Hunting, poaching and whaling songs

Subject: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 07:35 AM

There are lots of traditional songs celebrating both hunting and poaching, and whaling, but is it acceptable to sing these today? I remember, way back in the 60s, Mike Waterson introducing 'Dido, Bendigo' by saying that they were against fox hunting but it was a great song.

My own view is that, although I am vehemently and actively against fox and stag hunting and hare coursing, I take Mike's standpoint. The same with whaling songs, of which I have written a few myself, and, although against present-day whaling, I've recently discovered that my family was heavily involved in the Hull whaling industry in the 1800s.

As far as poaching is concerned, I have huge sympathy for those people who, often from necessity, gained food from the land in the traditional way, especially after Enclosures when the laws against poaching became much harsher. Songs like 'Rufford Park Poachers' give us a good insight into this. Whilst I am not averse to popping out at night to take the odd rabbit, hare or pheasant from the local 'squire's' land (although, of course, I would never do this myself!!!!!!! ;) ), I am certainly against organised poaching gangs who raid our countryside and rivers purely for profit.

So what do other people think? Should we be singing the songs or not or, like songs that now seem actively racist, should we consign them to the archives?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,David
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 07:51 AM

All songs about hunting, whaling and poaching are acceptable.Who is to be the judge? Let's not let our personal sensitivities get in the way of the traditions of music.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Michael
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 08:06 AM

I too am vehemently against fox and stag hunting, hare coursing, whaling, catching of small birds and murder of siblings and lovers, I don't eat meat either but still sing about them all.

My attitude is 'If it's a good song then sing it', the only reason not to, at least in public, is if it is offensive to large groups of others eg racist songs. days I only sing 'Sally Brown for example, when I'm on my own.

Mike

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 09:14 AM

Many of the traditional songs are in those genres... 'twould be criminal not to keep tradition alive in song just because the world changes its ideas and beliefs.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Joe P somewhere else
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 09:54 AM

Fastus sing the song 'The Ballina Whalers'. at Towersey, Saul introduced the song saying something along the lines of not supporting whaling, its just a good song. Looks like everyone is of the same opinion.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: topical tom
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 10:17 AM

Ryan's Fancy sings "The Greenland Whale Fisheries"

and "The Keeper"

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 11:46 AM

Probably just my opinion, but hunting, poaching and whaling songs hold a mirror to how people lived at the time they were made, or the views of the then political protagonists. As such they are historical accounts (not necessarily accurate).

Like all history, some is palatable, some definitely unpalatable. To avoid (or censoring) unpalatable accounts because they offend the public sensibility would be tantamount to book burning.

It is but to the listener to judge the song, and maybe the performer is the performer's 'politics' appear dubious.

Also when judging, the listener should not be transferring 21st (commercial) motives as, at the times the songs refer to, the whaling trade - which is one of the worst jobs imaginable was a way of life in the communities where the trade took place.


End of opinion

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 12:05 PM

I'm all for hunting & poaching; never tried whaling, though I did eat whale in Norway as a kid (not a whole one) & I still regard Moby Dick with a special sort of reverence. As far as folk songs go, sing 'em loud & often I say, although I have seen the righteous scuttling off during a hearty chorus of Ballina Whalers, and turning their noses up at The Fox Jumps Over the Parson's Gate and The Innocent Hare - but I have coursed & killed & eaten hare, so it has a particular resonance for me. I've shot & ate rabbits too, but that doesn't have the same sense of ceremony somehow, nor yet the same sense of utter & perfect communion, though these days any huntin' & shootin' I do with my camera.

Do people object to fishing in the same way I wonder?

Otherwise, each to their own.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Paul Burke
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 12:15 PM

I think it's sensible to to do this by considering the extremes and working in. There's bound to be an area in the middle where it becomes iffy, and put in the stake somewhere there- remembering that others will place their boundary elsewhere. That of course isn't to say that all boundaries are equal.

A friend who is mostly unacquainted with folk music went to an English seaside town a couple of years ago, and was pleased to find that there was a folk festival on. He went into a pub, and found a singaround, which he listened to. Until eventually it dawned on him that this particular session was a BNP group, singing hunting and whaling songs, songs glorifying war, songs in which a word that began with N was prominent, all as far as he could tell traditional, and to the exclusion of possibly non- controversial subjects.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jayto
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 12:27 PM

Country Joe did a song called Save The Whales that is based off the melody What do you do with a drunken sailor. I like it alot. I really don't like the way he did it with the background singers and the strings and all but I like the song. I recorded a version of it years ago but it was more folk rock. We had an acoustic guitar, a distorted electric guitar, and my brother payed spoons on it. Chris Knight a singer songwriter friend of mine was playing the acoustic and singing it.It's a cool song.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 05:03 PM

I like 'Hunting the Hare'. I think it's Kate Rusby who sings a nice version of that. I use it as a warm up tune on my fiddle - its got lots of simple phrasing in it and and bits of scale (maybe it should be about fish then. oh, terrible joke..)

I'm getting so fed up of political correctness I'm seriously considering setting up a campaign aginst the worst excesses of it... It's strangling public AND private debate, and in some cases covering up the truth and therefore impeding scientific progress. And now we're even censoring the past, and the stories of our heritage?? Madness. Next time you automatically respond with the now accepted PC answer..Think about the way you're policing your own thoughts. And they're your OWN, no-one else's!

I had a go at shooting and eating rabbits, but stopped doing it when I realised I'm not that keen on the taste, and if I dont eat them I see shooting em as a bit unethical. I was veggie for years on and off, and PC for a fair few years too, until I saw reason again. I am not BNP, they are thugs and morons. But I understand why some people are turning to the BNP (in their ignorance). I could go on for ever about PC as it's my particular bete noir at the moment.

Read Anthony Browne's 'The Retreat of Reason' about the downside of PC, it is eye opening.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Penny S.
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 05:59 PM

Rabbits would be a problem if everyone went veggie. I remember that at one stage when I had a bedsit in a rural enclave I went to help the next door guy get his harvest in. One third of his crop was lost to rabbits from a warren on his neighbour's land.

I do like the taste, so they aren't a problem to me, and I wouldn't mind where they came from. We've got away from the situation where they were farmed by an owner. That isn't the case with pheasant, though with the shoots putting the bodies in landfill, I don't suppose it would be that wrong to acquire some for the pot. Oh, bother, of course, they'd be losing income... And hare is endangered.

Penny

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 06:38 PM

The political correctness thng is taken TOO far on too many occasions !
A mate of mine wote a VERY Non P C about Doing All The things that are decried ! Last line of his chorus is 'Nuke the Whale and Kick the Bloody Cat'

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Booklynrose
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 10:25 PM

What about all those songs that extol Jesus? I don't like the way organized religion tries to push people around, but some of the religious songs are glorious. At what point do these songs become offensive? Is misleading people about science and restricting public health worse than killing and eating animals? I think it is a matter of degree.
What about songs in which women are abused or denigrated? I recall once when someone was singing "The farmer's cursed wife" ("The devil & the farmer's wife") there was a woman who was getting angrier and angrier verse by verse until "This proves that the women are better than men..." Then she smiled.
   (I did try to renew my cookie before writing.)

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Sep 08 - 10:34 PM

Done ethically and legally I have no problem with hunting (except the way fox hunting is/was done in England). Moreover, I don't have a problem with the Arctic peoples or the Native Americans/First Nations taking A whale if it is part of their culture.

I very much have a problem with poaching, but I suspect that the definition differs between the UK and the US. Here it is used for taking game out of season, taking game without a license, taking game in an illegal manner (e.g., using a snare for deer), taking more game than the legal limit, etc. and I would not hesitate to report it. Here wild game is defined as belonging to the people, not to a particular landowner (but you can prohibit hunting on your land).

But there is nothing wrong with songs about hunting, whaling, poaching, moonshining, murder, highway robbery, rebellion.... Just all good fun in the long-ago.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 06:46 AM

I think that performing songs about some of the unpleasant practices engaged in by our ancestors can serve to keep them in our minds and, hopefully, prevent us from returning to them.

I'm thinking here especially about capital punishment. I find it sobering that this was abolished permanently in the UK as late as 1969. Public executions were abolished just a hundred years before that and the hanging beheading and quartering of those convicted of treason only in 1870 – that's just 20 years before my own grandfather, who was to administer justice in his role as a magistrate, was born.

Whilst in 'gallows songs' like Sam Hall, we feel little sympathy for the condemned man, I find songs like 'The Night Before Larry Was Stretched' bring home the horror of hanging a little too eloquently for comfort – probably the intention of the song! The one song that really sticks in my mind from my early years in folk music is Ewan MacColl's 'Ballad of Tim Evans' and I wonder what influence that had on the banning of capital punishment in the UK.

Perhaps our less-enlightened friends across in the US could do with a few more songs of that ilk.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 07:20 AM

I was going to say that you shouldn't judge the past by the standards of today. Then I suddenly recalled a song that I encountered years ago called 'The Stamford Bullard's Song'. Apparently, a couple of hundred years ago (possibly?) the inhabitants of that glorious Licolnshire town (one of my favourites) had an annual bull baiting ceremony. Stamford men would seal off the streets and chase a bull around the town (or it would chase them!) until they cornered it on the bridge over the river. They would then contrive to push the bull over the bridge parapet and into the river: horrendous cruelty by the standards of today!

Now the thing is that while I couldn't possibly bring myself to sing that particular song, I still sing a couple of poaching and whaling songs. And I should say that, while most fox-hunting songs bore me stupid (it's got something to do with the f***ing choruses - which are so easy to turn into f***ing folk club 'dirges' - but don't get me started on that!), I dislike them for the very modern reason that they're about killing animals for sport.

So, to sum up this rather confused post, I will sing songs about hunting animals in order to make a living (although that doesn't mean that I necessarily approve of such activities in today's world) but I won't sing songs about cruelty to animals or hunting animals for sport.

Does that make sense?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 07:39 AM

Perfect sense, Shimrod. Although I do love Martin Simpson's The Granemore Hare.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 08:34 AM

Don't think this question is as straightforward as all that; lumping hunting, poaching and whaling songs together certainly doesn't help.
Wilde had hunting summed up for me "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable" (he might have added "supported by the unthinking and unfeeling").
Killing and torturing for pleasure has always appeared obscene to me, and arguing that it is carried out for the preservation of nature is self-justifying bullshit.
The mindlessness of this 'pastime' is, imo, adequately represented by the songs, which I find to be as mindnumbing as the 'sport' itself.
I would include such 'pleasures' as badger-baiting, dog-fighting and coursing. As a teenage apprentice I was taken to a coursing at Waterloo in Liverpool where I had the 'pleasure' of witnessing what was referred to as 'a string' - a live hare being slowly torn apart by two dogs. One of the 'sportsmen' took pity on the animal and attempted to kick it to death; failing, he lost interest and left it writhing in agony on the ground - all good attitude-forming stuff.
Whaling, as dealt with in the songs, was a reflection of the trade in the 19th century, a far cry from today's factory farming, and more a stark picture of life at sea than a glorification of the trade.
Poaching! what's poaching doing on the list?
Our poaching songs came from a time when men went out at enormous risk to themselves in order to protect their families from starvation. The 'poaching wars' which gave rise to the songs were a direct result of the Enclosures, the wholesale seizure of common land by the wealthy. The same people who stole that land sat on the magistrates benches and shipped these 'criminals' to the other side of the world for the heinous crime of feeding their children.
Singers should be free to sing whatever they wish, but personally I can't understand how somebody can make a song work unless they connect with that song emotionally or intellectualy
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 08:57 AM

Thanks, Jim, you summed up, more or less, what I feel.

I included poaching because, today, there are many people who feel that it is a despicable crime (local landowners round me, for instance, who still occupy 'enclosed' land and use it for private shooting parties). There are, on the other hand, organised gangs of poachers who reek havoc on the land and rivers.

Dog-fighting and badger-baiting still exist. It's often organised and supported by the hunting fraternity. I know, from personal expertience in trying to stop this, just how incredibly violent these people can be.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 09:12 AM

I have a friend who was a court-appointed "friend" for the dogs in the Michael Vick case (a prominent US football player was involved in raising dogs for dog fighting). She was unable to save two of the 50 animals because they had been trained to viciousness and had to be "put down" because of it. Another friend has a rescued show-dachshund; rather, it wasn't quite good enough and so for two years was subjected to its spirit being broken (almost worked). A dog-fighting "mill" was broken up very near here and as a result dog-fighting is now a felony in Idaho.

When it comes to hunting I'm glad I live in the US -- and I pity those who have been shooting cattle and horses near here (some on an Indian Reservation) because if the ranchers catch them it'll be a toss-up whether they take the trouble to call the sheriff.

And I, as does everyone I know who hunts, abhor the "shooter bull" operations, where you pay several thousand dollars to kill a trophy elk or other animal. That's not hunting, that's simply being a slaughterman in an abattoir.

If you kill it, you eat it.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Larry
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 09:37 AM

Isn't the issue not what the songs say but the reason that you are singing them? I now hat sounds a bit social worker but bear with me!
The BNP story above is a case in point: once you know why they are being sung then you change your mind about singing them. If you are singing it because it is a good song, or it is evocative of a time past, or such like then IMHO that's okay. Perhaps when context changes so may judgement?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 09:52 AM

If you extend the logic that some of you are extolling here, then you, or your Government appointed officials would start to quietly expunge all evidence of any activity which offended your left wing sensibilties. Aahh, Mudcat at its finest!!

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 10:03 AM

Aren't nutty rants usually in green ink?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Dead Horse
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 11:39 AM

So my new song "Clubbing With The Seals" is out then, huh? ;-)

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM

There is a difference between hunting and hunting with dogs - the latter virtually everyone knows about, but there have also been, and still are as far as I know, foot hunts in Wales which think take/took place on boxing day. As opposed to being a bloodsport for the jollification of those who still view themselves as the ruling class, the foothunts are/were culls by local farmers/farm-workers in an attempt to control the fox population - however I have never come accross a traditional or even contemporary foot-hunting song.

Another subject which I think slots in with the thread subject is the slave trade - another historical abomination.

What stops abominations being repeated is the continuation of debate, without debate comes apathy, with apathy atrocities reoccur without anyone noticing. If hunting/whaling/poaching songs keep the pro/anti debate going, it can only be a good thing, or we end up with a sanitised version of the truth.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: kendall
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM

Sing whatever you want. If most people like it, do it again. If most people don't like it, drop it.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 01:52 PM

Another subject which I think slots in with the thread subject is the slave trade - another historical abomination.

I'm sure if there were slaving songs in the folk song tradition, they wouldn't be sung by even the most recalcitrant traddy, at least with respect to the foibles of Political Correctness. Otherwise, what has the slave trade got to do with hunting, whaling & poaching?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 02:53 PM

Dead Horse:
"So my new song "Clubbing With The Seals" is out then, huh? ;-)"
As is my songs about shooting horses - don't they!!!.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Sep 08 - 04:18 PM

...And what do you think she had for cargo?
Blow, boys, blow!
Well, black sheep that had run the embargo,
Blow me bully boys blow!
             --"Congo River"

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 03:33 AM

I believe the idea of singing or proscribing songs that run counter to modern thinking is an important one that can, (and has in the past) pose enormous problems with the presentation of folk songs; for me, it goes far beyond the three subjects raised.
For instance, I believe the upheaval against (imagined or otherwise) anti-women pieces made a large number of entertaining and socially and historically important songs a no-go area - but maybe this is a subject for another thread - or maybe it has been hammered into the ground already and I missed it.
Paco Rabane
"which offended your left wing sensibilities. Aahh, Mudcat at its finest!"
Thank you Paco; I'll take this as a complement - I have always believed that the social conscience of nations lies firmly in the hands of the left.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 03:55 AM

"... however I have never come accross a traditional or even contemporary foot-hunting song."

As I understand it most fox-hunting songs from the North of England are about hunting on foot. Surely you've heard of 'Do Y'ken John Peel' - which is about a Lake District fox-hunter who hunted, with hounds, on foot?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,doc.tom
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 05:17 AM

Foot hunting - try the 'Songs of the Fell Packs' book.
Slaving? - try Congo River (as above), or Flying Cloud.
Poaching? - A crime created by enclosure legislation - not the modern commercial style to feed the city restaurants. And yes, I too think £2000 for a days shooting is obscene. Few modern songs, but two styles in the tradition, epitomised I always think by "Eynsham Poachers" and "Two (Three) Brothers".
Whaling - there seems to a balance coming between 'pro' and 'anti'. Are we suprised at how few whaling songs were among the "Songs the Whalemen Sang" (Huntingdon).
Hunting? There is a balance coming here too. But, as Dylan said, "don't criticise what you don't understand".
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Tom

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 07:46 AM

"don't criticise what you don't understand".
Hi Tom,
Is there any other way to understand killing and persecution for pleasure?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Pete
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 09:50 AM

Singing a song doesn't have to mean you share the views expressed in the song. I've sung The Rising of the Moon in a soldiers bar in Cyprus and come out unscathed, but I don't have a box of Semtex or an Armalite buried in my garden. I'm not even Irish. (Well only 12.5%)

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Sep 08 - 10:28 AM

I wish I was huntin' where the wild ducks run
And the rabbits and the pheasants and the hares,
Or searchin' for a fox in the barrens and the rocks
And I wouldn't give you tuppence for my cares.

                --From the singing of Tommy Makem

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Dead Horse
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 04:19 AM

"....Is there any other way to understand killing and persecution for pleasure?"

For pleasure???
Whaling for pleasure????????
Going to sea for maybe a year or more, in a wooden ship, in the ice and snow or in the unpredictable tropics?
For a small percentage of the profits?
At great risk to life or limb?

As for slaving, don't forget to include "Alabama John Cherokee"
Kendall got it right on the button as usual,
"Sing whatever you want. If most people like it, do it again. If most people don't like it, drop it."

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: romany man
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 12:51 PM

Ah a new slant from an expired equine,

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: kendall
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 01:37 PM

Whaling was a horrible way to earn a living, but they had it slightly easier than the whales. Sometimes the whale won:



             The Last Whale Hunt





When I was a young man, I dreamed of life at sea,

For adventure and for riches, and the dream did capture me,

But the whaling life is bitter and the owners get the gold

While we settle for a pittance when the oil is sold.



Ever since I was a young man, I've hunted for the whale

Around the world's great oceans we go with oars and sail

But I tire of the killing, I tire of the sea

Now the voices of my loved ones are calling me.



The air is always putrid the bunks are often wet

I mind the years I've wasted, and it fills me with regret

But when this trip is finished and I am safe ashore

I'll turn my back on this life and sail no more.



Last week from the masthead the cry of "There he spouts"

We chased him with the long boats until he wore us out

But the sperm whale is a killer, and he turned on us at last

His tail flukes smashed the long boat as he went past.



The first Mate and the harpooneer met their fate that day

And I've lost my lust for whaling, I can no longer stay

But the hold is full of oil now, we need no longer roam

There's a fair wind on our quarter, rolling home.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 03:04 PM

Dead Horse
"Whaling for pleasure????????"
Sorry - crossed lines.
I was responding to Tom's comment that we don't understand hunting so we shouldn't criticise it.
Whaling certainly wasn't a pleasure - one of the most interesting aspects of the trade for me was that it was considered the bottom of the pile.
Quite often the whaling ships were manned by men who were too bolshie to get work elsewhere - shipboard lawyers, those not afraid to stand up for their rights.
Some of them, referred to as 'scabbers' found themselves regarded as unemployable and were only taken on when full crews could not be found.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Schantieman
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 04:03 PM

Abroad for pleasure as I was whaling
It was one stormy winter cold and dark
(repeat)
There I espied a most powerful sperm whale
But we were hunting for the Snark
We were hunting for the Snark

????

S

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 04:07 PM

The poor whales in the pacific are on a hiding to nothing all the while the Japanese need them for "scientific research". One would have thought that after God knows how many years the Japanese have spent studying the whale they would know everything there was to know about them. Maybe they are only third division scientists. I wonder if there are any Japanese folk songs about it?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 04:20 PM

I `ad that John Peel, the `unter in my cab once. I picked `im up at St.Pancras.
I said, "Thats` a fair old jacket you got on, guvnor"
`e said, "Yeah, that`s me `unting Red and I`ve come down from Ilkley to do some fox `unting `round London."
I said, "Where d`ya wanna go then? Green Park? Windsor?"
`e said, "Nah, from what I `ear I stand a better chance of a kill on the Marylebone Road!!"

Whaddam I like??

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Sep 08 - 04:09 AM

"Quite often the whaling ships were manned by men who were too bolshie to get work elsewhere - shipboard lawyers, those not afraid to stand up for their rights.
Some of them, referred to as 'scabbers' found themselves regarded as unemployable and were only taken on when full crews could not be found.
Jim Carroll "

Hmmm...probably why my ancestors were whalers - thankfully, those traits haven't come down to me :).

Here's a verse from a song collected by Gavin Grieg

There's Wady in the Enterprise is next to describe,
With their Windybags and Heather Jock and all their other tribe, Low, mean in their ways and respected by none
By all decent people their company is shun.

The owners were often pretty unscrupulous, too, especially with under-provisioning their ships, resulting in starvation and scurvy when ships got stuck in the ice. Here's a verse from another song:

There's some of their owners rather windy in their way
They were originally intended for Botany Bay,
But by some of the clever tricks of the hand
They escaped that though they ought to have been hanged.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: llareggyb (inactive)
Date: 15 Sep 08 - 07:19 AM

I'm with those who say preserving folk history is more important than P.C. And I can't imagine an English folksong collection without the "Lincolnshire Poacher". Etiquette towards those you are singing with is always appropriate, of course: there are some songs in our family book I wouldn't sing if some of our stricter Christian friends were there, for example.

Getting slightly off topic, one branch of P.C that irritates me is the idea that only African-American people can be allowed to sing in old southern dialect. People who've never been within a thousand miles of Nashville sing C&W with a twang and nobody thinks anything of it -- in fact it would sound pretty funny sung any other way.

I recently sent a blues I wrote a zillion years ago to a friend, who commented "...I'm surprised you decided to write the lyric in "Plantation Negro" dialect. Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa." In actual fact the lyrics were written by a black American poet, Langston Hughes (often quoted by King, e.g the "Crystal Stair" speech), and written in dialect. It would have been artistically wrong of me (I think) to "clean up" his 'de's and 'ma's. Old Man River, although not technically a folk song, is so well known it might as well be one (probably will be in another 50 years), but how many people know that the orginal first line is "Niggers all work on de Mississippi", or would dare to sing it in public that way? Yet without the angry bite of that word the song loses much of its poignancy, and (as I understand it) it is authentic speech of the period represented in "Showboat".

Tony

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 15 Sep 08 - 07:52 AM

I am against these sports but I think that our history shouldn't be lost, so singing these songs to keep the memory alive is ok, just so long as they're not sung with expressions of happiness and glory. After all some people sing songs about war and I think it would be nice if war were banned as well. Most of these songs are educational and should be sung in schools to pass on the horrors to the next generations. Children should be encouraged to sing about death and distruction so that they understand how dreadful it all is, and not wrap them in cotton wool and sweep this history under the carpet.

(On another point here, and totally btw, I think all 6th formers should visit a slaughter yard and see it in action)

Nuff said

Sal

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Dead Horse
Date: 15 Sep 08 - 10:48 AM

Ahhhh. Tourist Slaughter Yards. There's an idea.
I wonder if EuroDisney would take it up.
And who would get the burger concession?

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 15 Sep 08 - 03:02 PM

lol!

s

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Mar 21 - 12:18 AM

For the scope of the thread title I'll reopen this old one and post here an interesting article about sperm whales and their learning curve in the Pacific ocean. I suspect it ties into whaling culture ABOUT the whales and how they behave.

Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information

Whalers’ logbooks show rapid drop in strike rate in north Pacific due to changes in cetacean behaviour

A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes wreaked by humans in the 21st century.

The paper, published by the Royal Society on Wednesday, is authored by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, pre-eminent scientists working with cetaceans, and Tim D Smith, a data scientist, and their research addresses an age-old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t.

Using newly digitised logbooks detailing the hunting of sperm whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales, who made vital changes to their behaviour. As their culture made fatal first contact with ours, they learned quickly from their mistakes.

“Sperm whales have a traditional way of reacting to attacks from orca,” notes Hal Whitehead, who spoke to the Guardian from his house overlooking the ocean in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches at Dalhousie University. Before humans, orca were their only predators, against whom sperm whales form defensive circles, their powerful tails held outwards to keep their assailants at bay. But such techniques “just made it easier for the whalers to slaughter them”, says Whitehead.

It was a frighteningly rapid killing, and it accompanied other threats to the ironically named Pacific. From whaling and sealing stations to missionary bases, western culture was imported to an ocean that had remained largely untouched. As Herman Melville, himself a whaler in the Pacific in 1841, would write in Moby-Dick (1851): “The moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc.”

Sperm whales are highly socialised animals, able to communicate over great distances. They associate in clans defined by the dialect pattern of their sonar clicks. Their culture is matrilinear, and information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way whale matriarchs share knowledge about feeding grounds. Sperm whales also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters’ ships, themselves wind-powered. ‘This was cultural evolution, much too fast for genetic evolution,’ says Whitehead.

And in turn, it evokes another irony. Now, just as whales are beginning to recover from the industrial destruction by 20th-century whaling fleets – whose steamships and grenade harpoons no whale could evade – they face new threats created by our technology. ‘They’re having to learn not to get hit by ships, cope with the depredations of longline fishing, the changing source of their food due to climate change,’ says Whitehead. Perhaps the greatest modern peril is noise pollution, one they can do nothing to evade.

Whitehead and Randall have written persuasively of whale culture, expressed in localised feeding techniques as whales adapt to shifting sources, or in subtle changes in humpback song whose meaning remains mysterious. The same sort of urgent social learning the animals experienced in the whale wars of two centuries ago is reflected in the way they negotiate today’s uncertain world and what we’ve done to it.

As Whitehead observes, whale culture is many millions of years older than ours. Perhaps we need to learn from them as they learned from us. After all, it was the whales that provoked Melville to his prophesies in Moby-Dick. “We account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in individuality,” he wrote, “and if ever the world is to be again flooded … then the eternal whale will still survive, and … spout his frothed defiance to the skies.”

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 20 Mar 21 - 01:44 AM

thanks, stilly

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: GUEST,Rob mad jock wright
Date: 23 Mar 21 - 01:24 PM

The female duo Taggart and Wright did a very fine version of Hunting the hare . Recorded on their first CD NowWe Are Met. Very difficult to get hold of one nowadays so very lucky if you have one.
There is a rumour they may be getting back together for a few gigs.

Subject: RE: Hunting, poaching and whaling songs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Apr 23 - 01:15 PM

We discourage requesting lyrics on the Mudcat Facebook page that is used for performance announcements and such, so when a request came in this morning I redirected him to several threads on Mudcat. (Answers on FB disappear quickly and don't help anyone else later.)

I didn't find the answer here, but posting his question now may yield the results he needs.

From Jeremy Dale on Facebook:

I'm trying to track down an anti-hunting song that starts off 'I'm a rich old bastard with bugger all else to do'. The guy who ran our folk club for years died last week and we're trying to assemble a booklet of his favourite songs, but that one has defeated us.
Any ideas?