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GUEST,henryp Origins: Cod Banging song (40) RE: Origins: Cod Banging song 23 Jun 21


"Cod Banging; In his notes to Bob Hart's 1973 LP, Bert Lloyd confirms its rarity, adding that Sam Larner of Norfolk knew a bit of it as The Smacksman's Life."

Not much in common between the words of Cod Banging and Haul Boys Haul/The Smacksman!

Bert Lloyd in fact gives The Smacksman's Life as an alternative title for Cod Banging, from Bob Hart's chorus;

To my lal fol the day Riddle all day
This is the smacksman's life at sea
From EFDSS Essex Folk Song Discovery: Coastal Songs 2018

To my lal-fa-the-day, riddle all day
This is a smackman's life at sea
From The Voice of the People Volume 2: My Ship Shall Sail the Ocean

Full note by Bert Lloyd from Songs from Suffolk by Bob Hart
Cod Banging
Compared to the great treasury of songs telling the adventures of Navy Jacks and merchant seamen, the English fisherman’s repertory is rather small. Such songs as survive are mostly found along the East Anglian coast, and the trawlermen who work the codbanks off the Shetlands and beyond. Cod Banging, sometimes called The Smackman’s Life is a rather rare
song. Sam Larner knew a bit of it, and doubtless at one time it had more verses than it retains now. In Bob Hart’s version, a stanza – the one about the ‘big barque ship’ – has wandered in from ‘The ‘Dolphin’,
a sea-battle song much favoured among old time fishermen of the Suffolk-Norfolk coast.

Incidentally, the "big barque ship" verse does not appear in any of the five versions of The Dolphin contained in Mainly Norfolk. But that is another story!


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