Annotation:Old Hollow Poplar

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OLD HOLLOW POPLAR. Old-Time, Breakdown. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'BB. While no relation to the tune title, it is interesting that hollow poplar trees could serve a useful purpose, as this passage from History of Hocking Valley Ohio (1883, p. 850) illuminates:

One of the curiosities as well as a giant of the forest was the old hollow poplar tree, which once stood at the mouth of the creek by that name. The creek was named after the tree, and had its rise in Ward Township. In early times this tree was known to all travelers between Marietta and Lancaster, and many of them found shelter from storms in its great hollow trunk, or, if belated, found a safe retreat from the night air and rain. Four travelers once slept in its trunk one night, having been caught in a heavy storm, and preferred its hollow trunk and warm and comfortable quarters to traveling in a cold and heavy rain. This monarch of the forest was on the line of the Hocking Canal, and fell before the unrelenting ax in the year 1839. slept

Source for notated version: Howdy Forrester, via John Hartford [Devil's Box].

Printed sources: The Devil's Box.

Recorded sources:

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