The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #33324   Message #3920002
Posted By: Lighter
25-Apr-18 - 07:39 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Rolling Down to Old Maui
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Rollin' Down to Old Maui
The Boston Daily Globe (Apr. 18, 1915) offers a stanza or two sung by the late Captain James Dowden, an old whaling man who'd been at sea as early as 1855.

Once more we sail with a favoring gale
A-bounding over the main
And soon the hills of the tropic climes
Will be in view again.
Six sluggish months have passed away
Since from your shores sailed we,
But now we're bound from the Arctic ground,
Rolling down to [old] Maui

                   (Chorus)

Rolling down to old Maui, my boys,
Rolling down to old Maui,
But now we're bound from the Arctic ground,
Rolling down to old Maui.

O welcome the seas and the fragrant breeze
Blowing high in the lofty air,
And the pretty maids in the sunny glades
Are gentle kind and fair;
And their pretty eyes looking each way
Hoping some day to see
Our snow-white sails before the gale
Rolling [down] to Old Maui.

The version of stanza 1 given - apparently independently - in the Honolulu Advertiser (Dec. 28, 1947), is identical except for line 2: "Laden with odors rare."