Annotation:Log Driver's Waltz

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LOG DRIVER'S WALTZ. Canadian, Air and Waltz. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'BB'. Composed by Canadian folksinger Wade Hemsworth (1915-2002). The song has become a classic of Canadian folk music, and begins:

If you should ask any girl from the parish around
What pleases her most from her head to her toes,
She’ll say - I’m not sure that it’s business of yours,
But I do like to waltz with a log driver.

Chorus:
For he goes birling down a-down the white water;
That’s where the log driver learns to step lightly.
It’s birling down, a-down white water;
A log driver’s waltz pleases girls completely.

The melody is borrowed, however, and began not as a waltz but as a schottische. In fact it is quite widespread, albeit primarily in the first strain (with a variety of second strains attached). It can be found under titles "Evening Pleasures Schottische," "Limber Neck Blues", "Clog in C Major," "Starlight Clog," "Nightingale (2) (The)," and others. However it seems likely that Hemsworth borrowed it from Don Messer's 1937 recording called "Billy Wilson's Clog" (later published as "Clog in C Major").

Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources:

See also listing at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]
See John Weldon's 1979 animated short "Log Driver's Waltz" [2]

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