The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #96587 Message #4068461
Posted By: GUEST,henryp
15-Aug-20 - 12:24 PM
Thread Name: DTStudy: Get Up, Jack! John, Sit Down!
Subject: RE: DTStudy: Get Up, Jack! John, Sit Down!
This - and more - from Mainly Norfolk. Cyril Tawney sang Outward Bound in 1963 on his Argo album A Mayflower Garland. He noted:
This ditty from the days of sail says much the same as the modern American song Nobody Needs You When You're Down and Out. At the end of a voyage a sailor was a comparatively wealthy man in a seaport and friends were easy to come by, friends who steadily evaporated as the ‘chink’ disappeared. Soon it was time to “go to sea for more”, a situation so common that in time the phrase ‘outward bound’ actually came to mean ‘broke’ among sailors.
Our version here was collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould from Will Huggins of Lydford, Devon [VWML SBG/1/2/305].
Baring-Gould was born in Exeter in 1834, and his family owned the Lewtrenchard Estate near Lydford in west Devon. "As I have mentioned the folk-music of Devon, I may here add that one of my assistants was old Will Huggins, of Lydford, a mason, who entered enthusiastically into the work. I had an attack of influenza in the winter of 1889-90, and had to leave England for Italy. Before my departure Will promised me to go about among his old cronies and collect ancient ballads. Alas! he caught a chill; it fell on his chest, and when I returned in the spring, it was to learn that he was gone." I'm going, I reckon, full mellow, To lay in the churchyard my head; So say, God be wi' you, old fellow, The last of the singers is dead.