Here's a question that has puzzled some readers of Patrick O'Brian's Captain Aubrey series. In Master & Commander (and many subsequent books), pp. 187, is the first reference to sailors ashore "kicking up Bob's A-Dying" which clearly means having a spree. But is there an old tune called "Bob's A-Dying" – some jig, reel or hornpike that really existed by this title or is this another figment of O'Brian's fertile imagination?

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