Author Archives: Larry Dohey

Newfoundland and Australia: Old Music Connection

ARCHIVAL MOMENTS

April 3, 2012

Newfoundland and Australia : Old Music Connection

Photo Credit: The Rooms Provincial Archives Division, B 22-55

 Francis Forbes’s, Chief Justice of Newfoundlandand later first Chief Justice of Australia is credited with writing “The Banks of Newfoundland”.

Most would immediately recognize the tune as “Up the Pond,” the familiar music at the annual St. John’s Regatta and a piece steeped in the tradition of North America’s oldest continuing sporting event.

“The Banks of Newfoundland” enjoyed a populist appeal in nineteenth-century Newfoundlandthat would have likely astounded Justice Forbes.

Initially published for solo piano by Oliver Ditson of Boston, the piece became best known as a regimental march performed by the Band of the Royal Newfoundland Companies and a variety of other military and civilian ensembles active inNewfoundlandat the time.

Processions, festivals, dinners, soirees, and the like were frequently enlivened with renditions of the popular tune, a tradition that began in the 1820s and proliferated in the years following the granting of representative government.

At the turn of the twentieth century it was considered an unofficial national anthem of Newfoundlandand has remained the march commonly associated with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

Recommended Reading:  Australian Dictionary of Biography  http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/forbes-sir-francis-2052

Recommended Reading:  Imagining Nation: Music and Identity in Pre-Confederation Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies.  Volume 22, Number 1 (2007), Glenn Colton

Recommended to Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNVQdwzMKpA

 

 

LAST WOMAN HUNG IN NEWFOUNDLAND EXONERATED

LAST WOMAN HUNG IN NEWFOUNDLAND EXONERATED

200 YEARS AFTER THE EVENT

 

Jury Declares Catherine Snow Innocent

 

(St. John’s, Newfoundlandand and Labrador– March 30, 2012)  A very cold case was reopened last night in St. John’s,Newfoundland by the Newfoundland Historical Society to re-examine the murder trial of Catherine Mandeville Snow, the last woman executed in Newfoundland.

The case has fascinated historians for decades. In 1833, Catherine Mandeville Snow was tried along with Tobias Mandeville and Arthur Spring in connection with the murder of Snow’s husband, John. He had gone missing in August, which led to an inquiry that discovered dried blood on his fishing stage. It was determined that John Snow had been murdered, but his body was never recovered.

No direct evidence linking Catherine Snow to the murder was ever presented in court, but she was found guilty and sentenced to hang along with her co-conspirators. Her execution was delayed because she was pregnant at the time with her eighth child.

She gave birth to the child, baptized Richard Snow, nursed him for three months in her prison cell from where she was taken and hanged in July 1834 from the court house in St. John’s.

The case garnered a great deal of public sympathy for Snow, including the sympathy of the local Catholic Bishop – Michael Anthony Fleming a native of Carrick on Suir –  who took over guardianship of her seven children. Carrick was also the home town of the Mandeville family.

Her hanging in St. John’s drew a huge crowd. Her final words were:

“I was a wretched woman, but I am as innocent  any participation in the crime of murder as an unborn child.”

A panel including two Supreme Court Justices from Newfoundland and Labrador,  Carl Thompson and Seamus O’Regan, along with defence lawyer Rosellen Sullivan examined how the  two hundred year old case.  An audience of 460  (who also served as the jury) listened intently as the evidence was explored.

The jury has spoken.  Catherine Snow is an innocent woman.

200 Undecided, a hung jury

250 Not Proven (= Not Guilty)

10 – Guilty

http://archivalmoments.ca/2012/03/a-re-examination-of-the-catherine-snow-case/

 

 

 

Was the Bishop Excommunicated?

 ARCHIVAL MOMENT

January 26, 1816

Bishop Michael Fleming giving the last rites of the church to Bishop Thomas Scallan.

On January 26, 1816 the talk in St. John’s was all about the appointment of a Father Thomas Scallan, (also Scallon) who was given the nod to succeed as the new Catholic bishop in Newfoundland.    

Scallan was very well educated; in his career he had been a lecturer in philosophy at the prestigious St Isidore’s College, Rome and a professor of classics at the Franciscan Academy at Wexford, Ireland, a preparatory seminary for candidates for the priesthood.

What is most telling about his tenure as Bishop of Newfoundland is the memorial or relief that was established in the Roman Catholic Cathedral (now Basilica) to celebrate his work in Newfoundland.

Scallan in his relationship with the leaders of other denominations was considered to be far ahead of his time. His ecumenical spirit in fact stirred occasional and considerable controversy.

Indeed, Bishop Michael Francis Howley from St. John’s, attributed such ecumenism to a mental weakness. He stated flatly in his Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland (1888)  that Scallan was reprimanded  by Rome for his ecumenical spirit.  He did not identify the type of reprimand  but the most severe censure or reprimand in the Catholic Church is excommunication.

Indeed, this story that he was reprimanded by Rome became  generally accepted – and was compounded by the story that he was refused the last rites of the church.  To quiet the rumors that he was on the verge of excommunication and or perhaps even excommunicated the local church authorities ordered the creation of an  unusual monument of Scallan by the famous Irish sculptor John Hogan.  

The monument  depicts Scallan on his deathbed receiving the last sacraments (last rites) of the church. It was placed  in the Basilica to show his reconciliation with the church.

 Recommended Archival Collection :  Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese

Recommended Reading: Michael Francis Howley’s Ecclesiastical history of Newfoundland . 1888:  was reprinted atBelleville, Ont., in 1979.

Auld Lang Syne – Times Gone By

December 31

auld-lang-syne-sheet-music

The most commonly sung song for English-speakers on New Year’s eve, “Auld Lang Syne” is a Scottish song that was first published by the poet Robert Burns in the 1796 edition of the book, Scots Musical Museum. Burns transcribed it (and made some refinements to the lyrics) after he heard it sung by an old man from the Ayrshire area of Scotland, Burns’s homeland.

“Auld Lang Syne” literally translates as “old long since” and means “times gone by.” The song asks whether old friends and times will be forgotten and promises to remember people of the past with fondness, “For auld lang syne, we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet.”

There’s plenty of documentary evidence establishing “Auld Lang Syne” as a favorite since the mid-19th century:

The company joined hands in the great music room at midnight and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as the last stroke of 12 sounded.
– The New York Times (1896)

It was a Canadian bandleader Guy Lombardo who popularized the song. Lombardo first heard “Auld Lang Syne” in his hometown of London, Ontario, where it was sung by Scottish immigrants. When he and his brothers formed the dance band, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, the song became one of their standards. Lombardo played the song at midnight at a New Year’s eve party at the Roosevelt Hotel inNew York City in 1929, and a tradition was born.

The song became such a New Year’s tradition that “Life magazine wrote that if Lombardo failed to play ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ the American public would not believe that the new year had really arrived.”

There is  – as with all things –  a Newfoundland connection. The musical Auld Lang Syne was written by Newfoundland born playwright Hugh Abercrombie Anderson. Born in St. John’s, Anderson was the son of politician John Anderson. In 1921 he became manager of a theatrical business in New York owned by his brother John Murray Anderson. Under the pen name of Hugh Abercrombie he wrote the musical Auld Lang Syne, a musical romance in two acts.  It was used as the theme song in the 1940 movieWaterlooBridge.

Recommended Reading: http://www.enotes.com/topic/Auld_Lang_Syne

Recommended Video – Sing Along:  http://www.vxv.com/video/jtHVO6xf9Zqz/happy-new-year-auld-lang-syne-by-sissel-live-wmv.html  (Auld Lang Syne by Sissel (Live).wmv)

 TIMES GONE BY

Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintances be forgotten,
And days of long ago!

Chorus:
For times gone by, my dear
For times gone by,
We will take a cup of kindness yet
For times gone by.

We two have run about the hillsides
And pulled the daisies fine,
But we have wandered many a weary foot
For times gone by.

We two have paddled (waded) in the stream
From noon until dinner time,
But seas between us broad have roared
Since times gone by.

And there is a hand, my trusty friend,
And give us a hand of yours,
And we will take a goodwill drink (of ale)
For times gone by!

And surely you will pay for your pint,
And surely I will pay for mine!
And we will take a cup of kindness yet
For times gone by!

Happy New Year.

I hope that you are enjoying your “Archival Moments”. 

If you would like to comment or make suggestions about content drop me a line  in the New Year at whiteway@nl.rogers.com. I would love to hear from you!!

Gift from Australia

When writing a codicil to his last will and testament on this day  6 August 1865, Bishop John Thomas Mullock of St.  John’s left “his gold enameled pectoral cross to the Diocese of St. John’s.”  The gift to the diocese was quite significant because this pectoral cross in addition to having “liturgical” symbolic value also gives insight into the bishops and their friendship networks around the world. Bishop Mullock wrote that  “the pectoral cross was a gift from his friend Dr Bishop Patrick Geoghegan, Bishop of Adelaide, South Australia.”   [104.1.31]

Many of the early bishops in the “new world” came from Irish stock.  The young Patrick Geoghegan, ordained in 1829  as a Franciscan priest (O.S.F) had as his first assignment the Franciscan Church of St Francis’ Church, Dublin, popularly known as the Church of Adam and Eve., the oldest existing Roman Catholic in Dublin.

Geoghegan in 1837 asked to be sent as a missionary to Australia where he became bishop in 1859.

While he was at Adam and Eve  he was befriended by another Franciscan priest, John Thomas Mullock who was also ordained in 1829.  Mullock was the guardian of Adam and Eve Convent.  Mullock was sent as a missionary to St. John’s becoming bishop in 1848.

One of the first people that Mullock wrote about his appointment to St. John’s, Newfoundland was Geoghegan. In that letter he wrote:

“As to myself, I can’t say as yet how I will be situated in St John’s, but I am sure Dr (Michael Anthony) Fleming  (Bishop of Newfoundland)  will make me comfortable. I have a very arduous Mission but with God’s assistance I hope to get through it, always remembering St Francis’ Motto non tibi soli vivere [Live not for yourself alone].I get a steamer direct from Glasgow next month and expect to arrive in 9 or 10 days in St John’s. I will write to you in a month or two after my arrival there and give you an account of the Mission. As yet I know nothing of it except by hearsay. Our Cathedral there is the largest building in N. America.”

The two maintained a life long friendship.

The pectoral cross is on exhibit in the Basilica Cathedral Museum, home to one of the finest collections of religious artefacts of historic and artistic significance in the country.

The pectoral cross (crux pectoralis) is worn by bishops. The word pectoral derives from the Latin pectus, meaning Abreast.” This cross is attached to a chain (or cord) and is worn on the chest, near the heart.  In 1889, the Holy See recommended that the pectoral cross of a deceased bishop which contained a relic of the True Cross be given to his successor. When putting on the pectoral cross, traditionally the bishop says, “Munire me digneris,” asking the Lord for strength and protection against all evil and all enemies, and to be mindful of His passion and cross.