The dying Californian
Publisher: [s.n.]
Published: 1855
Place of publication: United States?
Language: eng
Subjects: Broadsides; Songs; Texts; Popular music; Brothers; Songs and music; Sailors; Death; Gold discoveries
Other titles: Lay up nearer, brother nearer, for my limbs are growing cold
Notes: Two editions are noted. In one, 8 verses are printed in one column, within an ornamental border; in the other, 16 verses are printed in two columns separated by a single wavy line, within a different ornamenal border. The texts are the same.

Without music.

Printed area, including ornamental border measures 14.3 x 11 cm.

Text of song in eight four-line stanzas.

Words by Catharine Harris of Pascoag, R.I. See Keach, H. Burrillville; as it was, and as it is (Providence, 1856), p. 136.

Poem first published in the New England diadem and Rhode Island temperance pledge, Feb. 9, 1850 as lines "suggested on hearing read an extract of a letter from Captain Chase, containing the dying words of Brown Owen, who recently died on his passage to California." Sheet music edition copyright 1855. See Ballads and sea songs of Newfoundland (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 360.