"Riding Down from Bangor" is a song, written by 1871, about a train journey from
Bangor, Maine
Bangor ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's List of municipalities in Maine, third-most populous city, behind Portland, Maine, Portland ...
.
Text
The words, as published with music in ''The Scottish Students' Song Book'' (1897),
[ are:
:Riding down from Bangor, on an eastern train
:After weeks of hunting, in the woods of Maine
:Quite extensive whiskers, beard, moustache as well
:Sat a student fellow, tall and slim and swell
:Empty seat behind him, no one at his side
:Into quiet village, eastern train did glide
:Enter aged couple, take the hindmost seat
:Enter village maiden, beautiful, petite
:Blushingly she faltered, “Is this seat engaged?”
:Sees the aged couple, properly enraged
:Student’s quite ecstatic, sees her ticket through
:Thinks of the long tunnel, thinks what he will do
:Pleasantly they chatted, how the cinders fly!
:Till the student fellow, gets one in his eye
:Maiden sympathetic, turns herself about
:“May I if you please sir, try to get it out?”
:Then the student fellow, feels a gentle touch
:Hears a gentle murmur, “Does it hurt you much?”
:Whiz! Slap! Bang! Into tunnel quite
:Into glorious darkness, black as Egypt’s night
:Out into the daylight glides that eastern train
:Student’s hair is ruffled, just the merest grain
:Maiden seen all blushes when then and there appeared
:A tiny little earring, in that horrid student’s beard.
]
History and variants
"Riding Down from Bangor" was a poem written by Louis Shreve Osborne in 1871 while attending Harvard. The text mentions the Eastern Railroad
The Eastern Railroad was a railroad connecting Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Maine. Throughout its history, it competed with the Boston and Maine Railroad for service between the two cities, until the Boston & Maine put an end to the competi ...
which ceased only a few years later in 1884 when it became part of the Boston and Maine
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. It has an area of and a ...
.
At some early point, Osborne's poem was set to music.Frank Crumit
Frank Crumit (September 26, 1889 – September 7, 1943) was an American singer, composer, radio entertainer, and vaudeville star. He shared his radio programs with his wife, Julia Sanderson, and the two were sometimes called "the ideal coupl ...
and in 1950 by the husband and wife duo Marais & Miranda.
It is the same poem as "The Harvard Student", also titled "The Pullman Train" (attributed to Louis Shreve Osborne, 1871) by Doney Hammontree.
Orwell essay
" Riding Down from Bangor" is also the title of an essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...
. In it, he muses on 19th-century American children's literature and the type of society it portrayed.
Not to be confused
The song should not be confused with the folk style song " Day Trip to Bangor", a 1980 hit by Fiddler's Dram
Fiddler's Dram were a British folk band of the late 1970s, most widely known for their 1979 hit single, " Day Trip to Bangor (Didn't We Have a Lovely Time)", which reached no. 3 on the UK Singles Chart.
Band members
The full-time members of Fi ...
about "the day we went to Bangor" in Wales.[{{cite web, title=Day Trip to Bangor, publisher=]YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
, url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8WiPy1xSkw, accessdate=2014-11-18
References
American songs