Lyr Add: Tarpaulin Jacket

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Tarpaulin Jacket
From: and e
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 07:45 PM

Les Cleveland in his 1959 book The Songs We Sang has a list of titles of unpublishable songs sung during WWII. He lists the song "A Drunken Old Harlot Lay Dying."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Tarpaulin Jacket
From: GUEST,Rick Pollay
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 04:16 PM

Gai; Huntington, Folk Songs -f Martha\s Vineyard (Folkways 1957) had a fragment with lyrics quite different than sub by Burl Ives. The fragment has been restored with some verses from the original and is now sung by me as below.

Tarpaulin Jacket (Wrap Me Up In My …)
cf. Rosin the Beau (trad) popular in early 19th C and, predating Fiddler’s Green (1960)

Slow ¾ time
1. As a New Bedford sailor was dying,
And as on his deathbed he lay,
His friends gathered ‘round him were sighing,
To them these last words he did say:
        Wrap me up in me tarpaulin jacket
        No more to the docks will I go
        Let six stalwart sailors come carry me
        With steps mournful, solemn and slow.

2. I've survived on the ocean of this world
But now to another I'll go
I pray that dry quarters await me
Up above … and not down below
        CHORUS
3. I didn’t do much to get to heaven
Still I don’t want to go down below
Oh ain’t there some place in between them
That a poor drinking sailor can go.
        CHORUS
4. For the six stalwarts who will carry me
I’ve one last request to bestow
Pray give them a bottle of rum, Sir
To drink when they’ve laid me below.
        NO CHORUS
5. And then in the calm of the twilight
When the soft winds are whispering low
and the darkening shadows are falling,
Give a thought to this sailor laid low, my mates.
Give a thought to this sailor laid low,

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Tarpaulin Jacket
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 05 Aug 17 - 10:39 AM

"The Scottish Students' Song Book" (1897) attributes "The Dying Lancer" to the novelist G. J. Whyte Melville and the musician Charles Coote.

In spite of long searches, I've been unable to find any earlier connection of the song to Melville or Coote. In the 1887 "University of Toronto Song Book," it's unattributed.

S. B. Luce's "Naval Songs" (1883) (with the jacket but not the lancer) credits one "W.P.B."

There are textual differences among all three versions, none of which closely resemble the much earlier anonymous broadside that seems to have been part of the inspiration.

Whyte Melville died in 1878, Coote around 1880.

Does anybody have any further information or documentation on the relationship of Melville and Coote to the song? (The British Library appears to have no sheet music publication.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Tarpaulin Jacket
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 23 Feb 14 - 08:47 PM

Take down your service star, mother
And replace it with on that is gold,
Your son's inbthe ROTC now
He'll die when he's 90 years old.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Stringsinger
Date: 21 Feb 09 - 02:39 PM

Check Carl Sandburg's American Songbag. It's about an aviator.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Feb 09 - 03:38 PM

The refrain doesn't fit but the stanzas do. There are several old songs that use the stanza tune.
Is the refrain an add-on or borrowed from another song?
Is the verse similarity coincidence?
The verse form also makes it easy to float verses from one to another.

I will go so far as to note similarities, but I'm not going to spend time studying relationships. In any case, I don't have access to enough material.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Haruo
Date: 20 Feb 09 - 02:35 AM

I think of "My bonnie lies over the ocean" as containing a refrain that I can't quite see how to fit the refrain you give to.

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Feb 09 - 12:50 AM

Burl Ives, "Down to the Sea in Ships" album, 1950s.
Also Skip Henderson (not heard).

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 11:35 PM

Tarpaulin Jacket is well-known . Does anyone know of a recording of it?

Subject: Lyr. Add: The Rakish Young Fellow
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 08:22 PM

THE RAKISH YOUNG FELLOW
(Verse tune same as "My Bonnie Is Over the Ocean")
1
I once was a rakish young fellow,
I never took care of my life.
I have sailed the ocean all over
And found in each port a fresh wife.

Refrain
But now that the wars are all over,
And I'm landed safe on the shore,
It's God bless me now and forever,
If I go to sea any more.

2
I have sailed through stormy weather,
I have travelled thro' hot and thro' cold.
I have ventured my life on the ocean,
I have ventured for honour and gold.
3
I will send for my friends and relations,
I will send for them every one,
And all for to make them quite welcome
I will send for a cask of good rum.
4
I will send for a cask of good rum, boys,
And two or three barrels of beer.
It is done for me to make them all welcome
To meet me at Derrydown fair.
5
And when I'm dead and I'm buried,
And past all the troubles of life,
Let there be no sighing nor sobbing,
But do a good turn for my wife.
6
Let there be no sighing nor sobbing
But one single favour I crave;
Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket,
And fiddle and dance o'er my grave.
7
Let six jolly fellows all carry me,
And let them be terribly drunk,
And as they are going along with me,
Let them fall down with my trunk.
8
There shall be such laughing and joking
Like so many men going mad;
They shall take a glass over my coffin,
Saying- there goes a true-hearted Lad.

Change refrains and the tune is essentially the same as "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." I have changed the format to 4-line stanzas from the 8-line of the sheet.                                                                                                                                                      
Bodleian Library, Harding B16(218b), Pitts, Printer, London, between 1819 and 1844.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 09:00 PM

I forgot to mention that the quotes I gave were from Lighter, "Historical Dictionary of American Slang," vol. 2.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:26 PM

G'day Q,

I think I left out a phrase in the first sentence of my last posting. It should read:

"References to "kraut" - the vegetable (cabbage) in respect of Victoria's (or, more commonly, Alberts') German background start to appear in the first decade of Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert - but the interchangeability of "Kraut" with German (person) is only cited from the end of WW1."

I checked with the latest OED edition (CD-ROM version ... 2003?)- so it appears they have continued to be a bit evasive about repeating disparaging terms for foreigners!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 01:33 PM

Kraut as a colloquial term for a German goes back to 1841 in print: Mercier, in "Man-of-War," One of them hit the old Crout, the Dutchman ... hit him in the eye."

1864- C, W. Wills, "Army Life," p. 309: "Some puppy finally cried out "kraut," and another echoed it with "kraut by the barrel." [General Osterhaus] wheeled his horse and rode up to us, his face white with passion. "Vat regiment is dis?" No one answered... Yelping "sauer kraut" at a German is a poor way to gain his favor."

1918- Casey, "Cannoneers (Aug. 26): "Dead Krauts and dead Yanks all over the place."

The complete OED (with 1985 supplements) doesn't include these terms for foreigners (e. g. frog, kraut, etc.)or gives them bare mention. The policy may have changed for the latest edition, but I haven't looked at it.
One did sneak through- under frog, it is noted that the word was a disparaging term for a woman, and for a Dutchman [!].

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 02:33 AM

G'day Martin (aussiebloke),

The OED doesn't show quite as long a history of "Kraut", as a personification of Germans as I expected. References to "kraut" - the vegetable (cabbage) start to appear in the first decade of Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert - but the interchangeability of "Kraut" with German (person) is only cited from the end of WW1.

Oxford's Australian National Dictionary (a full OED treatment of Australian words and terms), Oxford University Press, 1988 doesn't distinguish any usages as distintively Australian ... and I was intrigued, while reading the OED, to note that, although the term appears frequently, as a mild vilification, in books after both World Wars, there are no citations from published marerial during either war! I guess this says something about the Poms ... at least, in Fleet Street! I'm sure that an early tape recorder, roaming amongst Australian troops, would present something quite at odds with the published record!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 11:48 PM

G'day Martin (aka aussiebloke),

I think you're right about the indiscriminate of any "dirty word" at that age ... although I'm fairly sure I did not learn my version until my early teens. The obvious tune has to be The Dying Stockman as this version sits squarely in the standard Dying Whoever descendant of the Tarpaulin Jacket of which we have many other examples, just in Australia.

My WW1 and WW2 distinctions don't rely on the use of "Kraut", which I think goes back at least to the 19th century (but I'll check in the OED ... when I get home!). The critical WW2 feature in your version nis the pairing of "... the Japs and the Germans ...", since the Japanese were on our side in the First World Stoush. My Grandfather served in both Wars ... and my Grandparents had Japanese Army and Navy officers as house guests in the late 1930s (automatically presumed ex post facto to have been "spies"!).

The other indication of my version's "post WW 1" dating is "... the League of all Nations ...", indicating a date around (or before) the breakup of The League of Nations that formed after WW 1 ... to prevent further global wars!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: aussiebloke
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:15 AM

G'day Bob

I suspect that the use of the word 'poofters' was just a mechanism for using more naughty words - at that age, (less than ten years old) any naughty word had mystique and power, we didn't stop to analyse why homosexual men would be associating with 'women of ill repute'.

I wondered about wartime origins, particularly in view of the use of the word 'kraut' - I don't know if this was a WW1 word, or if the use of it places the song to post WW2.

The tune as I learned it for Charlotte is what I later learned to be the tune of The Dying Stockman.

Cheers Bob

Martin

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:25 AM

Errr... G'day again,

aussiebloke: I should have asked - What tune did you have for this? In Sydney, it seemed to have grafted itself onto Botany Bay ... at least in the mind of those I heard to sing it.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:23 AM

G'day aussiebloke,

Somewhere in the muddy depths I have posted the version of Charlotte the Harlot I learned in the '50s - in Sydney. My verse only varies by one word: "... lying" at the end of the 3rd line instead of "... crying" (although I do seem to remember "...three poofters..." - but my chorus sounds rather older ... post WW1, rather than post WW2:

          I've been fu**ed by the League of all Nations,
          The Irish, the Scotch and the Jew -
          Now I've have come to Australia,
          To be fu**ed by some (three...?) bastards like you.

I'm also intrigued to note that your Melbourne version has the same illogical association of "poofters" with the infamous harlot that now puzzles me. I guess we weren't so worldly... back then - at that age - but I had thought that aspect might be a local abberation to my neighbourhood.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: ADD Version: Charlotte the Harlot
From: aussiebloke
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 03:51 AM

Offensive lyric alert:
As learned in the school ground Melbourne circa 60's


Charlotte the Harlot

Charlotte the harlot lay dying
A piss-pot supporting her head
Two poofters around her were crying
As she rose on her left tit and said:

I've been fu**ed by the Japs and the Germans
I've been raped by the Krauts and the Jews
Now I've come o'er to sunny Australia
To be fu**ed by some red kangaroos


The PC parody mentioned in my post above goes:
(Words strung together with hyphens need to be sung very fast)

Charlotte the oppressed-sex-worker lay dying
A receptacle-for-urine-that-goes-under-the-bed supporting her head
Two heterosexually-challenged-individuals around her were crying
As she rose on her left-mammary-protuberance and said

That is as far as I got, and that was probably too far anyway...

Cheers all

aussiebloke

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: GUEST,Eric Clarke North Yorkshire England.
Date: 18 Mar 07 - 11:44 AM

I remember as a child hearing my father singing this song but over the years I had forgotten the words. Many thanks for taking me back to my childhood I am now 81yrs of age I hope to learn the words again and pass them onto my grand children.My father was born in Ireland and I have the same love of Irish music that he had.
      Many Thanks Again.
          Regards Eric Clarke.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: aussiebloke
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 04:05 AM

I first learned this tune in the schoolground, Melbourne, circa 1960s as Charlotte the Harlot.

Not this version of a song with the same name from the DT, the version I learned was closer to the version posted in this thread.

I have written a pc parody, which I'll post later...

Cheers all

aussiebloke

PS: Love the Lancers version!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 06 Mar 07 - 06:21 PM

GUEST,A Stalwart Lancer You are wonderful! I have been searching high and low for this version of the song. My mum, now 83 remembers it being sung to her as a child and I promised her I'd try and find it. I even put a thread on mudcat but no one came up with it. You, Sir, are lovely. Thank you.

xx sally xx
www.myspace.com/shotdogs

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: GUEST,Lighter at work
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 07:50 AM

Am suddenly reminded of "Cam Ye Ower Frae France?" :

          Waur ye at the place ca'd the kittle housie?
          Saw ye Geordie's grace ridin' on a goosie?

Maybe geese were a whole lot bigger....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 05:48 AM

Goose - long neck....

Phallic Symbol Mate! :-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 10:30 PM

"Old Moll Roe" from Randolph "Roll Me IN Your Arms" in thread 10100.
Old Rosin Moll Roe
Dunno about the goose. Foolestroupe probably has it right but I haven't seen the verse.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 10:10 PM

"goose-riding Moll"

So I take it, you never heard about giving 'a Moll' 'the goose"....

:-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 09:56 PM

Concerning the above interest in "Moll Roe/Lady Monroe," etc., nearly 100 years ago P. W. Joyce gave the following unexplained couplet in his book "English as we Speak It in Ireland" :

             Wor you at the fair - did you see the wonder?
             Did you see Moll Roe riding on the gander?

Joyce, better known for his "Old Irish Music," was not the sort to allude to a bawdy ballad, and the goose-riding Moll sounds like a different person altogether. But was there more to this rhyme? What's it about, anyway?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: GUEST,DMcF
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 12:05 PM

Our band currently do a rocked up version of 'Rakish Young Fellow' (Roud 829. Sharp 228)
We've worked on it starting out from the unaccompianied version on Walter Pardon's 'A World Without Horses'

One verse runs...
I'll never go sobbing and sighing – but just one last favour I crave
Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket – and fiddle and dance round my grave

...good to see so many variations of more or less the same verses in this thread. Very interesting read - ta! Duncan

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 02:16 PM

Good to get these songs written down before they are lost.
Other Lancer songs would be welcome.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From:
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 01:44 PM

Thanks for both the lyrics and information. Wonderful bit of information.

Subject: Lyr Add: WRAP ME UP IN MY OLD STABLE JACKET
From: GUEST,A Stalwart Lancer
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 09:12 AM

To all,

Greeting....just to add grist to the mill, there exists another version of this famous tune/song and it is sung by the Queen's Royal Lancers at every formal dining function in all the Regiment's Messes.
The tune can be heard on the Royal Lancers Band CD called 'Into History'. As far as I'm aware the Regiment has sung this song since before the Indian Mutiny and proudly continues to do so today. Here are the words:

"A tall stalwart Lancer lay dying,
And as on his deathbed he lay,
To his friends who around him were sighing,
These last dying words he did say,

CHORUS: Wrap me up in my old stable jacket,
And say a poor buffer lies low,
And six stalwart Lancers shall carry me,
With steps, solemn, mournful and slow.

Had I the wings of a white dove,
Far away, far away, would I fly,
Straight for the arms of my true love,
And there would I lay me and die. CHORUS

Then get you two little white tombstones,
Put them one at my head and my toe,
And get you a penknife and scratch there,
Here lies a poor buffer below, CHORUS

And get you six brandies and sodas,
And set them all out in a row,
And get you six jolly good Lancers,
To drink to this buffer below. CHORUS

And then in the calm of the twilight,
When the soft winds are whispering low,
And the darkening shadows are falling,
Sometimes think of this buffer below. CHORUS"

It's obviously an adaptation of the orignal, but I think you're far more likely to hear it being sung by the 700 members of the Regiment than on board any ship these days......

Hope this proves of interest to somebody.

Warm Regards.

GW Brown
(A still serving Lancer)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: open mike
Date: 21 Oct 03 - 01:58 AM

kitty -- the lyrics from the morris
seem to follow the song Fiddler's Green:

"Wrap me up in me oil skin and jumper
No more by ther docks i'll be found
Just tell me old ship mates
I'm takin' a trip mates
And I'll see you someday
On Fiddler's Green"

Subject: Lyr Add: Cornpicker's Lament (Australian)
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Oct 03 - 07:53 PM

G'day again,

I guess I'm just adding this to round out the posting, 5 days above - where, after 4 years of neglect of the request, I posted the lyric of Lady Monroe. This is the song John Meredith wrote, of his brief experience of picking corn (maize) in Queensland during his rambles by pushbike, before settling in Sydney - after WW II. As his notes (below) say, he wrote it to make use of the tune he had collected to a song he definitely could not print back in the 1950s. I notice that the spelling has changed from "Munro" to "Monroe" ... perhaps an unconcious acknowledgement of Marilyn?

I don't remember Merro singing any more than the single verse and chorus , quoted above, of Lady Monroe/Munro - but I'll chase up with friends researching the Meredith Collection at the National Library - to see if he recorded any more. As it stands, I suspect the single bawdy verse and chorus may have survived as a musician's private words to a popular waltz tune at "bush dances". (Merro had noted that a number of bawdy songs were often requested - as tunes only - at dances, while: "the men danced around with silly smirks on their faces ..."!) It is worth noting that the Lady Monroe/Munro tune has a far more demure identity as The Gentle Maiden!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

THE CORNPICKER'S LAMENT
"Lady Munro", an unprintable ballad, was recently collected from a shearer. The tune is a variant of the evergreen "Rosin the Beau".

Words: John Meredith. Air: "Lady Munro".

Come all you young city-born slickers,
Who want to try life in the rough,
Stay away from the Atherton corn farms
And the job that I found was too tough.
Chorus:
          Then away from the Atherton farmlands
          I'm off at the crack of the dawn;
          I'll take any job you can offer,
          But I'll never more try picking corn.

It's hard to pick corn like a champion
When your husker has blistered your mitts.
And your horse always wants to be moving
Till you just about start throwing fits.

And you can't concentrate on your picking
When your shirt's full of sharp Roger seeds,
And the burrs in your pants are all prickly
And you can't see your cart for the weeds.

When you've got a shirt full of weevils,
Then corn-picking starts to get hard,
And every third cob when you toss it
Just misses the cart by a yard.

But after a while it gets easy,
And you reckon you've got the game licked –
Two ton a day will be easy,
But you're too late – the flaming crop's picked.

Singabout, Vol 1, No. 2, Autumn (March - May) 1956, p. 7
Bush Music Club, Woolloomooloo, Sydney

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 04:04 PM

I'm a bit surprised (because it's been harvested for the DT)that no-one has yet mentioned the Morris dancing version perpetrated by Herga Morris in the mid 1970s:

Wrap me up in me bells and me baldrick
No more in the pubs I'll be seen
Just tell me old side mates
I'm taking a slide mates
And I'll see you someday when me bells have turned green.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 02:08 PM

I thought that a Buffer was a member of The Buffs,nickname of the 3rd Foot , East Kents.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 01:01 AM

There's an interesting aspect to this song. While just about everyone I know has heard it or knows a version, the only recording I was able to find was by Burl Ives a half-century or so ago. Oral trad?

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Amos
Date: 17 Oct 03 - 12:48 AM

Darn. put my foot in it again, did I?? Fancy that! Here in the US, except for perhaps some regional dialects, a buffer is just a technical term for a memory register or a general term for something dividing two other things, such as a a buffer state. Well, ya learn something every day!

Thanks for the friendly correction!


A

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 11:44 PM

G'day Martin Ryan, Joe Offer & BruceO,

I must have skirted past this thread first time round - and not read too far back the second! (Er ... g'day Malcolm, I must have started my posting about when you sent yours!).

Anyway, John Manifold's remarks about the "unprintable" Lady Monroe would be lifted from John Meredith's notes on a song he wrote to use the tune ... published in Singabout, Journal of Australian Folk Song ... around 1960. I'll look it up when I get home. Merro sang Lady Monroe to me in the early '60s ... it was only a single verse and chorus ... and somewhat less "unprintable" by today's standards than the '60s in Australia.

As I remember it:

Monroe has a foot for a stocking,
Monroe has a foot for a shoe,
Monroe has a cunt for a sailor,
but not for a bastard like you!
    So it's over the hedges and ditches,
    Up to your bollocks in snow.
    A prick frozen fast to your britches -
    Would rise to the cunt of Monroe.

I don't remember there being any more ... but I could suss out if any of my friends who have access to the Meredith Collection tapes and papers know of any more. (I doubt that we are going to find anything of deep literary significance ... but folklore should recognise the whole field!)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 10:31 PM

G'day Amos,

Buffer is quite common English for "A silly, or incompetent, old man" ... it may not have leaked into American.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 10:28 PM

"Old buffer" is a common term in the UK.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Amos
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 10:11 PM

The version first posted by Martin Ryan sounds like an alteration (not for the better) of the version recorded by Burl Ives, which includes the phrase "here lies a poor duffer below". I have never heard of an individual being called a buffer.

A

Subject: Lyr Add: TARPAULING JACKET
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Oct 03 - 09:07 PM

Lyr. Add: TARPAULING JACKET
^^
I am a young jolly brisk sailor,
Delights in all manner of sport,
When I'm in liquor I'm mellow,
The girls I then merrily court.
But love is surrounded with trouble,
And put such strange thoughts in my head,
Is it not a terrible story,
That love it should strike me stone dead.

Have not I been in stormy weather,
Have not I been in heat and in cold,
Have not I been with many a brave fellow
That has ventured his honour for gold.
But now the wars are all over,
And I am safe landed on shore,
The devil shall have me forever,
If ever I enter any more.

Some where is the girl that will love me,
And lay with me this very night,
Come jig it away with the fiddle,
A country dance or hornpipe.
Let the weakest not go with the strongest,
But let them be equally yok'd,
For the strongest will last out the longest,
The jacket ne'er values the stroke.

Here's health to my friends and acquaintances,
When death for me it doth come,
And let them behave in their station,
And send me a cask of good rum.
Let it be good royal stingo,
With three barrels of beer,
To make my friends the more welcome,
When they meet me at derry down fair.

Let there be six sailors to carry me,
Let them be damnable* drunk,
And as they are going to bury me,
Let them fall down with my trunk.
Let there be no sighing or sobbing,
But one single favour I crave,
Take me up in a tarpauling jacket,
And fiddle and dance to my grave.

A sailors' version of this grand old song complex that leads to "The Streets of Laredo", and one of the best of the whole lot. *damndable in the sheet.
Bodleian Ballads, Harding B 25(1883), c. 1819-1844, J. Pitts printer, London.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 12 Dec 99 - 01:35 PM

Tarpaulin Jacket is one of the most-parodied songs in existence. It's been used by sailors, skiers, spelunkers, soldiers, paratroopers...anyone who wants to stress the dangers in his/her avocation or profession. My favorite is The Dying Airman (in the DT), but there are lots.

The tune I've always heard (well, it seems like always) was a lot closer to Botany Bay than to Rosin the Beau.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: lamarca
Date: 12 Dec 99 - 12:45 PM

Well, Joe - you beat me to it. I obtained both the first and second Australian Book of Penguin Folksong books (first edited by John Manifold, of "Griesley Wife" fame, second by Bill Scott) from Da Capo music bookstore in Sydney(?). Having never been Down Under, it was a strange and marvelous thing to me that I could find all these neat books of Aussie folksongs through ABEbooks.com and actually order them overseas using my trusty VISA card to handle the international exchange rates. After an initial binge of buying all sorts of fascinating collections, I've tried to settle down and be a bit more restrained in my book binge habits, with mixed success. Now if I could only find volume 1 of Bronson...

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bruce O.
Date: 12 Dec 99 - 12:12 AM

In the Levy sheet music collection (Mudcat's Links) we see copies of 1838 of "Rosin the Beau", and later 'Beau' sometimes becomes "Bow'.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bruce O.
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 11:43 PM

I, too, would love to see "Lady Monroe", as it is possibly related to a lost Irish song "Moll Roe in the Morning", whose tune was used in an Irish ballad opera of 1748, and in 1760 for a song on the death of the French Admiral Thurot at Sole Bay (after his capture of Carrickfergus Castle).

I'd also like the see the ballad about the capture of Carrickfergus, whose tune is known as; Irish- "Carrickfergus" and "The Dargle"; Scots- "The Small Pin Cushion"; English- "Haste to the Wedding". A note in Eloise Linscott's New England songs is obviously completely screwed up, as she has Thurot writing the ballad on the Isle of Man (while the English are scouring the Irish Sea looking for him).

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 06:03 PM

Dunno, Martin. Penguin Australian Song Book says it's "unprintable." That presents a challenge we can't resist, doesn't it?
-Joe Offer, off hunting-

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Martin _Ryan
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 05:56 PM

Great stuff! Now - what about "Lady Monroe"?

Regards

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Bruce O.
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 03:43 PM

There's no tune direction on the broadside "Tarpauling Jacket" (Harding B 25(1883) on the Bodley Ballads website. The song is probably 100 years after Benbow's time.
It may take a couple of weeks before I get a copy of the tune that S. P. Bayard said (Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife, #620) was probably the original version (1742) of "Rosin the Beau". I've had an offer to send it by s-mail from Scotland, but am still hopeing someone will do it in ABC for me.

Subject: RE: Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket????
From: Micca
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 11:01 AM

Hi John, I remember it too, with great affection, as it contained most if not all variants of the Admiral Benbow songs. No, I do not think it has been re-run. I think it was late 60s or early 70s, as I remember I was living at my mothers at the time and moved out in 1972.