Publication — if there was any, was usually oral. The annual Christmas concert, weddings and other social gathering s were often enlivened with recitations of original compositions in which humour and pathos enjoyed almost equal attention. Ballads commemorating individual events were less common.
In pioneer days people made their own music. Precious fiddles, banjos or accordions were often the last things travelers voluntarily discarded along the Athabasca, Slave Lake, or Edson Trails. Mouth organs, Jew’s (or juice) harps and even “bones” came into the country in packsaddles and parka pockets as far as the lonely men penetrated the wild places in search of furs. Any settler’s home that had a piano or an organ was a social centre, not only for dancing but also for singing, and services of worship. Singsongs were the common entertainment at which most people sang. A new song brought in by a newcomer was soon copied and like the repertoire of the old travelling minstrels became a vehicle by which news travelled from trading post to trading post and from camp to camp.
If people had no instrument of any kind, they were capable of improvising with what was at hand. A comb, a carpenter’s saw, a washboard — almost anything could became accompaniment for a song.
One of the most ingenious was constructed by trappers along the Pine River, where it was the custom to gather at Goodrich’s cabin for the Christmas season. One year four men found themselves without any music. One of them drove nails into the log walls at various distances. Snare wire was tightly twisted onto the pairs of nails and tightened to produce several different musical tones.
So one played a jig and the rest danced — about fifteen of them on the floor. In the far off places they made their own fun.
People sang. They sang the old tunes with the old words and they sang the old tunes with new words, often putting a humorous twist on the privations of their hard life. Many old timers say these singsongs were the happiest times in their whole life.
If a collection of these long lost songs had been written down, much history — now lost or dimly remembered — would have been preserved.