My Bonny, Bonny Boat: A Song History
"My Bonny, Bonny Boat" is a song tied to Ida Lewis, the nineteenth-century lighthouse keeper of Newport, Rhode Island.[1] In the lyrics and notes that the Rhode Island duo Atwater~Donnelly published for their 2022 album The Boat You Row, the song is said to have been composed in her honor, with words and melody credited to A. & J. Dale, 1870.[1][2] Its verses picture a home on a rocky island ringed by the sea, and its chorus follows the singer rowing out across the water.[1]
Francis William Edmonds, Man Seated in a Rowboat, from a sketchbook, graphite on off-white wove paper, ca. 1838 and after. A rowboat, shown for the song's chorus; it has no connection to Ida Lewis.
Lewis, Rhode Island's best-known lighthouse keeper, lived at Lime Rock Lighthouse on a small island in Newport's harbor and was famed in the town for her swimming and rowing.[3] Records of her rescues are incomplete, but she made her first at twelve and kept on into her sixties; after she saved two soldiers who had fallen through the ice in February 1881 she received the Gold Lifesaving Medal, and she came to be called America's bravest woman.[3] Even before the 1870 date credited for this song, other composers had honored her with pieces of their own: E. A. Kelly's "The Ocean Waves Dashed Wildly High" (Providence, 1869) is dedicated to "the heroine of New Port Lime Rock" and depicts her as she appeared in a rescue of March 29, 1869, and Dexter Smith and E. N. Catlin's "Bell of Boston Bay, or, The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter" (Boston, 1869) is also dedicated to her.[1][4][5] Edward Mack's "Ida Lewis Mazurka," published in Philadelphia the same year, carries a cover lithograph of her rowing through rough water to save a man.[6]
Aubrey Atwater arranged the song for mountain dulcimer in 2021, and Atwater~Donnelly recorded it as the second track of The Boat You Row.[1][2] Atwater includes it, in DAD tuning, in Song By Song, Vol. II, a tablature book of traditional songs for dulcimer.[7]
Sources
- Atwater~Donnelly: "Lyrics - The Boat You Row".
- Atwater~Donnelly: "Store".
- Google Doodles: "Ida Lewis' 175th Birthday".
- Johns Hopkins Levy Sheet Music Collection: "The Ocean Waves Dashed Wildly High".
- Johns Hopkins Levy Sheet Music Collection: "Bell of Boston Bay, or, The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter".
- New York Public Library Digital Collections: "Ida Lewis mazurka".
- Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
- Image: Francis William Edmonds, Man Seated in a Rowboat, from a sketchbook, graphite on off-white wove paper, ca. 1838 and after. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.