The fox went out on a chilly night…
He prayed for the moon to give him light
He had many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o,
Many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town.
Or to be more exact, 2,176 miles, from Norway to Ellesmere Island in Canada:
A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway’s Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days…
Researchers at Norway’s Polar Institute fitted the young female with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild in late March last year on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago’s main island.
The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later – a journey of 1,512 km – before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek.
She was tracked to Canada’s Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000 km further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard.
What amazed the researchers was not so much the length of the journey as the speed with which the fox had covered it – averaging just over 46 km (28.5 miles) a day and sometimes reaching 155 km.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes at first. We thought perhaps it was dead, or had been carried there on a boat, but there were no boats in the area. We were quite thunderstruck,” Eva Fuglei of the Polar Institute told Norway’s NRK public broadcaster.
I couldn’t remember where I first heard that song, but I was a child at the time. The voice reverberating in my head seems to be the voice of Burl Ives. And here he is:
Impressive. Makes me wonder how long it took for humans to cross over the Bering Straits. The Mongol armies traveled rapidly over long distances, but they had horses, rode with several mounts, carried food, and knew where they were going.
My first memory of the song is from Odetta. Odetta sings The Fox. I recall a family friend, visiting from out of state, informing me that HER Daddy didn’t sing the song that way. Oh well..
On the other hand, one’s father singing the song to you does indicate that yes, this is a folk song. One Christmas, I requested Alan Lomax’s Folk Songs of North America. My mother penciled in some nice additions about songs that her father sang to her.
When you take your dog out for a walk, remember this story about the fox that walked 3,500 km. Your dog just loves going out on a walk. This is what hunters do.
That fox, judging by the distances she covered, was able to find sufficient food on her trip. Before electronic tracking devices, we wouldn’t have known this.
If one is surprised that horses escaped from Spanish Mexico populated the Great Plains up to Canada, this story about fox mobility might lessen the surprise.
This is my favorite arrangement of that tune — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEoQ7S33Ys
Fox went out one stormy night…I learned it from my college roommate 60 yrs ago.
It is a notable song, with charming lyrics, many verses… We sang it in the dorm. The innocence of those days! Did other things also, like going for after-dinner walks and admiring the local PA architecture. Today everyone would think we were two queers.
We two still see each other; he is a yankee and I’m not. Brought him to southern MS 5 yrs ago, since he’d never been in the state, and he was startled at how fine the landscape was.
…there were the little ones, eight, nine, ten…
…sayin’ daddy, daddy can you go back again, ’cause it must be a mighty fine town-o, town-o, town-o….
Wiki says its been around for some six (!) centuries: “The earliest version of the song was a Middle English poem, dating from the 15th century, found in the British Museum.”
It’s been a long time since I remembered Burl Ives. Thanks.
Thanks from me too. Burl Ives had such a distinctive voice. I know that very few people know who is singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” at Christmas. Of course it is a banned song now, being about bulling and racist.
And of course “Goober Peas” a song from the Civil War I guess is banned because there were slaves in the US then.
J. R. R. Tolkien set one of his own poems to this tune. There are several versions; the one most people know is “The Stone Troll” which appears in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (first volume of LOTR). It is sung by the hobbit, Sam Gamgee, who is also said to be the author. I think there is also a recording of Tolkien singing this.
By the way, thank you for linking to that Burl Ives recording. I enjoyed listening to that.
LYNN,
Don’t forget Burl Ives’ ‘A Little Bitty Tear’. Always liked that song when I was a kid.
Neo,
I grew up with that song (and others like it). I loved Harry Belafonte, and this was one of his earliest songs. Recorded first (I think), in 1954.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSN4WucIFNg&list=RDVSN4WucIFNg&start_radio=1
Waidmann
I first heard it on an album by The brothers Four, c.1958. Folk music was generally popular, even for city dwellers. Brothers Four, Kingston Trio, Belafonte, and more.
My mother loved Burl Ives.
Really interesting funny why the fox kept going West for food, the article doesn’t talk about it. Does mention the shrinking polar ice — I’m wondering what the news will be saying if next year a little ice age starts (due to a lack of solar sunspots).
I recall the Burl Ives song: Ain’t we crazy?
My mother liked him and all the mentioned folk songs, plus the folk rock groups like Mamas and Pappas and Lovin’ Spoonful. Singing together in the car was a fun family thing. Our family does that less often, now, but not never. (Maybe I should try to do it more often.)
Folk music is usually fun to sing along with. Many Slovaks remember the commie songs they learned when young, and often sing some of them later in the campfire nights after more drinking. Burl Ives would approve.
(Looks like the almost unique 5 min to edit is back! Hurray!)
https://www.wideopenpets.com/25-fun-facts-about-homeward-bound-since-the-movie-is-already-25-years-old/
John F. MacMichael on July 6, 2019 at 7:39 pm said:
J. R. R. Tolkien set one of his own poems to this tune. There are several versions; the one most people know is “The Stone Troll” which appears in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (first volume of LOTR). It is sung by the hobbit, Sam Gamgee, who is also said to be the author. I think there is also a recording of Tolkien singing this.
* * *
I didn’t know this about JRRT (would love to hear the recording), but when I first read the books, I noticed how naturally that poem fell into the tune, and sang it that way in college.
While I love Ives, I think I like Belafonte’s version better — as for singing along with folk songs, which our generation did as a matter of course, my recording of Lehrer’s ode IIRC has a bit of his patter that isn’t shown below, which is, “They call them folk songs because folk sing them.”
Lynn: even in the seventies, there were people protesting the Offense Brigades; unfortunately, they lost the battle — It doesn’t matter if you have all the good songs when the popular culture gatekeepers drown you out.
See the cross-posted comment here.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/07/06/americans-are-not-especially-fond-of-the-woke/#comment-2441636
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc
Thanks, Aesop! Smart fella, that Lehra! (“Don’t even gotta rhyme.”) 😆
Julie – if Aesop doesn’t have a fable about something, Lehrer probably has a song!
Yep! (But we gotta get PETA after him about his attitude on pigeons in the park. Come to think of it, Ms. Stein expressed a certain sadness about that. But no practical experience in dealing with the problem.) 😀
These polar foxes can move amazingly fast, as I witnessed during my hiking in Polar Urals in winter. Their main diet are mice, whom they can smell and dig out from under snow, but they also can hunt polar partridges as well (the birds the size of pigeons).
Chuck — After I saw the movie “Mongol,” I came to the conclusion that the story that all the horses in North America are descended from a couple of escaped Spanish horses, and that the Plains Amerindians developed their horse culture in 200 years could not be right. Suppose the two horses were both males, both females, or one gelding in the pair. It took thousands of years for other tribes to domesticate various animals. I think it’s much more likely that some of the Siberians crossed the land bridge on horseback and brought horses and horse culture with them.
Richard, if I remember right I was taught the fossil record showed the progenitors of the horse were native to North America and migrated to Asia. Those ancestors died out in NA.
On the other hand, I tend to think the early human migrants to NA came coasting in canoes or other small boats. Indeed, eventually all the way to Tierra del Fuego is my conjecture.
Brings to mind a different song, for sure…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBdFA6sI6-8
To AesopFan above @July 7, 2019 at 7:40PM:
Since you said you would love to hear the recording of Tolkien singing his poem “The Stone Troll” to this tune and I just found a current source for it: “The J. R. R. Tolkien Audio Collection” a 4 CD set available from Amazon for about $25. This has Tolkien reading and singing selections from”The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” (and his son Christopher reading from “The Silmarillion”). One of the Amazon reviewers very helpfully lists all the tracks in the set.
I hope you see this note (or perhaps our gracious hostess will point it out to you).