Maple Sweet Vermont

Maple Sweet

Arthur Davis

Each year here at the Vermont Folklife Center we like to mark sugaring time by asking a local musician 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.

Our 2022 singer is Arthur Davis of Brattleboro, VT. Arthur has been playing music for as long as he can remember. He began his life as a traditional dance musician as a young teenager playing piano for dances with his father (VFC board member Andy Davis!) Since then, Arthur has added the trumpet, button accordion, and banjo to his arsenal of instrumental talents. He plays with the band Gallimaufry, adding a New England and Quebec flavor to this contra dance band as well as the brass timbre of the trumpet. Arthur is also an experienced singer, both on the stage with the Washed Up Beulah Band, a 1930s/40s radio jubilee style quartet, and in the pub, where he can often be heard belting out a rousing chorus song.

Thanks Arthur for sharing your version of Maple Sweet!

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.

Lyrics

Transcribed lyrics from the version performed by Arthur:

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 sunny 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 sour as 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.

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.