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65
gutenberg_id
int64
19
48.3k
The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of
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many North American Indian tribes, but especially those of the
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Ojibway Indians of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
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They were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned
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Schoolcraft married Jane, O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua (The
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fur trader, and O-shau-gus-coday-way-qua (The Woman of the Green
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Prairie), who was a daughter of Waub-o-jeeg (The White Fisher),
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who was Chief of the Ojibway tribe at La Pointe, Wisconsin.
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Jane and her mother are credited with having researched,
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authenticated, and compiled much of the material Schoolcraft
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included in his Algic Researches (1839) and a revision published
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in 1856 as The Myth of Hiawatha. It was this latter revision
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that Longfellow used as the basis for The Song of Hiawatha.
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Longfellow began Hiawatha on June 25, 1854, he completed it
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soon as the poem was published its popularity was assured.
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However, it also was severely criticized as a plagiary of the
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Finnish epic poem Kalevala. Longfellow made no secret of the
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fact that he had used the meter of the Kalevala; but as for the
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legends, he openly gave credit to Schoolcraft in his notes to the
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I would add a personal note here. My father's roots include
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Ojibway Indians: his mother, Margaret Caroline Davenport, was a
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daughter of Susan des Carreaux, O-gee-em-a-qua (The Chief Woman),
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Finally, my mother used to rock me to sleep reading portions of
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Hiawatha to me, especially:
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"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
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Little, flitting, white-fire insect
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Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
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Light me with your little candle,
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Ere upon my bed I lay me,
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Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
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Should you ask me, whence these stories?
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Whence these legends and traditions,
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With the odors of the forest
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With the dew and damp of meadows,
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With the curling smoke of wigwams,
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With the rushing of great rivers,
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With their frequent repetitions,
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And their wild reverberations
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As of thunder in the mountains?
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I should answer, I should tell you,
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"From the forests and the prairies,
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From the great lakes of the Northland,
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From the land of the Ojibways,
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From the land of the Dacotahs,
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From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
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Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
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Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
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I repeat them as I heard them
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From the lips of Nawadaha,
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The musician, the sweet singer."
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Should you ask where Nawadaha
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Found these songs so wild and wayward,
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Found these legends and traditions,
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I should answer, I should tell you,
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"In the bird's-nests of the forest,
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In the lodges of the beaver,
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In the hoofprint of the bison,
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In the eyry of the eagle!
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"All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
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In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
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In the melancholy marshes;
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Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
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Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
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The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
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And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
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If still further you should ask me,
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Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
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I should answer your inquiries
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Straightway in such words as follow.
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"In the vale of Tawasentha,
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In the green and silent valley,
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By the pleasant water-courses,
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Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
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Round about the Indian village
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Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
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And beyond them stood the forest,
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Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,
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Green in Summer, white in Winter,
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Ever sighing, ever singing.
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"And the pleasant water-courses,
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You could trace them through the valley,
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By the rushing in the Spring-time,
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By the alders in the Summer,
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By the white fog in the Autumn,
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By the black line in the Winter;
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And beside them dwelt the singer,
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In the vale of Tawasentha,
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In the green and silent valley.
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"There he sang of Hiawatha,
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Sang his wondrous birth and being,
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How he prayed and how be fasted,
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How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
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That the tribes of men might prosper,
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That he might advance his people!"
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Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
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Love the sunshine of the meadow,
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Love the shadow of the forest,
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Love the wind among the branches,
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And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
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And the rushing of great rivers
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Allison Parrish's Gutenberg Poetry Corpus

This corpus was originally published under the CC0 license by Allison Parrish. Please visit Allison's fantastic accompanying GitHub repository for usage inspiration as well as more information on how the data was mined, how to create your own version of the corpus, and examples of projects using it.

This dataset contains 3,085,117 lines of poetry from hundreds of Project Gutenberg books. Each line has a corresponding gutenberg_id (1191 unique values) from project Gutenberg.

Dataset({
    features: ['line', 'gutenberg_id'],
    num_rows: 3085117
})

A row of data looks like this:

{'line': 'And retreated, baffled, beaten,', 'gutenberg_id': 19}
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