> Cyril Tawney > Songs > Chase the Buffalo

Chase the Buffalo

[ Roud 1026 ; G/D 6:1103 ; Ballad Index GrD61103 , CAFS2394 ; VWML SBG/3/1/857 ; GlosTrad Roud 1026 ; Wiltshire Roud 1026 ; DT HUNTBUFF ; Mudcat 26594 ; trad.]

Inglis Gundry: Canow Kernow Roy Palmer: A Touch on the Times Roy Palmer: Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams James Reeves: The Everlasting Circle

Cyril Tawney sang Chase the Buffalo in 1962 on his HMV EP of songs from the West Country, Baby Lie Easy. All tracks of this EP were included in 2007 on his posthumous anthology The Song Goes On. Peter Kennedy noted on the original album:

Collected [by] Baring-Gould. Noted, also in the last century, by F.W. Russell, who was Vice-Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. It was sung by J. Benney of Menherriot. [VWML SBG/3/1/857] . This sung did not appear in Songs of the West, although it was sent to Baring-Gould by the collector; the reason probably being that it did not seem very “West Country” to sing about chasing wild buffalo on the banks of the Ohio, in fact, that this was an American song. Let’s see if we can get this one back across the Atlantic, shall we?

Eliza Carthy and Tim Eriksen sang Buffalo in 2015 on their Navigator album Bottle. Eliza noted:

Buffalo is one of the strangest songs these days, with its joyful and swashbuckling stories of killing both buffalo and native Americans on the banks of the Ohio river. We like to think of it as a nineteenth-century Tourist Board advertisement for Ohio, and like to juxtapose it with Logan’s Lament to bring everyone back to brutal reality. It is not widely sung in the UK, though I did find it in Vaughan Williams’ book Bushes and Briars, edited by Roy Palmer.

Lyrics

Cyril Tawney sings Chase the Buffalo

Come all you brisk young fellows
Who have a mind to range
Into some foreign country
Your stations for to change.
Into some foreign country
Away from home we’ll go.

Chorus (after each verse):
And we lay down on the banks
Where the pleasant waters flow.
Through the wild woods we’ll wander
And we’ll chase the buffalo,
We’ll chase the buffalo.
Through the wild woods we’ll wander
And we’ll chase the buffalo.

Come all you pretty maidens
And spin us up some yarn
To make us some clothing
To keep us snug and warm.
You can card and you can spin, maids,
And we can reap and mow.

There are fishes in the river
That are fitting for our use,
And high and lofty sugar-canes
To yield us pleasant juice,
There are all sorts of game, boys,
Besides the buck and doe.

Suppose though wild Indians
By chance should come too near,
We will link us heart to heart
And have nothing to fear.
We would march through the town, boys,
And give the fatal blow.