177 - Up, Up, My Boys, Up A Hill - Halyard Shanty


This is the halyard shanty belonging to the "Blow The Man Down" family because it has the same melody, Stan Hugill found this song in Laura Alexandrine Smith's collection "The Music Of The Waters" (1888). Here is the quotation describing this rather unusual song:
..."It is really much to be wondered at wherein the great fancy for this most ridicu- lous song lies. There is not one line of sense in the whole. There is another topsail-yard chorus something like this :

Solo. There once was a family living on a hill,
And if they're not dead they're living there still.
Chorus. Up, up, my boys, up a hill ;
Up, up, my boys, up a hill.

And it is sung to the tune of " Blow the man down."...
"Shanties from the Seven Seas" by Stan Hugill (1st ed p 215).


Up, Up, My Boys, Up A Hill


There once was a family living on a hill,
   - Up, up, my boys, up a hill!
And if they're not dead they're living there still,
   - Up, up, my boys, up a hill!