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Peter Ambelay
There are several variants of this ballad as sung in Maine. W. R. Mackenzie in The Quest of the Ballad (p. 35) quotes from memory two lines sung to him during his childhood in Nova Scotia by Edward Langille, a cobbler, of River John, Nova Scotia:
0 my name is Peter Ambelay, as you shall understand.
My home is in Prince Edward Island, down by the ocean strand.
Langille is now dead, and Professor Mackenzie informs the editor that he has not found the rest of the ballad.
A
"Peter Amerly," sung by a lumberjack in Maine and taken down for the editor, in ip/6i by a student in the University of Maine. Stanza 10 is from "Mary Hamilton" (Child, No. /;J, A fj, B 17).
i My name is Peter Amerly, As you may understand, Born on Prince Edward Island Close by the ocean strand.
2 In eighteen hundred eighty-two,
When the flowers were in brilliant hue, I sailed away from my native land My fortune to pursue.
3 I landed in New Brunswick,
That lumbering countteree; I hired to work in the lumber woods In the North West Merrimachi. |
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