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Location: Coopersburg, PA
Country: US
Country: US
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youtube videos: 10
images: 14
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videos: 3
audio tracks: 10
Happy Land (Southern Harmony #89b)
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Duration: 00:02:07
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Duration: 00:02:07
description:
Happy Land(Southern Harmony #89b)The tune is said to be a Hindustani air collected by Andrew Young in India in 1842. This is somewhat controversial, but I don't know the facts of it.Verses 1, 3, and 4 by Andrew Young, 1838. Verse 2 by Abby Hutchinson, ca.1850.The melody is pentatonic, lacking the fourth and seventh scale degrees which places it Bronson 1 mode, sometimes referred to as "Ionian pentatonic".Because the tune lacks the fourth and the seventh, it can be played melody-drone style in any dulcimer tuning intended for the Ionian, Mixolydian or Lydian modes. (DAA, DAD, DDD, etc)I play it noter-drone style on a Ben Seymour Galax dulcimer with a base tuning of DDDD. The outermost drone is reverse-capoed on the fourth fret, raising it to an A. Thus the final tuning is ADDD, with the scale starting on the open fret of the paired melody strings.The images are a season cycle of still photos I took at our farm over a three-year period.
Thanks, y'all. It's good to hear the encouragement.
times gone by...love this.
This is idyllic! Wonderful....
Funny how folks have been so recently re-enjoying this video from over three years ago. I used this video to learn this tune just last week! Long live FOTMD
and all the great folks who contribute so much
I love this too. Robin, a balm for my soul today as well. Great video, great song and gorgeous pictures!!!
Oh, Strumelia, I couldn't agree more! I would dearly love to have a cd by our friend Ken-- his music is a balm to my soul today.
Totally agree with you Strumelia, Ken always passed on knowledge in a very accessible manner !
JohnH
Still one of my very favorites, years later.
Wish we could see you here more often Ken- you are missed!
Nicely done Ken, I think this is the first time I've ever heard the proper words to this song, usually it's some parody and not always that kind or clean.
Sue, thanks. That means a lot.
Takes me back home !
It was supposed to be a wood duck box, but it turned out to be a bait station for feral cats.
Thanks Robin C and Randy. I had clean forgotten this song until Stephanie mentioned it a few months back. I listened to it on YouTube and had a crystal-clear recollection of singing at Baptist youth camp as a kid.Dogs. Let's see, we lost both our blueticks last year. Old age kidney trouble kind of thing. Our last hound dogs. I am too old to run them anymore. That picture was taken last summer before their troubles started.The 1952 Ford 8N is a daily driver, still running strong after 58 years. It has an adjustable track width in front, and it's set out to the maximum. We have a 50-foot elevation drop over 1/4 mile on our farm with lots of ravines, so we keep it set wide to make it as stable as possible for sidehill work. We don't use it for cultivation, so the wide track doesn't cause any trouble.The barn was built in 1869-1870, and "signed" in 1871 by 11-year-old Jarom Bright. His father was named Brecht, but changed his name. There was a log cabin here in 1789, occupied by the Kunsman family. It's foundation now supports our garage, and its builder is very likely the occupant of the rustic, unlabeled grave out behind the barn.Flint Hill, which is the name of the hill on which our farm is located, is an unsorted pile of glacial till that fetched up against the foothills of the Taconic mountains at the end of the last ice age. The barn foundation is squared-up mixed till (aka fieldstone), a common building material around here in the 18th and 19th centuries.Our barn is "pre-fab". The main timbers were cut to length in a water-powered sawmill on the Delaware River a few miles to the east, near the sight of Washington's famous crossing. They were labeled with Roman numerals and trucked over to the farm by mule train.We have Ameraucanas (green eggs), Australorps, Buff Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and R.I. Reds (brown eggs). We specialize in Ameraucanas, because they're good layers and very cold-tolerant without being big, hungry chickens during the winter months. They provide us with our main protein source, and we barter eggs for produce and the like because we don't want to be a licensed chicken farm for a variety of antibureaucratic reasons.The round symbol is a blumenstern (flower star), a common Pennsylvania German decorative motif with no special symbolic significance. They have been known as "hex signs" and attributed as magical symbols since Wallace Nutting photographed and gave them that name in Pennsylvania Beautiful in 1929, but they apparently had no such significance to the early German settlers who would have regarded any sort of magic as a totally forbidden. (They were radical ultraconservative protestants expelled from Germany by Lutherans and Catholics.)I never mind rambling on about the farm, so questions are always welcome.
looks like a wood duck box @ 1:47?
& what kinda chickens ya raisin' there/ ...& why?...: )...sorry so many ????.....interesting vid!
& what's the round symbol on the barn @ 1:40?
That old coon dog has something going about a half a minute in huh?..3 years ago?..& extry wide stance on the old Ford tractor?Beautiful hoar frost @ 1:00....Cool old stone foundation on the barn.... How old is the barn? Locally quarried stone? What kind of stone? We have white limestone around here....from Weeping Water NE.Best part tho is the playing & singing. I agree with Robin about the L of C.Thx for posting this Ken...f'real...
Hi Ken,I love your tunes. If Alan Lomax was travelling the land today then he would record you singing and playing for the Library of Congress. You have a beautiful and peaceful home.When you make your YouTube clips could you also upload the soundtrack to the "add music" section of your home page? I really like to listen to your page while I'm working on guitars!Robin
Thanks, Robin. I've been working on "Haven of Rest", which I think is on the same album.