a break, this means that the same eight people dance together for as long as half an hour. And since many of the sets re-form after the break in the same spot on the dance floor and with the same four couples, the "all singing squares" program gives rural New Englanders an opportunity to stengthen and celebrate long-standing family and community relationships now being threatened by the spread of suburbia into the country side. You may not know your neighbor any more, but you do know whom you're going to dance with on Saturday night.
Interestingly, the "newcomers"—the city people who have moved in large numbers into the small towns and villages now only a short commute from the cities—have adopted as their favorite dance the traditional New England contra dance. And they've chosen it because, unlike the square, in a contra it's virtually impossible not to dance with every other couple in the hall. A contra dance is a great way for a group of relative strangers to gain a sense of community.
Thirty years ago only a handful of contras like "Chorus Jig" were commonly done, but the contra dance revival has grown to such proportion over the last fifteen years that in some parts of New England it is possible to dance contras five or six nights a week. Major dances, though, are still held on Saturday night. On special occasions, "dawn dances" and contras are danced from 8:30 P.M. until 6:00 or 7:00 A.M. Despite the simple, repetitive nature of contra dances and the small repertoire of basic moves (do-si-dos, allemande, swing, etc.) from whch they are constructed, the number and variety of contras is apparently unlimited. So, also, it their adaptability. i've seen contras danced at weddings and private parties, in backyards, in hallways, on village greens, in parking lots, and in bars.
One of the most interesting group-dance traditions of the Northeast is the quadrille. Technically, a quadrile is a sequence of short square dances performed in sets of four (sometimes eight) couples. It was brought to this country from France and England in the early nineteenth century. Originally, each quadrille consisted of as many as five separate dance figures and, at the height of popularity, there were literally hundreds of different quadrilles. Many of the individual figures linger on as "prompted squares" at old-fashion programs like the Fitzqilliam dance. But the quadrille as a sequence of dances survives today in Franco-American and Canadian maritime communities.
Each Saturday night at the French American Victory Club, in the Boston suburb of Waltham, a three-figure quadrille is still performed. The house band of electric guitars, piano, and drums leaves the stage, and a fiddler and caller take their places. Several dozen people get up to dance. At first glance, the Waltham quadrille appears merely to be a series of rather simple square dances, done in sets of four couples under the direction of the caller. Repetition, the secret of the quadrille, becomes apparent only after watching the dance are fully several times. The quadrille is always the same—the three figures are danced in the same order every time the quadrille is performed. In Waltham, the quadrille is danced three times a night In contrast, in the Martimes, the local version of the quadrille is danced dozens of times in an evening, with breaks only for step dancing and an occasional fox-trot.
To an outsider, it might seem boring to repeat the same dance so often, but dancing is not all that's going on here. The quadrille to the community of Waltham (like the Fitzwilliam dance to its community and the singing squares and contras to their communities) is more than a dance—it's a statement. It says to the dancers, their families, and friends, "This is who I am and this is where I belong." And that's a very important function of the New England Saturday night dance.
At the center of all traditional dance in the Northeast is the fiddler. Without him, there is no dance. Only the flute, and earlier, the fife, has ever challenged the fiddle's dominance.
Since the earliest days, the roles of fiddler and caller have been intertwined. In some cases, certain dances were done only to specific tunes, and the fiddler, in choosing the tune, also chose the dance. But many fiddlers develop independent reputations as callers. Often the fiddler would just announce the dance and briefly review the figures before beginning to play. Some fiddlers, like the late Ed Larkin of Vermont, would call the changes and simultaneously play the tune.
A fiddler alone was enough to make a band for a small dance. In fact, at the informal house dances, or "kitchen rackets," there was rarely enough room for more musicians anyway, and often the fiddler had to perch precariously on a stool in the kitchen sink. In the early twentieth century, the accompaniment (if any) was provided by the parlor pump organ. Today, piano backup is standard, and guitars, mandolins, tenor banjos, and flutes round out the orchestra. Still, no matter what the makeup of the band, it's the fiddler who sets the tempos and chooses the tunes.
Although each of the major traditional north-eastern communities (Yankee, French Canadian, Scottish, and Maritime) has developed and maintained its own vigorous and distinctive fiddle styles, they all share characteristics that distinguish them from other major fiddle regions of North America. Among these characteristics are unison (one rarely hears harmony or countermelodies) distinct articulation, and absence of variation. Additionally, there is a high degree of musical literacy. Many fiddlers learn much of their repertoire from printed sources, and tunes in "flat keys"(F, B-flat, and even E-flat) are not uncommon.
All of these fiddle styles, all of these traditional dances, are still alive all over New England. Indeed, they thrive at the Saturday night dances.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nevell, Richard. (1977). A Time to Dance. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Sweet, Ralph. (1966). Let's Create Old Tyme Square Darning. Hazardville, CN: n.p.
Tolman, Beth, and Page, Ralph. (1976). Reprint. The Country Dance Book. Original edition, 1937.
Van Cleef, Joy. (1976). "Rural Felicity Sociail Dance in 18th-Century Connecticut." Dance Perspectives 65, no. 17 (spring).
DISCOGRAPHY
The Dances Down Home. 1977. Joseph Cormier. Rounder 7004. Jacket notes by Mark Wilson; insert booklet by Sam Cormier.
La Famille Beaudoin/The Beaudoin family. 1976. Louis Beaudoin. Philo 2022. Jacket note: by Paul F Wells.
John Campbell: Cape Breton Violin Music 1976. Rounder 7003. Jacket notes by Mary Campbell and Mark Wilson.
Maritime Dance Party. 1978. Gerry Robichaud. Fretless FR 201. Jacket notes and inset sheet by Tony Parkes.
Music from Cape Breton, Vol 2: Cape Breton Scottish Fiddle 1978. Various artists. Topic 12TS354 Jacket notes and booklet by John Shaw
New England Traditional Fiddling: An Anthology of Recordings, 1926–1975 1978. Various artists, John Edwards Memorial Foundation JEMF-105. Jacket notes and insert booklet by Paul F. Wells
The Rakish Paddy. 1975 Paddy Cronin Fiddler FRLP-002. Jacket notes by Frank H. Ferrel.
Vermont Fiddler. 1978. Ron West. Fretless FR 132. Jacket notes by Norma West Mayhew.
Violoneux à I'ancienne mode de Chicoutimi, Québec/Old Time Fiddler of Chicoutimi, Quebec. 1998. Louis Boudreault. Voyager VRCD 322. CD reissue of 1977 LP.
Nicholas Hawes
The active fiddlers and other instrumentalists traveled to play at area homes and halls. Fiddlers from the community also began to attend, and later to judge, contests in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Canada, spreading their versions of tunes but also accepting tunes and standards for old-time playing from a broader geographical region.
Attending social dances was very important to many Pittsburg residents. As the tradition changed and dances were no longer held in their neighborhoods, many traveled to dances in nearby communities. The dance-music traditions traditions also adapted to to the changing interests and tastes of musicians and listeners. Thus, in Pittsburg, ensembles were expanded to include other instruments, including guitar, accordion, trumpet, trombone, and drums. They also readily accepted influence from the media. Beginning as early as the 1930s some of the musicians organized hillbilly bands to accompany dances at the grange hall and other community performance spaces. Dance orchestras were also formed to support the increasing interest in dances outside the home environment.
Music in Pittsburg reflects changing interests and needs in this rural farming and lumbering community. Residents' narratives confirm that the dynamic singing tradition in the community was dependent upon shared community values and practices continued by relationships that occurred in household, neighborhood, and occupational spheres. As the geographical and social gaps between families, generations, neighbors, and communities widened, the tradition began to change.
Today the music connected to community traditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is heard in some homes on cassette, CD, and videotape and at public events where local musicians play fiddle, guitar, accordion, and drums to accompany old-time dances. The local songs, the British ballads, and even the popular songs of the earlier years are offered only as memories. For many, active singing has been replaced by active listening to country songs and other popular genres. The memory of the old songs and dances gives residents an opportunity to recall and to celebrate common experiences among relatives, neighbors, friends, and co-workers.
