ROLL BOYS ROLL
West Indian halyard shanty


Sally Brown, she's the girl for me, boys
Chorus: Roll boys, roll boys roll
Sally Brown, she's the girl for me, boys
Chorus: Way high, Miss Sally Brown

Oh way down South, way down South boys
Oh bound away, with a bone in her mouth boys

Oh we're rollin' down to Trinidad to see Miss Sally Brown
Oh rollin' down to Trinidad to paint the bleedin' town

She's lovely up aloft, an' she's lovely down below
She's lovely all the way, me boys, it's all you want to know

She's lovely on the foreyard, lovely on the main
She's lovely in the summertime, she's lovely in the rain

Ol' Captain Baker, how do you store yer carga
Some I stow for'ard, boys, an' some I stow arter (arta)

Oh, there's forty fathom or more below, boys
Oh, forty fathom or more below, boys

Oh, way high ya, an' up she rises
Oh, way high ya, the blocks is different sizes

Oh, one more pull, don't ya hear the mate a-bawlin?
Oh, one more pull, that's the end of all the hawlin'


Shay Black kindly loaned me a copy of a cassette tape recorded by Stan Hugill when he was touring with Stormalong John as his chorus titled A Salty Fore Topman which Shay thought had the shanty Roller Bowler on it sung by Stan. Roller Bowler wasn't on the tape but Roll Boys Roll was.

Roll Boys Roll is one of the best of the "Sally Brown" shanties although the song is no longer about her after the fifth verse. I sing the song now with many more "hitches" and "yelps." The lyrics shown in this thread are transcribed from Stan Hugill's tape - I tend not to sing in dialect. It's a great shanty to do with general audiences because the chorus lines are short and easy to remember.

The second verse contains the line "with a bone in her mouth, boys" which I first took as a very explicit sexual reference. In a house concert performance by Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman two years ago in Berkeley, California Dave sang the same line in another song. I asked him about it during a break and he said that the line refers to one of the sails (he called it the "water sail") which is slung quite low in the front of a ship. If you are looking at a ship head on when that sail is up it looks like the figurehead is holding something in her mouth. The phrase "with a bone in her mouth, boys" became a specific reference to heading southward with all sails up - the beginning of a voyage.

Radriano