Brewer’s Larry Gorman North woods balladeer

“And when they see me coming, Their eyes stick out like prongs, Saying, “Beware of Larry Gorman! He’s the man who makes the songs.”

The above lines were written by Larry Gorman who is probably the best known and least-liked lumberjack to have worked in the north woods in the 1800s.

Larry Gorman is the most famous lumberjack of the nineteenth century not because of his skills with an ax or a peavey, which were exceptional, but rather because he composed songs, seventy of which have been preserved. It is these same songs, however, that were responsible for making him the leastliked lumberjack of the time. They were biting satires designed to ridicule their unfortunate subject, who most often was someone who worked with Gorman or lived in close proximity to him. Moreover, he has been the subject of two books written by Maine authors, as well as a number of short studies in the country of his birth, Canada.

Larry Gorman was born on the Trout River in West Prince, Prince Edward Island in 1846. Prince Edward Island, when Gorman was growing up there, was in a state of almost complete economic depression. For that reason, ‘Islanders’ left in droves to find work elsewhere. This meant either going to sea or working in the woods on the mainland. Gorman was one of the great number of Islanders who traveled to the north woods of Maine and New Brunswick to find work. And it was in Maine, particularly in the area extending from Lincoln to the far reaches of Aroostook County, as well as on the Union River in Hancock County, where Gorman made his reputation.

And what a reputation it was, for it included being made the central character of one of Holman Day’s novels, and having his songs collected first by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm of Brewer, Maine’s first great folklorist, and later by Professor Edward Ives, the founder of the Northeast Folklore Archives at the University of Maine.

John Stevens, owner/manager ASE/IICAR Certifi ed Technicians Chief Collision Frame Equipment 207-941-1920 800-941-1920 (ME) 84 Target Industrial Circle Bangor, Maine www.mainecollision.com 72 Target Industrial Circle Bangor, Maine

207-299-4458 ~ Serving the Greater Bangor area ~

Since 1932

Serving you, your friends and neighbors for 88 years. www.maineenergy.net 947-4525 • 338-2444 Bangor Fuel Oil • Propane Gas • Automatic Delivery • 24 Hour Emergency Service • Service Contracts • Budget Payment Plans • Furnaces • Boilers • Heat Pumps

Northport

• Air Conditioning • Radiators • Heaters • Gas Tanks & Linings AUTO RADIATOR SERVICE

Remote Car Starters Installed! OPEN M-F 8AM - 5PM Family business for over 50 years! 942-4554 1-800-244-0034 568 Hammond St. Bangor Across From Fairmount Hardware

35 Market St. Bangor 945-6431 bangortire.com We’re More  an Just A Tire Company 514 Coldbrook Rd. Bangor (beside Dysart’s)

If there is a single work that truly captures the drama of the Maine woods and the life of the lumberjack and timber baron, it is King Spruce by Holman Day. One of the reasons that the 1908 novel so successfully depicts life in the north woods is that the characters are based on real-life figures. The most notable of these is the book’s hero, who is none other than Larry Gorman. Day is known to have interviewed Gorman a number of times while working as a newsman for the Lewiston Journal. Gorman, who sometimes worked in a brick factory in Brewer, also caught the attention of Fannie Hardy Eckstorm around the same time that Holman Day was interviewing him. Eckstorm, who traveled throughout the north woods with her trapper father, devoted much of her life to chronicling the folklore of those who followed the traditional lifestyle of the nineteenth century. In 1927 she published Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-songs and Ballads of the Woods and Coast with Mary Winston Smyth of Islesford. Smyth’s contribution to the book dealt with the sea while Ekstorm’s dealt with the north woods. Included in the book are several of Gorman’s songs.

Much later, Larry Gorman became the subject of University of Maine professor and folklorist Edward Ives’ 1963 book Larry Gorman: The Man Who Made the Songs. Gorman is described by Ives as a larger-than-life figure who was somewhat feared for “the malicious satirical quality” of his songs. In 1993 the book was reissued by a Canadian publisher. A Canadian reviewer writing in The Canadian Journal of Traditional Music said that the publication in Canada “is only fitting as Larry Gorman was a Canadian, and his songs circulated in the Canadian Maritimes as much as in Maine.” Interestingly, the Canadian reviewer, who cites several of Gorman’s songs, does not mention his best-known work, The Good Old

FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED FOR OVER 50 YEARS!

State of Maine. As Professor Ives said, Larry Gorman’s songs could be quite malicious. For example, when he did not approve of Michael Monaghan, his new brotherin-law, a twice-married man much older than his sister Bridget, he satirized the marriage in a song called Monaghan’s Raffle. The song is rather unique, for in addition to making his sister into a lottery prize and calling Monaghan by the name of Brigham – a reference to Brigham Young and bigamy — he describes the process he went through in composing the song, which appears to have been done in the Brewer brickyard. The lines dealing with the process of composition are as follows: I was sitting alone in the shanty, Never thinking of anything wrong, When a piece of brick hit me square in the neck, and I vowed that I would make a song.

(cont. on page 22)

Cable TV

Blvd.

www.whittens2wayservice.com

Companion Animals & Exotics Medicine & Surgery

After Hours, Please Contact: EASTERN MAINE EMERGENCY VETERINARY CLINIC 989-6267 Weekdays 7:00AM-5:30PM  ursdays Open Until 8:00PM Saturdays 8:00AM-1:00PM

207-922-2551 211 Riverside Drive, Eddington, Maine Minutes to downtown Bangor

Large pull through sites

Full Hookup • Cabins Pool • Laundry Game Room • Propane

─ Discounts Available ─

Several lines later, he refers to Brigham dancing with his concubine, who is, of course, his sister Bridget.

Another figure Gorman chose to inflict his biting rancor on was Michael McElroy, a man that Gorman had worked for in Prince Edward Island and that Gorman believed had cheated him. McElroy became the subject of some thirty extremely vicious songs. However, people of the time loved them and (cont. from page 21)

remembered them. The following lines on McElroy give a good idea why: That McElroy is quite a fop, A proud, suspicious, naughty pup, His head is tapering at the top, Like some wild goose decoy. While people were entertained by Larry Gorman’s songs so long as they were about others, almost everyone shunned him out of fear that they would become one of his subjects. Because of

this, Larry Gorman finished out his life in obscurity, working at the brickyard in Brewer.

Larry Gorman, the man who made the songs, died in Brewer in 1917. It is interesting to consider how he would have viewed the revival of interest in his songs, which now make more friends for him than when he was alive.

Excavating & Bulldozing Tree & Stump Removal Septic Systems Landscaping Road Buildings & Drive ways FREE Estimates!

Processed Sand • Gravel • Stone • Loam

GUNS AMMO ARMORING ELVER FYKE NETS 207-598-6862 • guagusenterprises.com

Dorcas Mitchell Loring Hicks of Hampden, ca. 1910. Item # 15013 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com