The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #31423   Message #850693
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
19-Dec-02 - 05:43 PM
Thread Name: Help: Fighting for Strangers
Subject: Tune Add: OUR CAPTAIN CALLS
Thanks to Old Possum for the tune from Steeleye Span. A little more information re. subsequent posts:

Roud 602

The text John quotes has only a few words changed from the collated one recorded by Martin Carthy. He took his text from James Reeves' book The Idiom of the People (1958; pp.165-6), not The Everlasting Circle, as he mistakenly wrote in his sleevenotes. His first three verses were noted by Cecil Sharp from Mrs. Overd at Langport, Somerset, 30 July 1904; the final two from Mrs. Elizabeth Smitherd at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, 10 April 1908. Carthy didn't use either Mrs. Overd's or Mrs. Smitherd's tune (Reeves printed texts only) and instead set the texts to a tune noted by Ralph Vaughan Williams from Mrs. Verrall of Monk's Gate, Horsham, Sussex, 2 Dec 1904. The original verses have been combined in twos to fit the longer tune.

Vaughan Williams adapted Mrs. Verrall's tune in order to fit it to Bunyan's poem. Here it is as originally noted:

X:1
T:Our Captain Calls
S:Mrs. Verrall, Monk's Gate, Horsham, Sussex, Dec 22 1904.
Z:Noted by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
B:Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol.II issue 8, 1906.
L:1/8
Q:1/4=140
M:4/4
K:G
(GA)|B2 G2 (Bc) d2|e4 d4|d2 G2 (EF) G2|
w:Our_ cap-tain calls_ all hands on board to-mor-*row
z6 d2|g2 e2 f2 gf|e6 d2|(BA) G2 (Bc) d2|
w:Lea-ving my dear to_ mourn in grief_ and sor-*row
z6 d2|g2 e2 f2 (gf)|e6 d2|(BA) G2 Bc d2|
w:Dry up those bri-*ny tears and leave_ off weep-*ing
z6 g2|d3 d (ed) (cB)|
w:So hap-py may_ we_
M:5/4
(A2 c2) e2 d2 G2|F2 G2|]
w:be_ at our next meet-ing.


Of the sets in the DT, OUR CAPTAIN CRIED ALL HANDS acknowledges no source of any kind. I have no idea if it's a genuine traditional variant or not. The tune provided (and the verse set to it in the download DT) was noted by Dr. George Gardiner from George Smith at Fareham, Hampshire, August 1906. Neither singer nor collector are mentioned, and the DT text appears to be from a completely different source.

OUR CAPTAIN CALLS is copied from Stephen Sedley's The Seeds of Love. The source of the text (acknowledged by Sedley but not by the DT) was Mrs. Overd, though some changes have been made to it by Sedley for his usual impenetrable reasons. The tune doesn't belong to it, being the one Sharp noted from Mrs. Smitherd, and the download DT sets the first verse of The Blacksmith to it instead. That too is taken from Sedley, who included a text collated from several sources as an alternative text for Mrs. Smitherd's tune. That text is also in the DT: BLACKSMITH COURTED ME, with Sedley's already unhelpful note on provenance quoted inaccurately. What he actually said was

"...collated from Sharp's manuscripts, a York broadside c.1825, and an apparently authentic but unidentified manuscript note in a copy of the Folk Song Society Journal at Cecil Sharp House."