The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #97649   Message #1923656
Posted By: Azizi
31-Dec-06 - 08:23 PM
Thread Name: Origin: Sail Away Ladies
Subject: RE: origin and lyr: Sail Away Ladies
Hello, Richie.

I don't know about any earlier lyrics for "Sail away ladies" than the Talley one you quoted.

Here's some minor corrections:

"Nev' min' what you daddy say", is given as "Nev' min' what yo' daddy say"

This is in the 1968 Kennikat version of Fisk University's [Professor]Thomas W. Talley's "Negro Folk Rhymes, Wise & Otherwise with a Study"

The title of the book is usually given as "Negro Folk Rhymes", and was first published by The Macmillan Company in 1922.

**

I'm wondering if "sail awy" referred to dance moves [moving away from your partner] instead of actually getting on a boat and sailing away [from slavery or otherwise]. If so, the lines "never mind what your master, daddy, mama says" [to convert those lines to contemporary English}, would suggest that the girl shouldn't mind that these folks frowned upon dancing.

In this excerpt from the Study section in his now clasic book, Talley notes that

"Many Negro Folk Rhymes were used as banjo and fiddle {violin} songs. It ought to be born in mind, however, that even these were quite often repeated without singing or playing. It was common in the early days of the public schools of the South to hear Negro childern use them as declamations. The connection, however, of Negro Folk Rhymes with their secular music production is well worthy of notice...

The Negro Folk Rhymes ,then furnished the ideas about which the "old time" Negro banjo picker and fiddler clustered his best instrumental music thoughts. it is too bad that this music passed away without unrecorded save by the hearts of men."

[pps. 235; 237,238]

-snip-

I take it "declamations" means poetry or speeches. Is that correct?