From Songs of Miramichi by Louise Manny and James Reginald Wilson, Brunswick Press, Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1968

The Jones Boys

I’ll tell you a tale of the Jones Boys

Who lived in yonder hill,

Two jolly fellows with a twinkle in their eye,

And they each did own a mill.

They owned a mill in the side of a hill,

And Eliza she worked in the kiln.

They worked all night, and they worked all day,

But they couldn’t make the gosh-darned saw-mill pay.

Then hi dum diddle um Johnny Jones,

Then hi dum diddle um Jimmy.

They would bring their grist from far and near,

And early they’d arise,

And the bell would be ringing, and the boys would be singing

When on the scene arrived.

And Jimmy would be there for to serve them,

And a jolly man was he,

And his gallant wife Eliza,

For she worked in the kiln you see.

Chorus:

O the Jones Boys, O the Jones Boys,

Here’s to the jolly Jones Boys,

They worked all night and they worked all day,

But they couldn’t make the gosh darned saw-mill pay.

Then hi dum diddle um Johnny Jones,

Then hi dum diddle um Jimmy.

O Oliver McKay just across the way,

The sawyer in Johnny’s mill,

He could set his dogs for to saw his logs

And the orders he could fill.

But quite often he’d get tipsy,

As Johnny Jones would say,

And on that day there were hell to pay

In the mill in the side of the hill.

Chorus

Late in the Fall when the leaves are down,

And the days are bleak and gray,

And the grist’s all ground for miles around,

And it’s time to feed your hay,

With the season’s cut completed,

And all is safe and sound,

They close their mills on yonder hill,

Till the springtime come around.

Chorus

So now, my friends, I will attend,

And those boys of high renown,

Their water mills are silent,

And the snow lies on the ground.

I reside beyond the kiln field,

James Barry is my name.

I have made this song for to pass along,

For those boys of noted fame.

Chorus

Now to conclude and finish

As my ditty I must end,

I hope I have said nothing wrong

To those noble boys offend,

But in the spring when the robin sings,

For employment I will look,

I would work for Johnny Jones

In his mill in Jones’s Brook.

Chorus