continued...

//
Quite as popular as Stormy was another mysterious person--Randso. Of this person it is alleged in an unusually coherent narrative song that "he was no sailor"; that, nevertheless, "he shipped on board of a whaler," and as "he could not do his duty," he was brought to the gangway, where "they gave him nine-and-thirty." Obviously Randso was not a model for sailors.

O Randso was no sailor.
Ah, Randso, boys, ah, Randso.
He shipped on board of a whaler.
Ah, Randso, boys, ah, Randso.
//

It's REUBEN RANZO with the regulation verse.

Then he gives HUCKLEBERRY HUNTING

//
In the following song not only is the mysterious Randso mentioned, but a word of fathomless meaning and of very frequent recurrence in sailor songs is introduced. Perhaps Max Müller could attach some meaning to "hilo," but in that case he would do more than any sailor ever did. It will not do to suggest that it is really two words--"high" and "low." It occurs in too many other songs as an active verb to leave us any room to doubt that to "hilo" was to be, to do, or to suffer something. It can not be gathered from the insufficient data at our command whether or not the act of "hiloing" was commendable in a sailor, but from the frequency with which the fair sex was exhorted in song to ''hilo," it is evident that it was held to be a peculiarly graceful act when executed by a young girl. The syllable "yah" which appears in the first chorus of this song is not necessarily the negro "yah." The best nautical pronunciation gave it a long sound, something like "yaw," whereas the negro, who is popularly believed to remark "yah I yah I" whenever he is amused, really says " yoh! yoh!"

I've just come down from the wildgoose nation.
To me way hay E O yah.
I've left my wife on a big plantatlon.
And sing hilo, me Randso, way.
//

This is there first time it appears as a chanty, though the song is known in minstrelsy since the 1840s.