Sea Songs and Ballads

1778. The Arethusa had not by any means the success which this ballad claims, and was worsted in the duel.

66. D. S. iii. Sung by Mr. Sedgwick.' On the outbreak of the war with revolutionary France in 1793, Lord Howe took command of the Channel Fleet, and bringing the enemy to an action some 500 miles off Ushant on June 1, 1794, he inflicted a decisive and important defeat upon them, capturing six ships of war, and sinking one.

67. This ballad is chiefly interesting because it is taken from the Skylark published at Edinburgh in 1803. 69. From Songes and Sonnettes, published by Richard Tottel in 1557. This song is under the heading Uncertain Auctours'. It is printed in the Oxford Book of Verse, 54.

70. W. e. 25. 153; D. B. ii. 286: cf. R. B. iii. 127 (a slightly different version by Cuthbert Birket); Hall., p. 108. Another version of this ballad, 'The Welcome Sailor' (no. 87) presents many interesting points of contrast.

71. D. B. i. 122.

72. D. B. ii. 214.

73. From William Allingham's Ballad Book (London, 1864). Two other versions are printed in L., pp. 24, 25. Cf. no. 88. In line 16' withershins' means 'contrary to the course of the sun, i.e. unlucky.

74. Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 123; Child, 24. There is another 'Dumbarton' version in Child. Cf. 'Captain Glen', no. 56. In l. 11,

'There's fey fowk in our ship',

'fey' means 'doomed to die soon'.

75. Rawl. 64; B. B. i. 261; Hall., p. 49. This ballad would perhaps be more appropriately placed in the first group among the songs in praise of sailors'; but it forms a good companion to the next ballad.

76. Hall., p. 42; B. B. i. 289. 1650-74.

77. Rawl. 188; Hall., p. 85.

Date, about

79. Printed by kind permission of Miss Lucy Broadwood. This version is slightly altered and abridged (for concert-singing purposes) from that originally published in the Folk Song Society Journal.

80. Third Edition.

81. 'I never heard this song sung by sailors, or even alluded to by them, notwithstanding its being so well known ashore.' [C. A. G. B.]

82. Ash. 35.

83. D. B. ii. 196; B. B. i. 274; Ash. 38.

84. D. B. i. 29 (printed at Gosport) and iii. 16. Cf. R. B. i. 24. The tenth stanza is omitted in the

former broadside.

85. Rawl. 97; D. B. i. 87; R. B. vi. 415; Hall.,

p. 76.

86. Ash. 63.

Folk Song Society Journal, vol. i. 3. 20.

87. Ash. 74.

There is another version in the

Compare this with no. 70.

88. Ash. 59. The first stanza has been corrected from a version in the possession of Professor Firth. No. 73 is the same ballad in a Scotch and apparently later form.

89. Ash. 74.

90. Edition of 1721. In the seventh stanza 'the main' is a technical term in the throwing of dice.

91. This is copied from J. H. Dixon's Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs (Percy Society, vol. xvii); but versions vary considerably, and the song is still much sung in the navy. Chap. 736.

92. A curiously similar song of much the same date, 'Go High, Go Low,' was published in the Dairy-maid, Edinb. 1784. See L. 51.

97. D. S. iv.

98. Skylark, 1803.

99. D. S. ii.

100. From W. E. Henley's Poems, dated 1886. The note at the end of it, 'the burthen and the third stanza are old', is sufficient excuse for reprinting it, by kind permission of Mr. David Nutt, in this collection.