Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book

Subject: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 16 Jul 07 - 07:19 PM

Here's a review of a new book on the history of the American whaling industry: Thar She Blew.

An interesting point mentioned is that whaling ships had much larger crews than were needed for day-to-day shipboard activity, so that whalers, as compared to other varieties of mariners, had more leisure time to do things like make scrimshaw and compose ballads.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 05:38 AM

Apart from lying about all day composing ballads, I would imagine they argued a great deal about the status of the songs. The first harpooner would be lying there, on a coil of rope, making up the "Greenland Whale Fisheries". He would deliver this latest offering, and say "Hey, that's a pretty good folksong I've come up with, I reckon, shipmates". And the second harpooner would reply "Not yet, I think. We will have to wait till it is accepted into the tradition before we can accord it that status. A good song, maybe, I'll grant you that, Quohog, but a folksong? I think it might become one, but not yet".And so the age old argument would start again, till a timely cry of "Thar She Breaches" from the crosstrees puts an end to another interesting chat.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Sugwash
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 06:06 AM

Well put Greg, that, for me, puts the tin hat on so many recent threads. Of course, if he wrote the ditty before the collectors got out and about, he'd have every chance of fast tracking it into the tradition.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 07:08 AM

This is perfectly true, but imagine if you will what the outcome might have been if Mr Cecil Sharp, or any of they great collectors transgressed the normal rules of convention and collected a song before it had been written. Would it qualify for instant admission to the canon of traditional folksong and balladry when somebody eventually got around to writing it ?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 08:04 AM

Herman Melville had time to write Moby Dick, and that's a leviathan of a book. Mind you, 5 years at sea for a trip to the South Atlantic is a long drag, so they had to do something to pass time.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 08:58 AM

Of course, many young men undertook those long and not-particularly-lucrative voyages for the express pupose of escaping the collectors, folk-club impressarios, guitar-playing revivalists, and adoring fans, so that they could compose their ballads and ditties - not to mention novels - in peace. "It's all for me art!" was an oft-heard refrain in the fo'c'sle of a whaling ship ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: EBarnacle
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 09:43 AM

And it's all for me art,
Me jolly, jolly art;
All gone for time on the v'yage;
But I spent all me time
Try'n to get this song to Rhyme
As across the Pequod's deck I do stumble.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 10:32 AM

Aye, EBarnacle, me old shipmate, that's the one; you're bringin' a tear to me eye (the one without the patch) ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 03:53 PM

Leave it out. Who'd want to listen to a bit of Barnicle nowadays unless the singer had served their time on one of them there old time whaling ships?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 04:52 PM

This book is alledged to have been written by one Caleb Crain. Do you suppose we have a time-traveller or a second generation hippie?

I was disappointed to find no reference in the review to the fresh-water whale fisheries in our Great Lakes, an industry which went into rapid decline in the mid 19th century. "Superior Sperm" shall remain one of my favorite traditional whaling songs.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 05:06 PM

"Superior Sperm"? Charley!
Is it going to be REALLY informative to put it into Google looking for lyrics?
Or is it going to be like the daily load of dodgy spam?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 03:29 AM

Okay, I couldn't resist the challenge.
Most of the search results came out as adverts for / articles about sperm donor clinics or for programmes aimed at breeding geniuses. Not as bad as I might have feared.
A few were for animal breeders rather than humans.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new bo
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 03:40 AM

From the Brummagem Whale Fishery:

"There's a whale, there's a whale, there's a whale," he cried,
"Oi wonder if it'll fit moy boik?"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 04:18 AM

Plenty of them swimming in the Birmingham Canal Network (BCN) usually hiding in the shadows of the bridge so they don't get attacked by the predatory shopping trolleys found under most bridges.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: Lyr Add: FRESH WATER WHALING (Si Kahn)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 08:34 AM

Geoff et al-

Would I lead you on with "Superior Sperm"? Well, I'd try but in this instance it's the original title to a song now better known as "Fresh-Water Whaling." It's been discussed in the threads and the version I collected out in the wilds of Michigan looks like this:

Original concept by Scott Alarik in the late 1970's; lyrics by Si Kahn
Mark Cohen learned this from Mary Benson in Portland, Oregon.
Recalls those halcyon days when the St. Lawrence was deeper
and broader; whales made their way into the Great Lakes
to sport and play only to be later hunted to extinction.
Adapted by Charlie Ipcar in 2001
Tune: after Jez Lowe's "Black Diamonds"

Fresh-Water Whaling

Now when I was a tiny lad, no bigger than a youth,
I'd walk along the seawall where the waters meet Duluth;
The whale boats would be coming in, the wind would fill their sails,
And I'd dream of going hunting for them fierce fresh-water whales.

The first ship that I signed on was called The Great St. Paul;
Her old sod sides were sturdy and her cornstalk masts were tall;
Her captain was an older man, but well preserved with rum,
Which he'd only started drinking when a perch bit off his thumb.

Chorus:

Oh, the wailing of the women, I can still recall,
As they watched our sails grow smaller, from the old seawall;
We young men were determined to heed our fathers' call,
We'd go fresh-water whaling, or not come back at all.

That night we heard the barking of them Apostle Island seals;
For our passage 'crost the Keweenaw, our ship we put on wheels;
We polished up our decoys with bowling alley wax,
And lined our trusty whaling clubs with extra rows of tacks.

Now the wind it was a-rising, our decks were swept with spray,
When we launched our wooden decoys in the waters of Green Bay;
We didn't want to scare the whales, so we muffled oars with care,
Rowed out to the horizon and dropped our decoys there. (CHO)

After forty days and thirty nights our hunger pangs grew rough,
The last whale had been hunted down -- God hadn't made enough;
The decoys were our only hope, we were a desperate bunch,
So we sawed them into plank steaks, and broiled them up for lunch.

Now when we limped back to Duluth, they all did stand and stare,
We looked so thin and ragged, our lives they did despair;
But unlike the Flying Dutchman, whose story you'll recall,
We've resettled in Minneapolis, do our whaling at the Mall. (CHO)

I added a verse and chorus.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: EBarnacle
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 08:52 AM

Aye, but it was grand to watch them Sparm jumpin' up the falls at Niagara.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:02 AM

Hmmm - there's something that just somehow doesn't ring true about that 'Fresh-Water Whaling' ballad ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Snuffy
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 06:52 PM

Up to the nineteenth century England had a flourishing trade in live whales. They were herded up into the Irish Sea and brought ashore in Cardigan Bay in mid-Wales.

There they were handed over to the highly skilled drovers who would conduct them overland all the way to the livestock markets at Banbury and Moreton-in-Marsh. (If the whales had really behaved themselves, they might treat them to a trip Drayton Manor or another amusement park instead).

The remains of these ancient tracks (or whaleways, as they were called) can still be seen across the Welsh highlands and the midlands of England. Like the American cowboys, the drovers apprently sang to their charges on the long journey, but of all these songs, only a single fragment has survived: the first line of a song which begins thus:

I've been a whale drover for many's the year ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:09 PM

Well, whaddya know - another song's origins successfully explained!

I'm going to scamper down to my local pub right now, and ask the band if they know that one, so I can sing along, like the whale drovers of old ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 08:42 AM

Snuffy-

Thanks so much for your contribution to my archives of Real-Whalermen Songs. I was hoping such a song might surface in Wales, and your contribution is surely a fluke!

I'm still searching for a traditional whaling song rumored to have been associated with the Great Salt Lake in Nevada.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new book
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 08:40 PM

Utah!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Come All Ye Would-Be Whalers: new bo
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 09:34 PM

Now there's an assignment for U.U. Phillips, wouldn't y'say?

~ Becky in Tucson
(writing from Vermont, actually)