Origins: The Flying Cloud

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:37 AM

Hi Martin
Good idea to contact ITMA - will try to remember and pass on what I get.
Would love to know if anybody ever did record his English language songs - seems inconceivable that nobody did.
Annoyingly, I caught the last five minutes of the documentary - but I'm not sure it was exclusively on Nioclas, but rather on the area, Ring - will check that out too.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 10:18 AM

A fascinating and useful thread -- mudcat at its best. Apologies if any of the comments below repeat what's been said -- I don't think they do, but it's a long thread.

A version of this song, with full lyrics and score with chords, is in the book A Bonnie Bunch of Roses by Dan Milner and Paul Kaplan (Oak Publications 1983.) There is a brief introductory note there which doesn't, I think, give any information that hasn't been mentioned above, but it does say that the version in the book is taken "from the singing of Ewan MacColl, with additional verses from other sources," implying that this collated text may be different from those found elsewhere. That note also refers to a recorded version on MacColl's Haul on the Bowlin', a 1962 LP, though according to the Ewan MacColl site he also recorded it elsewhere.

The song seems to me to use a technique relatively rare in English-language folk music, using a rather jaunty melody as a setting for tragic lyrics.

I haven't seen a definitive statement of the provenance of the air, but to me it sounds definitely Irish, though mostly attested from North America. I wonder if it might be found in old song books under a different name.

I've adapted the tune for a musical setting of an A. E. Housman poem, here.

Jon Corelis

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 10:31 AM

Great setting, Jon!

Personally, I'd never describe MacColl's tune as "jaunty." "Dramatic," certainly. Hugill says he heard the tune used for "Go to Sea No More."

A related but gloomier melody is in Doerflinger's "Shantymen and Shantyboys."

MacColl's performance on "Haul on the Bowline" is, I believe, the same as that on "The Singing Sailor" (1956).

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 12:27 AM

Thanks for the comment on the Housman.

My memory of Go To Sea No More (I probably have a recording of it somewhere but can't remember just where) is that it is quite similar to The Flying Cloud air, but with a different meter. Thinking about it, it occurs to me that the melody of Dylan's I Am A Lonesome Hobo from the John Wesley Harding album is also quite similar.

Jon Corelis
Abergenny: A welsh Song

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 03:07 AM

Bingo!

There's a tape in the Comhaltas archive of Nioclas singing The Flying Cloud , together with some print references to their journal Treoir.

For a sample from the tape Click here

You need to be a member to play the full (6 minutes) tape - which has an aural "watermark" on it. I haven't played it in full yet but there is no sign of either chorus or coda.

I'll follow up the print references another time.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:13 AM

In fact the print references mentioned in my last post are not relevant.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 02:06 PM

I have looked at several of the versions of the song above and in regard to the size of the Flying cloud and number of guns. I would add that a ship of about 1000 tons would need a crew of about 40 and would carry about 14 guns if compared with ships of the 1800s. Comparable with a frigate of that period.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 03:43 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by "compared with ships of the 1800s", but aren't your figures low? The only stats I have to hand are for ships built around 1800, but the approx. 1000 ton ships among them (e.g.Diana, Leopard) have complements in the hundreds and guns in the dozens.

Jon Corelis
Songs by William Blake

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,oldtimer
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 03:59 PM

Fair play Martin , I am again astounded--- saw your item about the wounded Hussar , great , Mrs Flannery

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 04:18 PM

In the version I know (largely MacColl's) the Cloud is "500 tons or more."

The 1000-ton ships JC describes were large (though not the largest) naval vessels, not "clipper ships" fitted with guns as in the ballad.

Whatever its origin, I wouldn't take anything in it literally. The story with its temperance moral was the thing.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 09:16 AM

No fewer than three versions of The Flying Cloud - by Luke Cheevers, Dan Milner and Sean Garvey now available at The Goilin Song Project:

Click here

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:25 AM

This gives me a chance to say I've searched innumerable newspaper databases over the past two years and found no earlier reference to the song.

The 1870s or '80s seem to me to be the most likely time of origin.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:48 AM

Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman, William Main Doerflinger
page 334 Flying Cloud, the
From the singing of Captain Henry E Burke, Toronto. Formerly of Lenenburg Nova Scotia . probablt inspired by the Dying Declaration of Nicolas Fernadnez (1830) etc etc - the discussion.
and p136 -138. - the song.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:22 AM

The similarities between the song and the "dying declaration" appear to be too generic to show a real connection.

Not just my opinion - but I can't recall who first pointed it out. Horace Beck?

In any case, Beck did argue that the song came from not one but *two* "lost" broadsides. Which is probably at least twice as unlikely as coming from either one lost broadside or from the Fernandez leaflet more than 50 years before the song's first known appearance.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 10:20 PM

Hi all- there are numerous versions of this in the Maine collections I have been studying. It was very popular among the lumbermen as well as the coastal singers. In addition to the Minstrelsy of Maine reference above Barry, Linscott, Colcord and Beck all have it . It also appears in the Helen Hartness Flanders collection, sung throughout New England.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 17 - 05:56 PM

When I sing this song, I often get comments saying it is strange that the song seems to regard "piracy" as worse than slaving. Actually, the 1829 Act of Parliament outlawing the slave trade declared it to be a form of piracy. Logically enough, as the English were upset by the practice of the Barbary Pirates, which was to make slaves of Englishmen captured in the Mediterranian.

I would say these comments are anachronistic. A generation raised on "Pirates of the Caribbean" has learned to believe that "pirates" are just quaint early Libertarians. So piracy seems less threatening to us today than it seemed to our ancestors. But Parliament dealt the slave trade a shrewd blow by designating it piratical.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 09:45 AM

On Oct. 13, 1926, retired seaman Joseph McGinnis wrote to American collector R. W. Gordon about "The Flying Cloud" :

"I learned what I think is the original song in the foc'sle in about 1883 from an old Liverpool Western Ocean sailor and it gives the singer's name as Edward Hollander and it has a very tuneful melody to it....

"I gave Miss J.C. Colcord the words and music... and she published it in her book 'Roll and Go' or Songs of American Sailor-men....

"The name of the man-o-war I gave her was the 'Dungeness.' I thought at the time it was the wrong name. I have come to the conclusion since that it was the 'Diogenes.' As I have reeled off sixty years I am not always too positive about matters that happened years ago. ...

"It was and is a popular song wherever sung and particularly with Sailors."

1883 is, so far, the earliest alleged date for the song. No other collected text includes the name "Diogenes." Sing "Diogenes" and "Dungeness" might have sounded similar when sung (think "Dodge-ness") it's impossible to be sure which name McGinnis heard.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 10:31 AM

There was never an HMS Diogenes. I don't think that anyone has ever discovered any historical basis for this excellent ballad. As recorded in this thread there are many details that don't stand up to scrutiny. Certainly a thousand ton eighteen knot barque wound be an unusual slave ship in any period. Sing what you like or what you've 'collected'!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 11:32 AM

> Certainly a thousand ton eighteen knot barque wound be an unusual slave ship in any period

Probably so. But how about the way I heard it:

"The Cloud she was a Yankee ship, five hundred tons or more....

"And her canvas taut in the rattling breeze, logging fourteen off the reel...."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 08:06 AM

Among much else, this ballad offers some fascinating illustrations of the "folk process" in action. The ship is consistently the Flying Cloud (even though the only known real ship of that name came well after the main era of slaving and piracy and was never used for those purposes), her captain is always Moore, and the protagonist's place of birth almost always Waterford, but everything else varies: the protagonist's name; whether he was apprenticed to a butcher or a cooper; where he met Moore; the ship's size, speed and complement of crew and guns; where the slaves were sold; and the name of the naval vessel that eventually made the capture. Also there are many verses that occur in some versions and not in others.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jan 19 - 10:50 PM

This site seems to give the earliest known printed text. Note the 1894 copyright:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/songster/42-the-flying-cloud.htm

I haven't seen a copy of the original source and don't know where the website found it.

An extensive (though not exhaustive) search of newspaper databases turns up nothing relevant about Leonard D. Geldert.

He would appear to have been a vaudeville performer.

But beware! Nothing above tells us anything about the song's actual origin. Was Geldert (whoever he was) the author? That seems unlikely if McGinniss's much later recollection (see up-thread) of hearing the song in 1883 was accurate.

Who can say?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 06:19 AM

That 1894 version (presuming the attribution to be accurate) had already suffered significant corruption:
Verse 1 line 2 "Dyman's land";
Verse 2 line 1 "Water street so fair" instead of "Waterford's fair town" (or similar) which rhymes with "Brown" in the next line;
plus other missing rhymes.

That is confirmation that the song had been on the go for a while before that date, but otherwise only of interest as an instance of the folk process being degenerative.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 06:52 AM

True, Richard, but a single corrupt text could have appeared in no time at all.

Somebody can hear a freshly made song, try to learn it, then get it jumbled in no time at all. (Learning a song while intoxicated would make this even easier; and "FC" is a long song telling a complex story.)

I'm not saying this is what happened here, only that corruption in a single text is not a reliable indicator of a song's age.

The existence of *several* independent corrupt texts from 1894 or earlier would be far more significant.

Without the recollections (from many years later, regrettably) that the song existed between 1883 and 1892, we'd have little enough basis for believing so.

"FC" may not predate 1894 by much.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 07:03 AM

Lighter. The source is Wehmans Universal Songster, Vol 42 and according to the site This collection of around 6000 songs was taken from a set of 61 song books published quarterly roughly between 1884 and 1899 by the Henry J. Wehman publishing company of New York and Chicago.. If they were quarterly, vol 42 would be somewhere about 1894.

That attribution "sung with...". looks like the sort you get on sheet music. I've looked at several of the sheet music sites and though I found a Flying Cloud Gallop, Flying Cloud Schottische and Flying Cloud Waltz (all from around 1850), I didn't find a song.

Mick

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 08:34 AM

Thanks, Mick.

Interestingly (but no more than that), a site search for "The Flying Cloud" turns up no text in "Hyland's Hibernian Songster" (1901), "A Collection Of Over 500 Songs That Are Dear To The Irish Heart ."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 09:04 AM

The Oxford Book of English Traditional Verse (1983) calls the "British man-o'-war" the "Dungemore."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 03:58 AM

Heard this sung by Dave Brady [Bradley] many years ago

Vinyl of Louis Killen ~ Ballads and Broadsides 1964/65 notes by Angela Carter (?) mentions that the ballad makers were were originally inspired by a pamphlet ~ The Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez~ on the eve of his execution in 1829 (for piracy) published as a temperance tract!

There is she states[Angela] no record of a ship called the Flying Cloud

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 06:01 AM

Perhaps worth re-iterating Lighter's comment from years ago on this thread "This IS the greatest of the broadside ballads - too bad no broadside's ever been discovered!"

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 06:55 AM

Dying declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, who with nine others were executed in front of Cadiz harbour, December 29, 1829 For piracy and murder on the high seas.

Some 30 odd pages of his life story (he was a young man) as how piracy led to his downfall and this it seems was published the year after he waswhanged with others (9) it was translated from his native Spanish and there should be some copies still availble to read per my google research in US libraries etc

This does not of course answer the question Who constructed the lengthy song? or if indeed this really was the source of the ballad/broadside of the Flying Cloud ~ those with good eye sight may want check this further

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 10:07 AM

The "Fernandez" theory was floated by William M. Doerflinger in the early 1951.

Two years later folklorist Horace Beck cast extreme doubt on the theory, saying that the correspondenc es (for example, caring parents, piracy, Cuba, repentance, temperance message, "Dead men tell no tales") are generic and virtually inevitable for the time and topic.

On the other hand, Fernandez explicitly says "I am a Spaniard," whereas Hollohan/ Hollander/Anderson in the song is just as explicitly Irish. Fernandez serves no apprenticeship, his downfall begins not in Bermuda but New Orleans. There's no "Captain Moore" or "Flying Cloud," no slaving voyage, no British man-o'-war.

So I agree with Beck. (However, I and William of Ockham disagree with his thesis that "FC" is a conflation of two entirely hypothetical "lost ballads.")
It may be that the author of "The Flying Cloud" read Fernandez's confession at some point. It is more likely, perhaps, that he didn't. And he probably read other stories of piracy as well.

So the influence of Fernandez on "FC" was probably slim to none.

Read the entire "Dying Declaration" and judge for yourself:

https://tinyurl.com/yam4pb5k

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 11:30 AM

Yes Lighter the Declaration is as far I got ~ what is being suggested is that the background to the song may have been influenced by "The Dying declaration" of one (Fernandez) who's life had been"coloured" by his Piracy exploits

As you say No Flying Cloud existed as far as can be seen, so imagination comes into play as with many a good song!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 11:39 AM

Looking at the top of the thread it seems that there was infact a Flying Cloud circa 1851!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 07:58 AM

There has to be some reason why whoever first made this song picked the name Flying Cloud. That must surely have been some time after the real Flying Cloud began (legitimate) operations, most likely during her active career or possibly fairly soon after her end. I'm imagining a conversation in a pub, with someone saying "The Flying Cloud is/was a marvellous fast ship. What a ship she would be been for a pirate captain a hundred years ago!". And then the other party in the conversation taking that thought and running with it, grafting in memes about pirates, young men being led astray, etc.

If the song's wide dissemination was then partly through print, what has happened to all the copies of the broadside? Were the likes of Baring-Gould and Kidson mainly interested in earlier broadsides and not bothering to collect recent ones? Who collected broadsides printed in the USA in the second half of the 1800s?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 10:22 AM

> Who collected broadsides printed in the USA in the second half of the 1800s?

Among folklorists, seemingly nobody. But a very large number are available online from the Library of Congress, and many more are available in songster form from Google Books, etc.

No "Flying Cloud" before 1922.

Maybe the song first appeared (as a poem) in some local newspaper. If so, it hasn't been found in a search of vast newspaper databases.

Maybe it appeared as part of a vaudeville act or in a medicine show. (Consider "Sung with great success by Leonard D. Geldert.")

Maybe the author circulated it in handwritten copies, and/or (in preferred fashion) sang it on shipboard or elsewhere many, many times.

It's so good that many hearers (relatively speaking) would have wanted to learn it.

Those are the only theories I can think of at the moment. None address the date of composition. Personally, I'm reluctant (in general) to date things to a date far earlier than their first report (ca1880-1892 in this case) without concrete evidence.

Folk ballads were not considered "newsworthy," except when readers wrote in to ask for a complete text of one song or other. These were usually parlor songs, and the practice seems to have become common only after 1900.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 12:29 PM

The print history is very sparse. After the Wehman edition, I think the next documented is the 1919 version in Mackenzie's The Quest Of The Ballad.

I have a couple of new references, which as far as I can see are not in the Roud index:

From 1916: The Duluth Herald for Monday March 26th prints a version sent in by Mrs.F. La Freniere of Grand Rapids, Minn. This version is almost identical to that published in the Journal of American Folklore, Vol 35, 1922 (which refers to Minn versions) Duluth Everning Herald (top left of left page - magnify to see).

1926: Adventure Vol60 No.03 (Aug 1926) prints a copy contributed by a Captain A K St.Clair of Vancouver, who I also can't find in Roud. I haven't compared this with other versions yet. Adventure 1926.

Mick

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 01:33 PM

Thanks for the post, Mick.

The same text then appeared in the Norton County News (Norton, Kans.) (Oct. 12, 1916), p. 8; and a very similar one in the Boston Evening Transcript (Dec. 30, 1926), "a true copy" credited to "S.H."

"S.H.'s" text reappeared, via an intermediate source, in in the Journal of American Folklore in 1922.

A similar version is printed in the Saskatoon Daily Star (Apr. 7, 1922), p. 4.

I suspect that Mrs. LaFreniere's lies behind all of these.

The tunes I've encountered are all clearly related. What else is related?

(Either Hugill or Doerflinger also weds it to "Go to Sea No More.")