Origins: What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor

Subject: RE: Origins: Drunken Sailor
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 05:55 PM

I found it in Dickens's magazine 'Household Words' for September 18th 1855. He relates a couple of disastrous Christmas Dinner stories from his youth. 'Disaster number one, took place in the city of Paris full twenty years ago' (making it 1835) After a lengthy intro describing his trials as an English youth in a French boarding school he moves on to one saving grace which is he spent Christmas with an English pharmacist, Batten, who had a chemist's shop in Paris. To cut a long story short Batten had an Irish cook called Mary who was rather lively, prone to tantrums and drunkenness. On Christmas Day Dickens describes her as drumming with a ladel on a pan in her drunken state and yelling out the choruses of 2 songs, viz.

Flare up, Mary! Flare up, Mary!
Fiddle iddle um tum
Tow row, row!

This very likely belongs to one of the many traditional offshoots of Dicky of Taunton Dean.

Hee roar, up she rouses,
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

There is no indication that it has anything to do with chanteying, but it is certainly part of the chantey that has come down to us. Now if Dickens was using poetic licence to tie this up to the drunken state of the cook, it still gives us a definite date of 1865 if not 1835.

Subject: RE: Origins: Drunken Sailor
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 05:38 PM

Steve, news to me at least. What is it?

Subject: Origins: Drunken Sailor
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 03:58 PM

Hi.
This query/piece of useful info, is directed towards Gibb mainly.
What is the earliest known reference to 'What shall we do with a drunken Sailor?'? Would a reference dating to 1836 by no less a person than Charles Dickens be useful or is this well-known?