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Ste. Anne's Reel is about the church of Ste. Anne de Beaupré near Quebec, which dominates a high cliff accessed by a steep series of stairs, like Memphis's Northfield apartment, only higher, said to be the site of miraculous recoveries and healing. The church was built partly from donations from my Rivard ancestors.
I may have borrowed the chord structure from the famous French-Canadian fiddle tune of the same name. And the melody line, which seems to fit the chord structure remarkably well. No one knows why. It's a mystery. Oh, and the name. It's all public domain, so sue me.
C'mon Lizzie, played by request during the livestream, but not included in the studio EP, concerns Lizzie and her sister Myrtle Martel. Myrtle and Lizzie ran a cathouse near a WPA work camp. Martel was not their given name, since Myrtle married into my family after having been chased from Vermont across the border into New York by a lynch mob composed of God-fearing Christians.
Myrtle married one of her brothel's best customers, Jack Martel, my grandmother's brother. He was a gambler, a rum runner, and a sharply dressed cad. One drunk night he drove his immaculate Model A Ford, the same car in which Myrtle and Lizzie had made their getaway, into a tree and went flying straight through the windshield to wherever he abides today.
Myrtle and Lizzie never shook their Temperance era habits, and kept their whiskey flasks chilling in their toilet tank, where my brother Bob discovered them one visit in '67 or '68. He has a nose for hiding places. He became an investigative journalist, one of two occupations which pay you to peer into people's toilet tanks.
Finally, there is an excellent history of Franco-American (French Canadian) migration and assimilation into the United States, A Distinct Alien Race, by David Vermette, who is now a social media pen pal. Due to their language (French) and religion (Catholic) French-Canadians weren't regarded as Caucasians in US censuses until the early 20th century.
Lyrics:
Below the high church steps on a torchlit night
Wound a slow procession
Of the crippled and the sick and the suffering
And others with a need to heal
On their hands and knees, they climb those steps
Intent on their confessions
Ev'ry last one praying that today's the day they'll go
Dancing Saint Anne's Reel
When your feet kick up and your head bows low
Like they never could do an hour ago
And women's' skirts go swirl around
As bells begin to peal
It's a dance that's done just once a life
On the Feast of Anne de Beaupré
Throw away your crutch, rise to your feet
Go dancing Saint Anne's Reel
Instrumental: AA BB
All the old folks say they've seen this dance
As long as they remember
And babes are born with the step down pat
It ain't taught, it's done by feel
So, they all set out and congregate
When July's burnt to an ember
Ev'ry last one praying that today's the day they'll go
Dancing Saint Anne's Reel
When your feet kick up and your head bows low
Like they never could do an hour ago
And women's' skirts go swirl around
As bells begin to peal
It's a dance that's done just once a life
On the Feast of Anne de Beaupré
Throw away your crutch, rise to your feet
Go dancing Saint Anne's Reel
Instrumental: AA
When your feet kick up and your head bows low
To the mandolin pick or the fiddler's bow
And women's' skirts go swirl around
'Cause that's the way they feel
It's a dance that's done in the honor of the one
And only Anne de Beaupré
If you never had need of a cane or a crutch
Give thanks with Saint Anne's Reel.
Instrumental at ramming speed: AA BB
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