The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #141779 Message #3837400
Posted By: Steve Gardham
07-Feb-17 - 03:43 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Rolling Sailor (Eliza Carthy)
Subject: RE: Origins: Rolling Sailor (Eliza Carthy)
Error in the above is the chorus isn't actually everpresent as it doesn't occur in the 'collier' variants.
Here's Whittaker's Northumbrian minstrelsy 'fisher' variant which has 2 stanzas and the chorus from TRS.
O the Bonny Fisher Lad
On Bamboroughshire's rocky shore, Just as you enter Boumer Raw, There lives the bonny fisher lad, The fisher lad that bangs them a'. O the bonny fisher lad That brings the fishes frae the sea, O the bonny fisher lad, The fisher lad gat had o' me.
My mother sent me out one day To gather cockles frae the sea; But I had not been lang away, When the fisher lad gat had o' me.
A sailor I will never marry, Nor soldier, for he's got no brass; But I will have a fisher lad, Because I am a fisher lass.
This smacks to me as a newly written parody, not from oral tradition. It has been much reprinted but I know of no oral versions not based on this one.