The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128220   Message #4146127
Posted By: Lighter
01-Jul-22 - 07:49 PM
Thread Name: The Advent and Development of Chanties
Subject: RE: The Advent and Development of Chanties
Have you reached these passages yet?:

“By this time the singing stage [of drunkenness] was reached, and I joined Scotty [a 17-year-old Scottish sailor] and the [19-year-old] harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties. It was here, in the cabin of the [sloop-yacht] Idler [on which the harpooner was ‘caretaker’] that I first heard ‘Blow the Man Down,’ ‘Flying Cloud,’ and ‘Whisky, Johnny, Whisky.’ Oh it was brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life.”

P. 56, ref. to San Francisco, 1892 :

“We got to singing. Spider [Healey, ‘a black-whiskered wharf-rat of twenty] sang ‘The Boston Burglar’ and ‘Black Lulu.’ The Queen [‘of the Oyster Pirates,’ Spider’s niece] sang ‘Then I Wisht I Were a Little Bird,’ And her sister Tess sang ‘Oh, Treat My Daughter Kindly.’” [P. 58:] “And Spider sang:

                Oh, it’s Lulu, black Lulu, my darling,
                Oh, it’s where have you been so long?
                Been layin’ in jail,
                A-waitin’ for bail,
                Till my bully comes rollin’ along.”

P. 192, ref. to 1897:

“[In ‘a borrowed whitehall boat’ off Benicia, Calif.] riding on the back of the unleashed elements…I sang all the old songs learned in the days when I went…to the oyster boats to be a pirate — such songs as : ‘Black Lulu,’ ‘Flying Cloud,’ ‘Treat My Daughter Kind-i-ly,’ ‘The Boston Burglar,’ ‘Come All You Rambling, Gambling Men,’ ‘I Wisht I Was a Little Bird,’ ‘Shenandoah,’ and ‘Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo.’”