The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #7339   Message #4183569
Posted By: Steve Gardham
13-Oct-23 - 09:07 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Spanish Ladies
Subject: RE: Origins: Spanish Ladies
Adieu to you, you ladies of Lisbon
Adieu to you, you ladies of Spain
For we've received orders to sail to old England
We hope on a short time to be with you again.

Chorus:
We'll rant and we'll roar, boys, like brave English heroes
We'll rant and we'll roar upon the salt seas
Until we strike soundings in the channel of Old England
From Nohant to Scully is thirty-five leagues.

The first land we made it was called the deadman
The ramhead of Plymouth doth start London white
Sailed east beachy ship past folly and Underneys
Until we roused the Forlan light.

The signal being made our grand fleet to anchor
All in the down that night for to sleep
It was stand by your stoppers let go your shank painters
Haul up your clew garnets stick out your fore sheets.

Let every man loft of his full bumper
Let every man taste of his full bowl
It will furnish the blood it will drive away all sorrow
So here is a health to all seamen so bold.

It will drive away all of your sorrows
it will drive away all melancholy
So here's a good health to all brave hearted and bold
Here's a health to each jovial and true hearted soul.

Sloop Nellie, 1769, Captain Peter Pease, on passage from Dartmouth to London.

Another interesting point is that he uses correct terminology for the ship's furniture, but gets just about all of the geographical names wrong, which is what you might expect from a sailor not familiar with the geography.

In answer to a query in Mariner's Mirror November 1919 there ensued a series of replies going up to October 2021 which at one point provoked a short study of comparing different versions. An interesting response came in February 1920 from one L. G. C. Laughton, whose father, Sir John Laughton, told him 'that it was written and sung in the Grand Fleet under Russell when it first wintered on the coast of Spain (at Cadiz) in 1694/5. from internal evidence it seems fairly certain that it must have belonged to that war, when you had the use of Spanish ports, and when the Grand Fleet had not been split up, as happened soon afterwards, by the need of sending fleets and squadrons all over the world. And the song being so old, it is quite certain that 'spankers' ought never to be introduced into the last verse but one to rhyme with 'anchors' for the spanker was not introduced till the very end of the 18th century.'

This would fit in nicely with the garbled 1769 version, the song being about 70 years old then.

There are some responses on the history of the tune which I will collate later, with some suggestion of an Irish influence.

NB: st1 'on', and chorus 'Nohant' and 'Scully' are quite likely misinterpretations of the ms.