Annotation:Mouth of the Tobique (The)

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MOUTH OF THE TOBIQUE, THE. AKA - "French Mary." Canadian, Reel (whole or cut time). Canada, New Brunswick. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Brody, Hinds, Messer): AABBCCBB (Songer). A Canadian reel that has had long currency as a vehicle for American contra dancing, popularized by Canadian radio and TV fiddler Don Messer. The Tobique River is in the northwest of the Province of New Brunswick and is named for a Maliseet chief Noel Tobec (1706-1767) who lived at the mouth of the river. In response to a copyright query posted to Fiddle-L on 12.5.07 [1], Peter Rolland responded:

Canoeing on the Tobique River near rocky bank. 1894. John Rowley 1866-1928 (photographer).

During my Nat'l Endowment for the Arts research project in 1977 into fiddling styles, New Brunswick fiddler Clarence Langen told me that Mouth of The Tobique (named after the Tobique river in New Brunswick) is better known as Grumbling Old Woman Growling Old Man. Clarence's aunt was the music teacher of the composer, an Indian fiddler named Francis Sowish. The famed Canadian radio fiddler Don Messer in his tunebook mistakenly switched the name of two Sowish compositions and published Sowish's tune "French Mary" under the name "Mouth of the Tobique". I don't know whether or not Francis Sowish "published" his tunes or merely composed them whence they passed into oral tradition. Don Messer got hold of them somehow.

Roland guessed that the reel was composed between 1910 and 1930. Peter Corfield (2024) further remarks that the tune was played at a Sportsman's show in Boston by Claude Paget's father, at which time Canadian radio and TV fiddler Don Messer picked it up. Corfield notes the piece "was common in the Perth-Andover (N.B.) area and had been composed by a local named Francis Sowish. Corfield (2024) prints a different first strain than the one usually played, and identifies it as the strain played by Sowish and Paget; the strain usually played nowadays in its place is actually a variation strain played by Don Messer.

See "Mouth of the Potomac" for a 6/8 setting of this tune.

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