The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #120478   Message #3081550
Posted By: Steve Gardham
24-Jan-11 - 02:14 PM
Thread Name: Origins: I Will Put My Ship In Order
Subject: RE: Origins: I Will Put My Ship In Order
Joe,
I did, along with Ben Schwarz, an in depth study on all known variants and related songs because of the confusion between this and related songs. Roud 402 is best studied from the numerous long versions in the Greig Duncan Collection, Volume 4. I've given it the master title 'I will set my ship in order'. There are no broadsides but it bears all the hallmarks of street lierature. Some of the stanzas are found in The American 'The Drowsy Sleeper' Roud 22621 and to a lesser extent in the English 'The Drowsy Sleeper' Roud 22620. To distinguish the 2 in my master title index the English ballad is The Drowsy Sleeper I, and the American, The Drowsy Sleeper II.

The only English manifestation of 'I will set my ship in order' is the one in Northumbrian Minstrelsy, and we can safely deduce that this came from Scotland. However there is no Scots language in the Scottish version so it could have come from an English or a Scottish broadside originally. Of course it is found in a couple of good versions in N Ireland as one would expect if it was well-known in Scotland.

'I drew my ship' is a perfectly normal, if brief, version of 'I will set my ship in order' with a couple of stanzas from 'Ripest Apples' tagged on the end.