The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167430   Message #4039826
Posted By: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
16-Mar-20 - 01:19 AM
Thread Name: Maritime work song in general
Subject: RE: Maritime work song in general
It's a day early but here's one for the Irish:

Antiphonary of Bangor

Columbanus (540-614)?
oooor…
Colman nepos Cracavist (c.800)?

Connections with Bobbio
On the basis of similarity in prosody, he (Colman) has also been identified as the composer of certain poems traditionally assigned to Columban, the saint and founder of Bobbio Abbey. These are Columbanus Fidolio, Ad Hunaldum, Ad Sethum, Praecepta vivendi, and the celeuma.” [wiki, Herren (2000)]

Heads up: The footnotes were written a long while after (1894 & 1914) St. Columbanus... or whomever:

Boating Song.
Heia5 viri, nostrum reboans echo sonet heia!
        Arbiter6 effusi late maris ore sereno
        Placatum stravit pelagus posnitque procellam,7
        Edomitique vago sederuut pondere fluctus.
5 Heia, viri, nostrum reboans echo sonet heia!
        Annisu8 parili tremat ictibus acta carina.
        Nunc dabit arridens pelago concordia caeli
        Ventorum Inotu praegnanti9 eurrere velo.
Heia, viri, nostrum reboans echo sonet heia!
10         Aequora prora secet delphinis aemula saltu
        Atque gemat largum, promat seseque lacertis,
        Pone trahens canum deducat et orbita10 sulcum.
Heia, viri, nostrum reboans echo sonet heia!
        Aequore flet corus:11 “vocitemus nos tamen heia!
15         Convulsum remis spumet mare: nos tamen heia!
        Vocibus adsiduis litus resonet: tamen heia!

5 yoho!         6 the lord        7 blast.        8 pull                9 swelling.                10 track.                11north wind.

Heia, viri, etc. A boating song, of uncertain age, found in a Berlin MS. of the eighth century. There is frequent mention in the ancient writers of the nauticus cantus (e.g. Cic. Nat. Deor. ii. 35) of boatmen at the oar; and the practice of singing at work also appears to have been general. Thus Varro, cited by Nonius (56), speaks of the vine-dressers singing at the vintage, and the sarcinatrices in machinis, which one would like to translate, “the seamstresses over their sewing machines.” For the spirited lines given here, see Bährens, Poet. Lat. Min. iii. 167, and Peiper in the Rheinisches Museum, xxxii. 523.

nostrum. Agreeing with the second heia, “our yoho.””
[Roman Life in Latin Prose and Verse, Peck, Arrowsmith, 1894]