Mouth Of The Potomac: A Song History

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The only fiddle tune by this name found in the sources consulted here is an American jig in G major, which the Traditional Tune Archive treats as a jig version of the reel "The Mouth of the Tobique."[1] The Archive's source for the notated version is Jehile Kirkhuff of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, whose setting Stacy Phillips printed in the second volume of Traditional American Fiddle Tunes in 1995.[1][2] Kirkhuff (1907–1981) was a blind fiddler, and a Field Recorders' Collective note on his repertoire points readers to a profile of him as the blind fiddler of Lawton, Pennsylvania.[2][3]

Rocky ledges and rushing water at the Great Falls of the Potomac

Andrew Joseph Russell, Great Falls, Potomac River, albumen silver print, 1864. The Potomac at Great Falls, shown for the river of the title; it is not the river's mouth.

The parent reel takes its name from the Tobique River in northwestern New Brunswick and has long served American contra dancers.[4] Writing for FolkWorks, Bill Olson credits it to Francis Sowish, a First Nations fiddler from New Brunswick, and tentatively dates its composition to between 1910 and 1930.[5] Don Messer, the Canadian radio and television fiddler, printed it in his 1948 tune book Way Down East and did much to spread it; one account reported by the Traditional Tune Archive holds that Messer mixed up the titles of two Sowish tunes, so that the reel he published was Sowish's "French Mary."[5][4]

Mark Gilston includes "Mouth Of The Potomac" in More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer, a book of sheet music that he publishes himself, one of several collections he has compiled of influential old-time American tunes; the listing does not say whether his arrangement is this jig or where it comes from.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Mouth Of The Potomac"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Mouth of the Potomac".
  2. Traditional Tune Archive: "Mabel Henry's Fling".
  3. Field Recorders' Collective: "Kerry Blech – Notes on the Tunes".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Mouth of the Tobique (The)".
  5. FolkWorks: Bill Olson, "Tune Histories: 'Snow Deer' & 'Mouth of the Tobique'".
  6. Mark Gilston: "More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Andrew Joseph Russell, Great Falls, Potomac River, albumen silver print, 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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