Putting this up now; need to analyze it later. But thoughts are very welcome!

1962        Harlow, Frederick Pease. _Chanteying Aboard American Ships_. Barre, Mass.: Barre Publishing Co.

[Was this also in the 1928 _Making of a Sailor_?]

1875/1876, Harlow worked on the clipper ship AKBAR, Boston > Java, Australia. "Lowlands" was sung at the capstan. This is his remembered version, noted many years later. I believe that when he did so he created something that was partly based in print versions that he'd referenced. We know that Harlow used print sources to some extent, including Whall's collection. What do people think about the language here?

[w/ score]

Oh, were you ever in Mobile Bay?
Lowlands, lowlands, away my John.
A-screwing cotton all the day,
My dollar and a half a day.

A black man's pay is a dollar a day;
A dollar and a half is a white man's pay.

Oh, were you ever in New Orleans?
That's where you meet the Southern Queens,

I wish I was in Slomes Hall,
A-drinking luck to the old Black Ball.

Oh, my old mother, she said to me,
"Come home my boy and quit the sea."

I dreamed a dream the other night,
I saw my love dressed all in white.

She stood and gazed in one blank stare,
And combed the ringlets of her hair.

Her face was pale and white as snow;
She spoke to me in accents low.

"I'll cut away my bonny hair,
No other man shall think me fair.

"I'll cut my breasts until they bleed,
From you, my love, I'll soon be freed.

"I'll jump into the Lowland Sea,
And drown myself for love of thee.

"With seaweed green about my head,
You'll find me there, but I'll be dead."

I then awoke to hear the cry,
"Hey, you sleepers! Watch ahoy!"

The landsman, no doubt sees nothing in the music of this mournful chantey but a mess of doggerel…