The Bonny Ship the Diamond

This is the way I learned it and have always heard it sung (first verse):

The Diamond is a ship, my lads, for the Davis Strait she's bound,
And the quay it is all garnishèd with bonny lasses 'round;
Captain Thompson gives the order to sail the ocean wide,
Where the sun it never sets, my lads, no darkness dims the sky,

CHO: So it's cheer up my lads, let your hearts never fail,
             While the bonny ship, the Diamond, goes a-fishing for the whale.

Okey dokey. The ship is all fitted out and is about to head out on a whaling expedition. As the crew is boarding, their wives and girl friends are all gathered on the quay to see them off. Clear enough, okay?

The second verse goes:

Along the quay at Peterhead, the lasses stand around,
Wi' their shawls all pulled around them and the salt tears runnin' down;
Don't you weep, my bonny lass, though you be left behind,
For the rose will grow on Greenland's ice before we change our mind.

Some time ago I acquired a copy of The Coffee House Songbook. This is an assemblage of some 164 songs collected from singers in miscellaneous coffeehouses around the country. I'm not sure if the singers wrote down the words for the collectors or if the collectors wrote down the words while listening to the singers. Well, anyway. . . .

This is how "The Coffee House Songbook" has the first verse of that song:

The Diamond is a ship, my lads, for the Davis Strait she's bound,
And the quay it is all garnishèd with forty lashes 'round;
Captain Thompson gives the order to sail the ocean wide,
Where the sun it never sets, my lads, no darkness dims the sky,

CHO: So it's cheer up my lads, let your hearts never fail,
             While the bonny ship, the Diamond, goes a-fishing for the whale.

"Forty lashes?"

Can somebody explain what was going on in somebody's mind that "bonny lasses" transmogrified into "forty lashes?" And what they thought that meant!??

(Even Lady Mondegreen is shaking her head in wonderment.)

But there it is, in a song book that a number of people I know have and use. What's a person supposed to think if they're not familiar with the song and run into that set of words? Made me really suspicious of some of the other songs in the book.

Don Firth