The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129573 Message #3005624
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
12-Oct-10 - 09:10 PM
Thread Name: Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew - 1845
Subject: RE: Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew
Lyr. Add: Lady Franklin's Lament for Her Husband
Broadside ballad, Murray Coll., Glasgow; 19th C., 2nd half
You seamen bold, that have oft withstood,
Wild storms of Neptune's briny flood,
Attend to these few lines which I now will name,
And put you in mind of a sailor's dream.
2
As homeward bound, one night on the deep,
Slung in my hammock, I fell fast asleep;
I dream't a dream which I thought was true,
Concerning Franklin and his brave crew.
3
I thought as we near'd to the Humber shore,
I heard a female that did deplore;
She wept aloud,and seem'd to say,
Alas! my Franklin is long away.
4
Her mind it seem'd in sad distress,
She cried aloud, I can take no rest;
Ten thousand pounds, I would freely give,
To say on earth that my husband lives.
5
Long time it is since two ships of fame,
SDid bear my husband across the main,
With 100 seamen with courage stout,
To find a North Western pasage out.
6
With 100 seamen with hearts so bold,
I fear have perish'd with frost and cold;
Alas! she cried all my life I'll mourn,
Since Franklin seems never to return.
7
For since that time seven years are past,
And many a keen and bitter blast,
Blows o'er the grave where the poor seamen fell,
Whose dreadful sufferings no tongue can tell.
8
To find a passage by the North Pole,
Where temperate wave and wild thunders roll,
Is more than any mortal man can do,
With hearts undaunted and courage true.
9
There's Captain Austin of Scarboro' town,
Brave Granville and Penny of much renoun,
With Captain Ross, and so many more,
Have long been searching the Arctic shore.
10
They sailed east, and they sailed west,
Round Greenland's coast they knew the best,
In hardships drear they have vainly strove,
On mountains of ice their ships were drove.
11
At Baffin's Bay where the whale fish blows,
The fate of Franklin nobody knows,
Which cause many a wife and child to mourn,
In grievous sorrow for their return.
12
These sad forbodings they give me pain,
For the long lost Franklin across the main;
Likewise the fate of so many before,
Who have left their homes to return no more.
Anon., probably written for a a shilling for a broadside publisher.
(The 1851 date mentioned above, in MS., is on another song pasted to the same sheet, and probably does not pertain to the Franklin verse).