The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164996 Message #3955661
Posted By: Jim Dixon
09-Oct-18 - 10:38 AM
Thread Name: Songs about press-gangs
Subject: Lyr Add: SANDY OF THE FORTH
These words were found in The Banquet of Thalia, Or, The Fashionable Songsters Pocket Memorial (Wilson, Spence and Mawman, 1790), page 52. The song was also published as a broadside, which can be seen in the Bodleian collection:
SANDY OF THE FORTH.
By George Saville Carey.
YOUNG Sandy was press'd from his Alice's side,
As they stray'd to converse in the dale;
And Sandy had ask'd the fair maid for his bride;
But, alas! as he told her his tale,
They tore him away, tho’ she fell on her knees
And implor'd them to spare her dear swain;
But the gang it was deaf to her heart-rending pleas,
And they hurry’d him off to the main!
She stood all alone a pale statue of grief,
When at length the tears burst from her eyes;
Mo friend near her side to afford her relief,
And she ask'd it at length of the skies.
The night-cheering morn was absorb’d in a cloud,
And the wind 'gan to rise in the North;
The flocks on the mountains all bleated aloud,
And the waves 'gan to foam in the Forth.
At this moment the galley was making its way,
With the head-drooping Sandy on board,
Who spy'd at a distance the ship as she lay—
In the mouth of the Forth she was moor'd:
But the waves with the mountains now all seem'd to vie,
For each wave left a valley below:
“Be steady! be steady! good Lads!” was the cry,
“Or adown to the bottom we go!”
These words were scarce spoke, when a turbulent wave
Bid defiance the skill of each oar;
For they all sunk at once in a watery grave—
All but one, that was cast on the shore:
'Twas Sandy, for whom the kind Fates interfer'd,
As a warning, that nought should remove
The bondage of faith, when it ever adher'd
To the hallowed mandates of love.
He fled to his Alice, who mourn’d in despair—
But when she her Sandy beheld,
His presence soon vanquish'd her visitor, Care,
And the vapours of Sorrow dispell’d.
To the mountains they fled, far away from the main,
Where no rude assailants engage;
No ruffians to part the fond lovers again,
Till Time shall intrude with old Age.