The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172604   Message #4180544
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
03-Sep-23 - 04:41 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Valparaiso / Paddy Lay Back
Subject: RE: Origins: Valparaiso / Paddy Lay Back
In the 1942 volume of _The American Neptune_ (vol. 2), there is an offering for the holiday season at the very end, presented by Joanna Colcord. She refers to the version of "The Oxford" given in the previous year's volume (1941) by Sturtevant (discussed above).

//
Its rollicking tune, which probably boasts a music-hall origin, has never appeared in print, so far as I know. There are many versions, but the consistent pattern is that of a sailor shipping away from London or Liverpool on what he supposed to be an ‘easy voyage,' and finding, alas, that the boarding-master had deceived him! The words on the following page are from various sources; the air as it was sung to me by Captain Richard Maitland of Sailors' Snug Harbor. His complete version of the song is on records preserved in the Archive of American Folk-song of the Library of Congress. [the recording made by Lomax in 1939?]
//

So, it looks like Colcord took Maitland's story line and improved the rhymes and prosody, also inserting lines 3 and 4 from another source. I don't remember ever hearing before that Maitland sang for Colcord! Did Maitland actually sing groups of 4 lines between each chorus? That's how Colcord has it notated, though its not how Maitland sung it for Doerflinger and Lomax.

PADDY, GET BACK [w/ score]

I was broke and out of a job in the city of London,
I went down to Shadwell Docks to get a ship.
‘Twas in the middle of the cold month of November,
And I thought ‘twas time to make another trip.

Paddy get back, take in the slack!
Heave around the capstan, heave a pawl, heave a pawl
‘Bout ship and stations and be handy!
Rise tacks and sheets and mains’l haul!

There was a Yankee ship a-laying in the Basin,
She was bound for New York, the boarding-master said.
If I ever lay hands upon that boarding-master,
I will be a month before he leaves his bed.

The pilot left the ship ‘way down the Channel,
And the captain said we was bound around Cape Horn.
He told us if we did not do our duty
He would make us wish we never had been born!

The mate and second mate belonged to Boston,
The Old Man hailed from Bangor down in Maine.
The three of them was rough-and-tumble fighters;
The treatment that we got, it was a shame.

We was called on deck one night to reef the topsails,
Belaying-pins was a-flying about the deck.
The mate he got ahold of me by the collar:
‘If you don’t sing a song, I’ll break your neck!’

Etc., etc.