Drimindown

[ Roud 2712 ; Ballad Index CrMa176 ; DT DRIMINDN ; Mudcat 3414 ; trad.]

Ernest Sellick from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, sang Drimindown to Helen Creighton in 1956. This recording was included in 1962 on the Folkways album of Maritime Folk Songs from the Helen Creighton collection. She noted:

In collecting folklore it often happens that a song or story may take years to find and then turn up two or three times in the same season. Perhaps I have missed opportunities for I never thought to ask for Drimindown until Captain Charles Cates when mayor of North Vancouver came to Halifax and recorded it for me along with many other songs he had learned from his father. Directly afterwards I went to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and, remembering the pathos with which Captain Cates sang it, asked Mr. Ernest Sellick if he knew it. I was both delighted and astonished when he produced this excellent variant which his father used to sing to the children at bedtime. This did not necessarily make it a lullaby, for fathers sang all kinds of songs to children at nighttime. However, I then recalled that a Mrs. Creelman had sung it to me in Dartmouth in the early 1930’s and had said it was used both as a lullaby or as a milking song. It seems to have had a wide distribution and to have been put to a variety of uses, but to Captain Cates and Mr. Sellick it was known as a lament, but one with a touch of humour. Mr. Sellick who sings it here is now retired, but spent his earlier days as a farmer.

Alasdair Roberts sang Drimindown on his 2023 Drag City album Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall . He noted:

This ‘macaronic’ song in English and (garbled) Gaelic is from the singing of a Mr Sellick of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, who was recorded in 1956 by the folklorist Helen Creighton. In the book Gaelic Songs in Nova Scotia by Helen Creighton and Calum MacLeod, Mr Sellick’s first name is given as Edward; however, on the Smithsonian Folkways LP release Maritime Folk Songs, the recording is credited to Ernest Sellick.

Lyrics

Ernest Sellick sings Drimindown

There was an old man and he had but one cow
And how that he lost her he couldn’t tell how,
For white was her forehead and slick was her tail
And I thought my poor Drimindown never would fail.

Chorus (after each verse):
Ego so ro Drimindown ho ro ha,
So ro Drimindown nealy you gra,
So ro Drimindown arha rna dow
Me poor Drimindown nealo sko chea go slanigash,
Oro Drimindown ho ro ha.

Bad luck to you Drimon and why did you die?
Why did ye leave me, for what and for why?
I’d sooner lose Pat and my own Bunken Bon
Than you my poor Drimindown now you are gone.

As I went to mass one fine morning in May
I saw my poor Drimindown sunk by the way,
I rolled and I bawled and my neighbors I called
To see my poor Drimindown, she being my all.

My poor Drimon’s sunk and I saw her no more,
She sunk on an island close down by the shore,
And after she sunk down she rose up again
Like a bunch of black wild berries grow in the glen.