In writing and conversation, nineteenth century Americans commonly would drop phrases, deriving from popular songs of the day, and expect people, of course, to understand the connotation. On the prairies, for instance, any old place of residence might be referred to, with nostalgic affection, as the “little old sod shanty on the claim.”
Similarly, in the way we today might say, “back in the day” (although I sort of hate that phrase), plains folk back in the day would say, “When you and I were young, Maggie.”
I got to thinking about this song while reading Francis Edward Abernathy’s book, Singin’ Texas. Abernathy, once president of the Texas Folklore Society, wrote a folksong book that was part memoir, part treatise. His chapter on cowboy songs draws heavily on the memory of his grandad, who was camp cook for the Sachueista Ranch in northwest Texas.
Abernathy intimates that not all cowboy songs were “cowboy songs” per se, and that the most popular song on the cattle trails was “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” - which singers eventually came to reference simply as “Maggie.”
I’m not sure the broader evidence supports Abernathy’s assertion, but I do know that “Maggie” was a sentimentally iconic song in the settler society of the Great Plains, right up there with “Lorena.” I have sheet music of “Maggie” before me: author George W. Johnson, music by J. A. Butterfield, published in Chicago, 1866.
I wandered alone to the hill, Maggie,
To watch the scene below;
The creek and the creaking old mill, Maggie,
As we used to long ago.
The Canadian Encyclopedia and a feature in the Toronto Star confirm that the composer was Canadian, a schoolteacher in Glenbrook, Ontario, who wrote the poem in honor of his young wife, Margaret, and published it in a collection called Maple Leaves. Butterfield and his music publisher in Chicago picked it up from there.
The poet persona is old and gray, and he revisits the the scenes of a youthful courtship, including a graveyard that once was a meadow. The repetition of the name, “Maggie,” at end of line injects poignant punctuation into the stanzas, and the tune tugs the heartstrings.
And now we are aged and gray, Maggie,
And the trials of life nearly done;
Let us sing of the days that are gone, Maggie,
When you and I were young.
I doubt that any of the plains folk who sang “Maggie” and propagated it as a folksong with their own variations — certainly not the kids of Devils Lake who performed it for end of school in 1910, nor the Kidder County Homemakers who group-sang it from memory at their achievement day in Tappen in 1937 — none of them knew the truly sentimental backstory of the song.
For Maggie, the darling bride of the poet, died of tuberculosis less than a year after they were married, before the poem became a song. If she ever revisited that meadow of her happy courtship, she did so as spirit. So let the tears begin. Ah, when you and I were young, Maggie.
