Penniless in the wake of a potato famine in their homeland, one and a half million Irish people immigrated to the United States between 1846 and 1850. Their passages were frequently paid by relatives who had already settled in America. Crossing the Atlantic by packet ship was inexpensive, especially for those who traveled from English ports, due to trade competition between America and Britain. The journey took at least six weeks on the overcrowded vessels. Famine, disease, and shipwreck caused an estimated one of every five immigrants to die at sea.
Across the Western Ocean expresses the concerns of the people making the transatlantic journey and their loved ones. It shares the same melody as the sea shanty Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her. Which song begot the other is not definitively known.
Lyrics toThis Old Hammer
This Old Hammer
John Henry was a former slave who worked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in the years following the Civil War. He was one of a thousand or so men who spent nearly three years drilling a hole through Big Bend Mountain in Talcott, West Virginia. An unrecorded number of predominantly African-American men died working in the thick smoke and intense heat of the tunnel. When his boss introduced a steam-drill that threatened the jobs of the workers, John Henry engaged the machine in a contest to prove that it was no match for man.
From the moment these events occurred, the legend grew in story and song as it moved about the country. Work songs that invoked the spirit of John Henry came into prominence. These songs, sometimes referred to as hammer songs, have only a few lyrics repeated with a strong rhythm to facilitate hammering or other manual labor. Ballads that told the whole story from John Henry's birth through his death were also widespread. Matthew Sabatella combined lyrics from various ballads and hammer songs and set them to his own melody to create This Old Hammer.
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