Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)

Subject: Lyr Add: SOU' SPAIN (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 10:43 AM

There is a reference to this song in the regular C. Fox Smith poem thread but no words were provided and there was no discussion of its curious geographic title.

Here are the original words:

Poem by C. Fox Smith, 1922
From SEA SONGS AND BALLADS 1917-22, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., NY, © 1924, pp. 1-2.

SOU' SPAIN

Are you coming, Johnnie Bowline,
Have you had your fill of fun?
Are you ready, Johnnie Bowline,
Now your payroll's spent and done,
And your welcome's growing stale,
And your pals begin to fail,
And there's something seems to whisper
That it's time to sign again –
Time to hit the trail you know,
Time to pay your shot and go,
Time to heave your donkey's breakfast in
And sail Sou' Spain!

Are you coming, Johnnie Bowline,
Have you kissed your girl adieu?
There's a lofty skysail clipper,
And I think she waits for you,
And she's ready for the sea,
And the Peter's flying free,
And the wind goes through her rigging
Like a ranting old refrain: –
"Time to find a ship once more,
You've been over long ashore,
Time to hump your old sea chest aboard
And sail Sou' Spain!"

Hurry up now, Johnnie Bowline,
For she hasn't long to stay,
Get a move on, Johnnie Bowline,
If you mean to come away,
For the tide is at the flood,
And the anchor's off the mud,
And they're tramping round the capstan
In the darkness and the rain, –
And when oilskins and sea chest
Go the way of all the rest,
Oh, it's time to take the pierhead jump
And sail Sou' Spain!

Sou' Spain! Sou' Spain,
In the grey dawn breaking chill!
Sou' Spain! Sou' Spain,
Give it lip lads with a will!
Oh don't you weep for me, for me,
My lovely Liza Jane,
You'll soon forget your sailorman
That's sailed Sou' Spain!

Here are the words that William Pint, Felicia Dale, and Tom Lewis sings in Pint's adaptation of this poem:

Words by C. Fox Smith, 1922
From SEA SONGS AND BALLADS 1917-22, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., NY, © 1924, pp. 1-2.
adapted by William Pint and recorded on MAKING WAVES © 1992


SOU' SPAIN

Are you coming, Johnnie Bowline,
Have you had your fill of fun?
Are you ready, Johnnie Bowline,
Now your payroll's spent and done
And your welcome's growing stale,
And your pals begin to fail,
And there's something seems to whisper
That it's time to sign again-
Time to hit the trail you know
Time to pay your shot and go,
Time to heave your donkey's breakfast in
And sail Sou' Spain!
Sou' Spain!
In the grey dawn breaking chill
Sou' Spain!
Give it lip lads with a will
Oh don't you weep for me
My lovely Liza Jane
You'll soon forget your sailorman
That's sailed Sou' Spain!

Are you coming, Johnnie Bowline,
Have you kissed your girl adieu?
There's a lofty skysail clipper,
And I think she waits for you,
And she's ready for the sea.
And the Peter's flying free,
And the wind goes through her rigging
Like a ranting old refrain:
"Time to find a ship once more,
You've been over long ashore,
Time to hump your old sea chest aboard
And sail Sou' Spain!"

Hurry up now, Johnnie Bowline,
For she hasn't long to stay,
Get a move on, Johnnie Bowline,
If you mean to come away,
For the tide is at the flood,
And the anchor's off the mud,
And they're tramping round the capstan
In the darkness and the rain
And the oilskins and sea chest
Go the way of all the rest
Oh it's time to take the pierhead jump
And sail Sou' Spain!

Unfortunately this CD is now out of print.

But what does "Sou' Spain" refer to? Is it some reference to the Old Spanish Main, wherever that was, or some place else altogether?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: GUEST,Jacqued
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 03:41 PM

Ask Tom Lewis on [e-mail] !   Memory like an anchor cable, has our Tom!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 04:06 PM

Jacqued-

Good idea but someone here must have an idea as well.

No luck in my Goggle searches.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Snuffy
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 07:14 PM

I'd guess South Spain was the New World colonies of the old Spanish Empire, and particularly the Pacific coast (i.e . round the Horn), rather than the Caribbean.

Likewise to all you Spanish girls along the coast of Chile

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 09:53 PM

Snuffy-

Sounds good to me but I've never run across the phrase in any other nautical literature I've read. Maybe we need a time-machine!

I'm surprised that nothing comes up with a Google search – other than the Pint, Dale, Lewis CD.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: JWB
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 10:52 PM

Charley,

Pinch o' Salt recorded their version of this poem turned song on a CD called "Handspike Gruel and Seaboot Duff." Danny McCloud was part of the group -- can't recall who else was in the trio. Could be they never actually released the recording. It's all CF Smith lyrics, with tunes by one of the group's members.

I've never come across "Sou' Spain" -- the expression -- anywhere, either.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 07:58 AM

Jerry-

You're right about Danny "McLeod" with Pinch o' Salt recording this song on their SEA BOOT DUFF & HAND SPIKE GRUEL limited edition CD back in the year 2000. However, the CD notes do not clarify the term.

This CD deserves special recognition for being the first one composed entirely of CFS poems adapted for singing, 15 in all. Other members of the group include Alan Fitzsimmonds (responsible for most of the musical arrangements) and Peter Wood.

I certainly treasure my copy, and the evening at the Maine Maritime Museum when I first heard Danny and his wife Joyce sing some of these songs.

Maybe I'll start a review thread of CFS recordings.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: JWB
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 09:55 PM

Charley,

Well, you can tell I was typing from an anonymous hotel room in Maryland, and not from my own cabin in Massachusetts, otherwise I'da checked the spelling, names and personnel.

I think it'd be inneresting to find out how many different melodies have been created for certain of CFS's lyrics. Start that thread.

I'll check when I get home: I think I have a copy of her "Sailor Town" book. Don't recall any poetry in it, but(as I proved last night) my memory is not to be trusted outside of my own domicile.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 10:06 AM

Jerry-

There are several CFS poems which have been set to 3 or more melodies and recorded at this point. The poems are relatively easy to fit to traditional tunes. The real challenge is to channel the right one!

With "Sou' Spain" I really like both arrangements, the one by William Pint and the one by Alan Fitzsimmonds. Any other thoughts?

For those who are less familiar with old sailor jargon, "donkey's breakfast" is a reference to a sailors straw-filled matress. After a long deep-sea voyage it must have been less than appetizing.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 07:35 AM

I have the Pinch o'Salt CD and would love to get my hands on a copy of the Pint, Dale & Lewis recoding of Sou' Spain.

Does anyone know if anyone else has re-recorded the song elsewhere?

Subject: Lyr Add: THE OLD SHIPS (C. Fox Smith)
From: Snuffy
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 09:11 AM

She appears to have used the expression "Sou' Spain" more than once, as this poem of hers was published in the April 9, 1919 edition of Punch (via Project Gutenberg).

But it does not leave us any wiser as to it's meaning


THE OLD SHIPS.

They called 'em from the breakers' yards, the shores of Dead Men's Bay,
From coaling wharves the wide world round, red-rusty where they lay,
And chipped and caulked and scoured and tarred and sent 'em on their way.

It didn't matter what they were nor what they once had been,
They cleared the decks of harbour-junk and scraped the stringers clean
And turned 'em out to try their luck with the mine and submarine ...

With a scatter o' pitch and a plate or two,
    And she's fit for the risks o' war---
Fit for to carry a freight or two,
    The same as she used before;
To carry a cargo here and there,
And what she carries she don't much care,
Boxes or barrels or baulks or bales,
Coal or cotton or nuts or nails,
Pork or pepper or Spanish beans,
Mules or millet or sewing-machines,
Or a trifle o' lumber from Hastings Mill ...
She's carried 'em all and she'll carry 'em still,
    The same as she's done before.

And some were waiting for a freight, and some were laid away,
And some were liners that had broke all records in their day,
And some were common eight-knot tramps that couldn't make it pay.

And some were has-been sailing cracks of famous old renown,
Had logged their eighteen easy when they ran their easting down
With cargo, mails and passengers bound South from London Town ...

With a handful or two o' ratline stuff,
    And she's fit for to sail once more;
She's rigged and she's ready and right enough,
    The same as she was before;
The same old ship on the same old road
She's always used and she's always knowed,
For there isn't a blooming wind can blow
In all the latitudes, high or low,
Nor there isn't a kind of sea that rolls,
From both the Tropics to both the Poles,
But she's knowed 'em all since she sailed sou' Spain,
She's weathered the lot, and she'll do it again,
    The same as she's done before.

And sail or steam or coasting craft, the big ships with the small,
The barges which were steamers once, the hulks that once were tall,
They wanted tonnage cruel bad, and so they fetched 'em all.

And some went out as fighting-craft and shipped a fighting crew,
But most they tramped the same old road they always used to do,
With a crowd of merchant-sailormen, as might be me or you ...

With a lick o' paint and a bucket o' tar,
    And she's fit for the seas once more,
To carry the Duster near and far,
    The same as she used before;
The same old Rag on the same old round,
Bar Light vessel and Puget Sound,
Brass and Bonny and Grand Bassam,
Both the Rios and Rotterdam--
Dutch and Dagoes, niggers and Chinks,
Palms and fire-flies, spices and stinks--
Portland (Oregon), Portland (Maine),
She's been there once and she'll go there again,
    The same as she's been before.

         *       *       *       *       *

Their bones are strewed to every tide from Torres Strait to Tyne--
God's truth, they've paid their blooming dues to the tin-fish and the mine,
By storm or calm, by night or day, from Longships light to Line.

With a bomb or a mine or a bursting shell,
    And she'll follow the seas no more,
She's fetched and carried and served you well,
    The same as she's done before--
They've fetched and carried and gone their way,
As good ships should and as brave men may ...
And we'll build 'em still, and we'll breed 'em again,
The same good ships and the same good men,
The same--the same--the same as we've done before!

C.F.S.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 05:37 PM

Snuffy-

That was a nice catch, "The Old Ships," and I haven't found another reference to Sou' Spain in the 200 or so of her poems Shantyfreak and myself have posted on her page at the Oldpoetry website: click here for website

You'll also find a slightly longer version of "Old Ship" published in SHIPS AND FOLKS.

Stan Hugil does use the term "Sou' Spainer", as I've found in his book SAILORTOWN, to refer to "deep-water men." He also mentions a nautical magazine called SOUTH SPAINER that was still being published in the early 1960'S.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 08:53 PM

The South Spainer was published from 1963-1966. Copies in the MacMullen Library at the San Diego Maritime Museum.
I get the impression that a 'South Spainer" was a ship that sailed to the former Spanish realms in America- but just an impression (See quote from book chapter, below, where a "South Spainer" is definitely a sailing ship- possibly carrying passengers as well as cargo).
Now if someone in San Diego would check No. 1 of the journal at the MacMullen Library, he might find a definition.

From chapter five of "Before the Mast- and After," 1924, by Sir Walter Runciman (an expensive title now, but apparently in Gutenberg, on line).
"Long experience had made Joe familiar with every harbour, cross-current, shoal or rock from the Tyne to London or Calais. Joe was strangely ignorant of the etiquette of the South Spainer quarter-deck, and his fluent gruff phrases were untrammelled in their scope."
www.guernsey.net/~sgibbs/runciman/bma/1-p5-ch5.txt

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 09:09 PM

Looks like we'll nail this yet. My best guess at this point is that South Spain refers to both the east and west coasts of South America, as distinct from the old Spanish Main or Caribbean.

So, maybe we need to mobilize Amos to check out "South Spainer" No. 1 given that he's known to inhabit San Diego.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 09:06 AM

I'll try to get down there and see what they have, Charley. Will advise. In common parlance, South Spain is the Andalusian reach which one passes when you round Portugal and cross Gibraltar. Roughly, the segment south of Seville, which includes a number of ports of interest such as Algeciras and Marbella.

A

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 09:25 AM

Amos-

I was hoping we could count on you.

If we don't hear back from you in a few months, we may even send out a rescue expedition!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, who has sailed through Goose Rock Passage

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 09:59 AM

Refresh for the weekend warriors!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sou' Spain (C. Fox Smith)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 May 07 - 09:15 AM

Well, I just ran across a reference in Hugill's THE BOSUN'S LOCKER, © 2006, p. 81, to "South Spain":

"Talk about the Packet Rats, and Flyting Fish Sailors, andthe West Coast Johns and other South Spainers - why this crew was the saltiest, roustiest, full-bloodiest, sea-gull scattering crowd that ever raised a 'Hooraw chorus.'"

The implication is that "South Spainers" is a general term for sailors who sailed above and below the Equator, and from one hemisphere to another, in other words world-wide.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble