Origins: The Nightingale

Subject: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 May 20 - 10:01 PM

Charlie Baum sang this tonight. I have no idea where he gets these song...and the melodies.

https://books.google.com/books?id=uo4mi3pj6AMC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103

Charlie Baum Says: There are verses of The NIgtingale in Doerflinger, but I found this version in the Bobbling Around Songster, published by Fisher and Brother, Philadelphia, New York, Boston & Baltimore, 1851

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Reinhard
Date: 26 May 20 - 01:33 AM

Joe, you might add this to the thread Lyr Add: The Nightingale (Bonny, Bonny) ?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 26 May 20 - 05:46 AM

There's also a song "The Nightingale" in act 1 of HMS Pinafore.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 26 May 20 - 07:44 AM

The tune comes from Helen Schneyer. You can hear her version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB3elc8G84c.

I went looking for the words and found the Bobbing Around Songster, which has an even more complete version than Helen used--although Helen's version distills it beautifully and has verses that aren't in the Bobbing Around Songster.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 26 May 20 - 08:08 AM

Helen Schneyer's words:

Come young and old and lend an ear
To a love sick maiden in deep despair
Her heart was light but her courage failed
When her true lover went down in the Nightingale

My parents were of high degree
My true love not so rich as they
They sent a press gang which did not fail
To press him aboard of the Nightingale

One night as I lay sleeping on my bed
My true lover’s ghost appeared to me and this he said
O weep yes weep but weep all avail
For your true lover went down in the Nightingale

On the sixteenth day of December last
The wind did blow a most horrid blast
Our captain cried my dear boys be brave
And prepare yourselves for a watery grave

The wind it did blow and the sea it did roll
And we prayed to the Lord for to save our soul
The deck stove in and the timber did fail
And down to the bottom went the Nightingale

The deck stove in and the timber did fail
What a dismal end to the Nightingale
Go tell your parents they may bewail
For the loss of your lover in the Nightingale

As I awoke in an awful fright
It being the hour of twelve at night
i saw his ghost standing cold and pale
Just as he went down in the Nightingale

He spoke to me in lamenting cries
In the Bay of Biscay my body lies
To become the prey of a shark or a whale
With my drownded comrades in the Nightingale

Last night as I lay sleeping on my bed
My true love’s ghost he appeared to me and this he said
O weep yes weep but weep all avail
For your true lover was drownded in the Nightingale

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 26 May 20 - 09:05 AM

There's a version of this song on the Alan Scott & Keith McKenry CD, Travelling Through the Storm. The liner notes:

This fine song of love lost at sea was collected by Alan in 1965, from Mrs Susan Colley of Bathurst. It is the only time the song has been collected in Australia. Mrs Colley's version had only four verses and Alan composed a fifth when he started singing the song himself. A longer British text is given in A. L. Lloyd's book, The Singing Englishman.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Nightingale
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 May 20 - 09:13 AM

Widely printed on English broadsides, going back at least to Armstrong of Liverpool, 1820-24. Longest version I have was printed in American Forget-me-not songsters printed in Philadelphia with 17 sts. All of the English broadsides have a standard 7 sts and the Glasgow Poet's Box issue of 1850 has 9 sts.