THE LOG DRIVER'S WALTZ - Wade Hemsworth (1916-2002) Video of the song; Sung by Kate & Anna McGarrigle

If you should ask any girl from the parish around
What pleases her most from her head to her toes,
She'll say - I'm not sure that it's business of yours,
But I do like to waltz with a log driver.

Cho: For he goes birling down a-down white water;
That's where the log driver learns to step lightly.
It's birling down, a-down white water;
A log driver's waltz pleases girls completely.

When the drive's nearly over, I like to go down
To see all the lads while they work on the river.
I know that come evening they'll be in the town
And we all want to waltz with a log driver.

To please both my parents I've had to give way
And dance with the doctors and merchants and lawyers.
Their manners are fine but their feet are of clay
For there's none with the style of a log driver.

I've had my chances with all sorts of men
But none is so fine as my lad on the river.
So when the drive's over, if he asks me again,
I think I will marry my log driver.

Wade Hemsworth grew up in Brantford, Ontario, and learned to play guitar and banjo as a youth. He graduated in 1939 from the Ontario College of Art, and then spent the Second World War in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was briefly stationed in Newfoundland, where he discovered traditional music. After the war, he worked as a surveyor in wilderness areas of Northern Ontario, Quebec and Labrador, a job which provided him with subject matter for many of his 20 original songs. He moved to Montreal in 1952, where he worked as a draftsman for the Canadian National Railway and performed in the city's folk music clubs at night.

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