The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #22617 Message #740580
Posted By: Jon Bartlett
02-Jul-02 - 05:17 AM
Thread Name: Origin: High Germany
Subject: RE: High Germany, who wrote it?
Bob Bolton, the astonishing thing is that there is contemporaneous evidence for the same song functioning in the same way on contact with First Nations people on the NW coast of America. The reference is I think in one of the Spanish texts describing the voyage of the SUTIL. Give me a day or so to hunt this down. (I remember spotting the Australian reference in "The Fatal Shore", but didn't check Hughes' footnote on his source). Incidentally, I don't think the song has anything to do with Marlborough: unless there's a Dutch etymology behind it.