Tune Req: Looking for 'The Whalers' Melody

Subject: Tune Req: Looking for 'The Whalers' Melody
From: nigelgatherer
Date: 12 Jun 26 - 03:46 AM

I wish to use a song from Ford's Vagabond Songsd and Ballads of Scotland (1901) called "Katey of Lochgoil:"

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'Twas on the year Eleventy-nine
And March the fortieth day,
That Katey of Lochgoil, my boys,
To sea she'll bore away.

To my fal al de dal, etc.
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The tune is given as "The Whalers" and I've looked through a few of my songbooks without finding it. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Looking for 'The Whalers' Melody
From: Reinhard
Date: 12 Jun 26 - 05:21 AM

Big Tim said in the March 2005 thread Lyr Req: Katey of Lochgoil:

The tune and basic structure is "Greenland Whale Fisheries". I wonder which came first?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Looking for 'The Whalers' Melody
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 12 Jun 26 - 05:54 AM

Steve Gardham's Earliest Song Dates gives c1814 for The Greenland Whale Fishery (text at least: Garland, Three Songs, BL 11621.b.8 (38)). The earliest text for Katey (so far) is 1857, The Universal Comic Song Book, Glasgow, 1857 (see the link above). Not definitive for relative order, but suggestive.

Ford noted that Katey was "long, and even until recently, a popular song at small social parties, throughout the West of Scotland."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Looking for 'The Whalers' Melody
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jun 26 - 10:01 AM

Greenland Whale Fisheries.