The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159568   Message #3784934
Posted By: Jim Brown
12-Apr-16 - 02:12 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Gosport Tragedy/ Cruel Ship's Carpenter
Subject: RE: Origins: Gosport Tragedy/ Cruel Ship's Carpenter
Hello Gutcher,

It's good of you to post these and fill in a gap in the picture.

The two lines in the first one are from the old broadside text. The Roxburghe and other 18th century broadsides have: "At the fall of the damsel and her daughter dear, / In Gosport church they bury'd her there." The Scottish chapbooks and Peter Buchan have variations around "At the fall of a damsel and baby so fair, / And in Gosport church-yard they buried were." or "At the fate of the damsel and baby so fair, / And in Gosport Church-yard they buried her there." Since the Greig-Duncan lines mention the "baby so fair", I would reckon they come from a version of that sort. (They're certainly not from the American Deming version, which doesn't have those lines.)

The second one is from the burlesque version, "Molly the Betrayed or The Fog-Bound Vessel". Maybe the tune makes it funnier, but as far as I can see, apart maybe from the second line, more usually "For grammar or graces none could her excel", pretty much all the humour seems to come from making fun of people who pronounce "w" as "v" (Cockneys?) - though fit for the Aiberdeenshire fowk wad hae lauchit at that is mair nor A can faddom.