Maple Sweet Vermont

Maple Sweet

Pete Sutherland

While the COVID-19 pandemic has many of us sheltering at home, Vermont’s sugar makers have been out in their sugarwoods and hard at work for some time now.

Each year here at the Vermont Folklife Center we like to mark sugaring time by asking one of our long-time friends to record themselves singing a version of the Vermont folk song, Maple Sweet (also known as the Vermont Sugar-Maker's Song) that we can share. This year we reached out to our dear friend Pete Sutherland for his rendition of this Vermont folk song staple, and we’re delighted he obliged.

If you find yourself cooped up and in need of some musical fun while we’re waiting for the world to get back to normal, be sure to check out one of Pete’s Posse's online Livestream Quarantine Benefit Concerts. You won’t be disappointed.

About the Song

The Reverend Perrin B. Fiske (born 1834 in Waitsfield, VT) composed the Vermont Sugar Maker's Song - also known as Maple Sweet - in 1858, and it has long been a staple in the Vermont folk song repertoire.

Documented both by Helen Flanders and George Brown in Vermont Folk-Songs & Ballads (1932) and Eloise Hubbard Linscott in Folk Songs of Old New England (1939), Margaret MacArthur recorded a version of it on her 1982 album, An Almanac of New England Farm Songs.

When asked about the song, Pete shared: “I’m a local boy. Grew up in Shelburne and attended the public schools where we started singing this and other Vermont folk songs and old-fashioned pieces in first grade. My first encounter with folk music of any kind and we all loved this song. In fact we had a ritual of singing the last chorus REALLY fast, which of course was hilarious for everybody including our music teacher.”

Tremendous thanks to Pete!

Lyrics

Transcribed lyrics from the version performed by Pete

Maple Sweet

When you see the vapor pillars link the forest and the sky,

You will know the days of sugar making then are drawing nigh;

Frosty nights and thawy days make those maple pulses play,

Till congested with their sweetness, they delight to bleed away

Oh! Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan,

Furnish better music for the season if you can,

See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow.

Sweeter joys indeed, we sugar makers know.

When you see the farmer trudging with her dripping buckets home,

You will know the days of sugar making then have finally come.

As the fragrant odors pour through your open kitchen door,

How the eager children rally, ever loudly crying: "More?"

Do you say you don't believe it? Take a saucer and a spoon,

Though you're sourer than a lemon, you'll be sweeter very soon.

And the greenest leaves you see, on each spreading maple tree,

Let ‘em sip and sip all summer, they’ll be autumn beauties be.

Then for home, or love, or any kind of sickness, it’s the thing.

Take in allopathic doses and repeat it every spring.

Until everyone you meet, if at home or on the street,

Will have half a mind to bite you, you will look so very sweet.

And don't forget Tony Barrand and Amanda Witman from last year (Maple Sweet 2019), Deb Flanders’ from 2018 (Maple Sweet 2018) and Dan and Megan MacArthur's version from 2017 (Maple Sweet 2017)!

References

Cohen, Norman (ed.). 2008. American Folk Songs: A Regional Encyclopedia.

Flanders, Helen Hartness and George Brown. 1932. Vermont Folk-Songs & Ballads.

Linscott, Eloise Hubbard. 1939. Folk Songs of Old New England.

MacArthur, Margaret. 1982. An Almanac of New England Farm Songs.

MacArthur, Margaret and Gregory Sharrow. 1994. The Vermont Heritage Songbook.

Always helpful online folk song resources

Keefer, Jane. 2013. Folk Music Index. Last accessed 2018-03-08.

Waltz, Robert B. and David G. Engle. 2016. Traditional Ballad Index. Last accessed 2018-03-08.

Mudcat Cafe/Digital Tradition Folk Song Database. Last accessed 2018-03-08.