Lyr Add: The Sailor's Christmas Day

Subject: Lyr Add: The Sailor's Christmas Day
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Dec 23 - 03:47 PM

I think it was Jim Lucas who sang this at the Mudcat Worldwide Singaround last Monday, and I liked it.

THE SAILOR'S CHRISTMAS DAY

Come rouse ye, my lads, though no land we are near
We’ve old Christmas aboard us to give us good cheer.
We’ve our salt beef and grog, lads, and plum duff galore,
And a right gallant captain. What can men want more?

CHORUS
For our ship is our home, though it floats on the main.
Your glasses fill ready and drink to old England again and again.

The landsman may boast when he hails Christmas Day
He can call friends around him to dance and be gay,
But though lone on the ocean our hearts they are true
To the lasses that love us, for we love them too.

Now, lads, join with me and a bumper fill high
To those who most miss us when Christmas draws nigh,
To the darling old mother and father so grey,
Who will think of their loved ones at sea, lads, today.

Then messmates be merry. We’ll dance and we’ll sing,
And scrape the old fiddle till we crack every string.
Though his ship bears him fast to his home that’s afar
Christmastide cheers the heart of a brave British tar

NOTES
Richard Cotten served as a seaman on HMS Comus from 1879 until 1884 and then as a gunner for two years on HMS Bacchante, voyaging in the Far East and the Pacific. At Callao in June 1883 he bought himself a fine notebook into which he copied over thirty poems and songs, mainly nautical, some traditional and some perhaps written by him. He kept a journal in which he also noted songs, remarking on one occasion: ‘Had a nice sing song on the forecastle just to let the gentry aft see we were alive.’ Although he does not say so it is clear that the nostalgic Christmas song went to an adaptation of the tune ‘Hearts of Oak’.

#129 in The Oxford Book of Sea Songs, by Roy Palmer (Oxford University Press, 1986, page 259-260)

http://www.mudcat.org/media/HEARTOAK.MID

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Sailor's Christmas Day
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Dec 23 - 03:50 PM

The Traditional Ballad Index has only the entry for the Oxford Book of Sea Songs

Sailor's Christmas Day, The

DESCRIPTION: "Come rouse ye, my lads, though no land we are near, We've old Christmas aboard us to give us good cheer." They have good food and a good captain. They drink to family at home. "Christmastide cheers the heart of a brave British tar."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1986 (Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs)
KEYWORDS: sailor Christmas music food
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs 129, "The Sailor's Christmas Day" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #V36903
File: PaSe129

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