This is part of a sea chanty

"Haul and Tow" are the call to pull the lines on the sails

"Jolly Rum Below" is the cargo, or supplies for the sailors.

Some of the words are a little garbled - probably from healthful draughts of the jolly run

Confusion came when a group of self-appointed pagans tried to find pagan lyrics and ended up with a number of confused statements, as jumbled as their haul and tow...

They did produce some old seas songs like the Pace egging song - which comes from the time of Queen Elizabeth I when sailors who had fought the Spanish armada were told to stay on board ship or they would not get paid - to stave off starvation the good Admiral and a few crewmen went begging for eggs and bread and the memory remains in the English today. Not paganism, but Christian charity, is the memory.

They also sang about a wren, that is taken from door to door annually in small villages and coins collected. This is a little closer to pagan...the wren represents a companion of one of the English kings who was very extravagant, raised taxes, was cruel to commoners, and a homosexual! When people learned of the companion's death there were great celebrations and his body was carted from place to place, to prove he was really dead - for smaller villages, a dead bird, which made a pun on his name, was dressed in fragments of his clothing - "his gay ribbons" - and it was carried from door to door - coins were given in celebration of the news of his passing...This became a custom but few remember its origin.

Our pagans would have found better references to their newly invented beliefs by seeking Celtic songs about St Bridget, Lou of the Long Hand, the gift of Gab, and other tunes referring to the pre-roman times. Kipling's "Oak and Ash and Thorn" [A Tree Song] probably holds more of what they were seeking...It would be interesting to see what his trees spelt in the old druid language.