South Australia:What the hell's a 'Rolling King'?

Subject: RE: South Australia:What the hell's a 'Rolling King'?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 09:34 PM

Question within a question: Lyr Add: Claudy Banks/Where are the Claudy Banks?

I'll have to post the rest of this version over there. 3rd verse:

“If Johnny he was here to-night he'd keep me from all harm;
He's in the field of battle all in his uniform.
He's in the field of battle, and his foes he does defy,
Like the rolling king of honor, going to the wars of Troy.
Bould Sarsfield was not braver when Erin he did guard,
And when the war is over, his king will him reward;
He's crossing the main ocean for honor and for fame.”
“No, no, fair maid, his ship was wrecked going by the coast of Spain.””
[The Banks of Clody [sic], The Universal Irish Song Book, 1898, p.70]

Subject: RE: South Australia:What the hell's a 'Rolling King'?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jan 21 - 07:12 AM

"Claudy Banks" or not, "rolling king" is a combination of words with no single, widely recognized or accepted meaning.

To put it another way, it means to anyone whatever the hell they want it to mean.

Not what someone else wants it to mean.

Once it was established in the chantey as a cliche', we have no idea what sailors in general thought it meant - assuming they even thought about it, which I believe they would have considered a damned waste of time.

Subject: RE: South Australia:What the hell's a 'Rolling King'?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 15 Jan 21 - 01:51 PM

Lighter:
18 Mar 15 - 10:45 AM: If anyone has found such an example outside of this shanty - and preferable before the 1950s - please, please post.

15 Jan 21 - 07:12 AM: "Claudy Banks" or not, "rolling king" is a combination of words with no single...

Some folks...

Subject: RE: South Australia:What the hell's a 'Rolling King'?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 08:05 AM

J.S. Scott (Carpenter Collection) seems to have perhaps sung "Darling fellow." I really like "darling" (or something else) as a possibility of an earlier/original word from which "rolling" could have morphed.

This is in line with my own belief that the song is on the template of something from the American South (in posts above from 2011). The "original," I conjecture, was about being born in Alabamy or South Virginny, etc. Country/minstrel music was all about the rhyme of "born" with "corn"! And this tune is as "down home" as they get.

Though, like Lighter says, at some point, it didn't really matter anymore.

I don't care that much, as as long as people put the exertion of "-way" (of "away") and not on "heave"!