Origins: The Flying Cloud

Subject: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: toadfrog
Date: 14 Dec 02 - 09:31 PM

The song, THE FLYING CLOUD (Laws K28?)is a good ballad. It sure does sould like it was originally a broadside, maybe from the mid 19th Century.   So far as I can make out, there are no Mudcat threads on the song, no mention in Bodleian, and nothing on the net except versions of the lyrics and discographic references. The Traditional Ballad Index gives the "earliest mention" as 1896, states it may have been based on a novel about a Spanish pirate, and observes that no pirate ship known as the "flying cloud" is known to have existed. (Citing Doerflinger, which I am not familiar with. The discussion of slavery in the song suggests that it might have originally been a political tract, although a long, Irish or pseudo-Irish, nautical ballad seems like an odd choice of vehicle for an anti-slavery tract. In fact, so far as I know the political "folksong" is more a mid-20th Century phenomenon. Does anyone know more about it?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: toadfrog
Date: 14 Dec 02 - 09:34 PM

Correction. Traditional ballad Index says 1894. A typo.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richie
Date: 14 Dec 02 - 10:33 PM

There's a "Flying Cloud" or "Flying Cloud Cotillion" that's a fiddle from the early 1900's maybe earlier. I doubt that this is the same song as it's usually an instrumental.

There's also a 'Flying Cloud' memtioned in Levy sollection but it's a different song.

Richie

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Charcloth
Date: 14 Dec 02 - 11:53 PM

I don't know if this is what you are looking for or not but, "The Flying Cloud" was a clipper ship built by Shipwright Donald McKay, She was launched in 1851. Her first voyage she averaged 314 miles per day for 4 days. Among the captains she had were Cpt. Creesy, Cpt. Alexander Winsor. Her crew was made up of 101 men
1 Cpt., 4 mates, 2 Boatswains, 2 Carpenters, 2 Sailmakers, 3 Stewards, 2 cooks, 75 Able seamen, & 10 "boys before the mast"
she was burned for whatever metal they could salvage in June of 1875
See the book "The Frigate Constitution & Other Historical Ships"
I hope this was useful
Charcloth

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 12:05 AM

Almost looks like three ideas in the song; in other words cobbled from an early 19th century apprentice song to which was added a modern anti-slavery ballad, and a pirate song (very popular in the late 19th century).
I believe that it originated in the folk song era, 1950s-1960s.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: toadfrog
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 12:43 AM

GUEST Q: That makes good sense. I just don't want to believe it. The Trad. Ballad index, below, has a number of references. The only one I am able to check is Lomax, the 13th edition from 1955.
The name of the singer seems to vary a lot. DT has Arthur Hollandin. Lomax says, Gilbert Howdelling. Below, we have Edward Hollohan, and my CD says Edmund Hallahan.

Flying Cloud, The [Laws K28]

DESCRIPTION: Singer Edward (Hollohan) abandons the cooper's trade to be a sailor. At length he falls in with Captain Moore, a brutal slaver. Moore later turns pirate. When his ship is finally taken, the remaining sailors are sentenced to death
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1894
KEYWORDS: sailor slavery pirate execution gallows-confession
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,NE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Laws K28, "The Flying Cloud"
Doerflinger, pp. 135-139, "The Flying Cloud" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Leach, pp. 778-781, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text)
Friedman, p. 411, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Warner 2, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
FSCatskills 115, "The 'Flying Cloud'" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-ABFS, pp. 504-507, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-AmFolklr, pp. 845-847, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NAS, pp. 98-100, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text)
DT 409, FLYCLOUD*
RECORDINGS:
Warde Ford, "The Flying cloud" [fragment] (AFS 4202 B1, 1938; tr.; in AMMEM/Cowell)
Notes: Doerflinger notes that there is no pirate ship known to have carried the name "The Flying Cloud." He suggests that the story is based on the book The Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, based loosely on the life of one of Benito de Soto's pirate crew (Fernandez was executed in 1829). - RBW
File: LK28

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 01:00 AM

The earliest set listed in the Roud Index (where it is number 1802) which has a definite date is one which Gavin Greig got from James Ewan (somewhere in Aberdeenshire) in 1906, called William Hollander. (Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, vol.I p.93, 1981). The song is very rare in Britain and Ireland, though; most examples seem to be American or Canadian, and to date from the 1930s or later.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: masato sakurai
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 03:47 AM

From G Malcolm Laws, Jr., American Balladry From British Broadsides (American Folkore Society, 1957, pp. 154-155):

                               K 28
                         THE FLYING CLOUD

The narrator becomes an apprentice to a cooper in Waterford but leaves him to ship on board the Ocean Queen, bound (usually) for Valparaiso. There he falls in with Captain Moore, commander of the Flying Cloud, which goes to Africa for a cargo of slaves, many of whom die on the return trip to Cuba. Moore decides to turn pirate and all the crew but five join him. The pirates rob and plunder many ships on the Spanish Main. Often pursued by warships, they outrun them all until finally a ship shoots away their mizzenmast. In the fight that follows, Captain Moore and many of his men are killed and the rest are captured. The narrator and his fellows next appear in Newgate under sentence of death.

       My name is Edward Holleran, as you may understand,
       I was born in County Waterford, in Erin's lovely land;
       I being young and in my prime, my age scarce twenty-one,
       My parents doted on me, I being their only son.

   Eckstorm, 214, 16d (N.S. via Me.). Belden, 128, 15d (Mich. via Wis.). Colcord, 145, 15d, m. Creighton, 126, 17d, m. (N.S.) Creighton and Senior, 223, 15d; 2d (N.S.). Dean, 1, 16d (Minn.). Doerflinger, 135, 17d, m. (N.S.); 3d, m. (N.Y.) Notes and refs. Finger, 84, 12d, m. Gray, 116, 24 sts. (from a Boston newspaper); 12d sts. (reprinted from JAF 35, 370) Greenleaf, 349, 30, m. (Nfld.). Leach, 778, 30 (Me.). Lomax, Amer. Ballads, 504, 13d. m. (Mo.). Mackenzie, 283, 16d (N.S.) Refs. Rickaby, 145, 15d, m. (N.D.). Thompson, 39, 15d (N.Y. a composite text) . Shay, 183, 15d, m. JAF 35, 370, 12d (Minn. A composite text).
   Greig, cxviii, 12d ("William Hollander").
   Doerflinger, 334-335, feels that the author of this ballad was influenced by a prose temperance pamphlet of 1830 entitled "Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, Who with Nine Others were Executed . . . for Piracy and Murder on the High Seas". Most of the parallels he cites, however, are commonplaces in crime literature of this type.
   For an enlightening analysis of the ballad see Horace P. Beck, "The Riddle of 'The Flying Cloud'", JAF 66, 123-133.

From Library of Congress Online Catalogue:

Dying declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, who with nine others were executed...

LC Control Number: 42043486
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Brief Description: Fernandez, Nicholas. [from old catalog]
         Dying declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, who with nine others were executed in front of Cadiz harbour, December 29, 1829. For piracy and murder on the high seas. Translated from a Spanish copy by Ferdinand Bayer. Annexed is a solemn warning to youth (and others) to beware of the baneful habit of intemperance ...
         [New York?] 1830.
         36 p. incl. front. 20 cm.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: masato sakurai
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 04:17 AM

"The Flying Cloud [textual transcription]" (sung by Warde Ford; recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Central Valley, California on December 27, 1938) is in the California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties collection. It begins with "My name is Edward Anderson. As you shall understand, I was born in the City of Waterford In [?] happy lonely land". The collection has also Ford's sound recording [fragment].

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: masato sakurai
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 09:26 AM

From Albert B. Friedman, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World (Viking, 1959, 1963, p. 411):

How and when the ballad originated remains a mystery. The Flying Cloud was Donald McKay's trimmest California clipper. Built in 1851, she set a record that same year by plowing from New York around Cape Horn to San Francisco in eighty-nine days and twenty hours--a record not yet beaten. Of a much less fortunate design, the slow Ocean Queen served her owners as an immigrant boat during the 1850s. Neither was ever a slave or pirate ship. Their names were borrowed arbitrarily to grace a tale with which the ships had nothing to do. The events the ballad describes must have happened, if they ever really happened, in the 1820s, when Britain, Spain, and the United States were making a concerted drive to stamp out piracy and unlicensed "blackbirding" in West Indian waters. While Hollahan (the usual form of the name) was in Newgate awaiting trial, some ballad writer may have got hold of the young lrish cooper's story and spun it into a broadside goodnight, as an earlier writer had done for Captain Kidd. But there is no record of a Hollahan trial and no broadside print. Horace Beck argues mistily (JAF, 66:123) that "The Flying Cloud" is a modernized combination of two lost mid-eighteenth-century pieces about Caribbean piracy. More arresting, though not quite proved, is William Doerflinger's suggestion in Shantymen and Shantyboys (1951, pp. 135, 334-35) that the ballad was inspired by a twelve-and-a-half cent temperance tract "purporting to be the confession of one of the crew of the notorious Benito de Soto, on the eve of his execution in Cadiz in 1829." Those who sang "The Flying Cloud" in dockside dives and inland taverns were merely amused, we may be sure, by the cautionary sting in the tail stanza.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 09:34 AM

Ask Liam's Brother. He sings it regularly and, I believe, cites his own interpretation in his book.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 10:48 AM

Nice notes on this old mystery.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: John Moulden
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 12:41 PM

The most interesting thing about this is really two things - that no ballad sheet versions are known and yet the song was so widespread early in 20th Century that it must have been disseminated in print or be much older than mid-19th. The version commonly sung in Britain is that spread by Ewan MacColl in his performances or in The Singing Island - it is attributed to the singing of one Barney Hand from Belfast )of whom no-one has otherwise heard.)

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 01:06 PM

FWIW, in Songs of American Sailormen, Joanna C. Colcord, Bramhall House, New York, 1938, Colcord says the following:—

"This was the era when Baltimore stood third of all American ports is a shipping center, but neither the Flying Cloud nor Captain Moore has been identified through the literature of the times. The ship should not, of course, be confused with the famous American clipper of the same name, which was not built until 1851.

The name of the British vessel mentioned in the twelfth stanza was imperfectly recalled by the singer, Joseph McGinnis. I have since found a reference to a raid on the Chesapeake region by a privateer squadron under Admiral Collier during the war of 1812, which did severe damage to tidewater plantations and coastal shipping. One of the British vessels was named the Dunmore. The discovery adds to the probability that this was a genuine contemporary ballad based on fact.

There follows an excellent version of the ballad, complete with tune.

I first heard it sung by Dick Wilder, Pirate Songs and Ballads, Elektra EKL 18, (19" LP), 1954. He sang it without accompaniment, which is the way I do it. With this song, I think an accompaniment actually detracts from the impact of the story.

The only time I ever heard anything about Dick Wilder was that one very good record.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 02:18 PM

When did the three elements of the song came together (disgruntled apprentice, blackbirder, pirate). Were they there from the start (the ca. 1906 referenced version cited by Malcolm Douglas)?
With red face I admit that I should have checked Lomax 1934, otherwise I would not have attributed the composite to the "folk song era." It is the kind of song McColl loved to sing, and the two are stuck together in my mind. Now it seems that the song may be of 1860-1900 vintage, when pirate songs were very popular (long after the western pirates' heyday).

The Lomax version (ABFS)is an admitted composite in which the Flying Cloud is a "Spanish ship" of 500 tons, not the American ship. Where did this come from? The tune in Lomax is "from Shay's More Drunken Friends and Pious Companions (New York)." What else has this tune been used for, and what other tunes have been used for "Flying Cloud"?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 15 Dec 02 - 03:18 PM

Those three elements are all present in the 1906 Scottish set. The ships there are The Flying Cloud and The Dungeon.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: toadfrog
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 06:06 PM

Thanks all, & especially Masato and Malcom. This is considerably more information than I had expected. And actual proof that musical threads are still possible!

Subject: Lyr Add: WILLIAM HOLLANDER (from Greig-Duncan)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 10:08 PM

Here's the 1906 set from the Greig-Duncan Collection. You can tell from the text that it wasn't new at that time, and had probably spent some while in tradition already.

WILLIAM HOLLANDER

(Noted from James Ewen, Aberdeenshire, 1906.)

My name is William Hollander as you may understand
I was born in the town of Waterford in Erin's happy land.
I being young and canty then kind fortune on me smiled
My parents doated on me I was their only child.

My father bound me to a trade in Waterford's town
He bound me to a cooper there in the name of William Brown.
I served my master faithfully for eighteen months and more
Till I slipped on board the Ocean Queen bound for Balfrasur's shore.

After some time sailing we arrived at Balfrasur's shore
Lying in harbour there I met in wi' Captain More
Which asked me to ship with him a slavish voyage to go
To the burning shores of Africa where the coffee seed do grow.

The Flying Cloud like a gallant ship carrying six hundred tons and more
She could easily have sailed from any port she sailed out of Baltimore
With her main top gallant and her mizzen sail set and the wind being after beast
You'd often seen that gallant ship carrying sixteen of the reel.

After some time sailing we arrived at the African shores
Till five hundred of these poor souls from their native land we tore.
The crew they marched them on the deck and stowed them down below
Till scarce eighteen inches to each man was all they had to go

So we set sail the very next day with our cargo of slaves
But better far for these poor souls they had been in their graves
For the fever and the plague set in which carried them half away
We dragged their bodies on the deck and heaved them in the sea.

After some time sailing we arrived at the Quebec shore
Sold them to the planters there to be slaves for evermore
The cotton and the rice to hue beneath the burning sun
To lead a hard and wretched life till their career was run.

After our money being all spent we set out to the seas again
The captain stood upon the deck and spoke unto his men
He said that there was going to be had if we with him remained
We'd hize aloft a pirate flag and scour the Spanish Main.

We all agreed except five young lads so they were told to land
Two of them were Boston boys and two from Newfoundland
The other was an Irish boy belonging to Timore
I wish if I had joined these lads and gone with them on shore.

We sank and plundered many's the ship down by yon Spanish main
Leaving many a widow and orphan to remain
The crew they marched them on the deck gave them a watery grave
As the saying of our captain a dead man tells no tale.

Twas on the twentieth of November the Dungeon heaved in view
She fired a shot across our boom for a signal to hold to
But we no answer gave to her but kept before the wind
Till a chain cut our mizzen mast it was then we fell behind.

We prepared our boat for action as you soon shall know
We fought till Captain Moor got killed and eighty of his crew
........
Till a boom shell set our ship on fire and we'll have to surrender now.


Patrick Shuldham-Shaw and Emily B. Lyle (eds.) The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, vol.I, 1981.


Tune to follow.

Subject: Tune Add: WILLIAM HOLLANDER / THE FLYING CLOUD
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 22 Dec 02 - 02:30 PM

X:1
T:William Hollander (The Flying Cloud)
S:James Ewen, Aberdeenshire, 1906.
Z:Gavin Greig.
B:Patrick Shuldham-Shaw and Emily B. Lyle (eds.) The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, vol.I, 1981.
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:4/4
K:D
HA2|D2 D2 E2 F2|G2 B2 A2 F2|G2 E2 D2 C2|
w:My name is Wil-liam Hol-lan-der as you may un-der-
D6 A A|d2 d d B2 B2|=c B3 A2 G2|F2 D2 F2 G2|
w:stand I was born in the town of Wa-ter-ford in Er-in's hap-py
A6 A2|d2 d2 B2 B2|(=c2 B2) A2 G2|F2 D2 F2 G2|
w:land. I be-ing young and can-*ty kind for-tune on me
A6 A2|D2 D2 E2 F2|B4 A2 F2|G2 E2 D2 C2|D6|]
w:smiled My par-ents doat-ed on me I was their on-ly child.

Note that the first verse as given with Greig's staff notation omits "then" in line three, which is however given in the text transcription.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Declan
Date: 23 Dec 02 - 11:01 AM

The Irish lad who went on shore at Quebec is likely to have been from Tramore than Timore. Tramore is a seaside village near Waterford where Hollander or Holohan came from. There may be a place called Timore, but I've never heard of it.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 03:12 PM

A long version of "The Flying Cloud" is given in Kenneth Peacock, 1965, "Songs of the Newfoundland Outports," vol. 3, pp. 842-845.
The narrator is Henry Anderson, and he meets Captain More in Valparaiso.
Sheet music to two tunes is provided, one of which Peacock says is much superior.
The slaves are sold on the Arabian shore. The Flying Cloud was accosted by the Spanish ship Sanvo, and Captain More and 80 of his men were killed; the remainder taken prisoner and sentenced to hang.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FLYING CLOUD (from Kenneth Peacock)
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 21 Feb 03 - 09:05 PM

Lyr. Add: THE FLYING CLOUD

Come all ye rambling sailor boys, take a warning here from me,
I'm bound in heavy irons strong for the crime of piracy;
With eighteen more I am condemmed in sorrow to complain,
For plundering and burning ships down on the Spanish Main.

When I was young and innocent, my heart it knew no guile,
In a happy home I lived content, my parents on me did smile,
But drinking and bad company have made a wreck of me.
Take warning all by my downfall and beware of piracy.

My name is Henry Anderson as you might understand,
Born in the town of Waterford in Erin's lovely land;
My parents reared me tenderly in the fear of God likewise,
They little thought I'd die in scorn 'neath Cuba's sunny skies.

My father bound me to a trade in Waterford's dear town,
He bound me to a cooper whose name was William Brown.
I served my master faithfully for eighteen months or more,
I shipped on board the Ocean Queen bound for Valparaiso's alien shore.

It happened in Valparaiso that we met one Captain More,
He commanded the clipper Flying Cloud sailed out of Baltimore.
The Flying Cloud was a clipper ship of eight hundred tons or more,
She could easily sail around any ship sailing out of Baltimore.

The canvasses white as the driven snow, on eight there was no stake,
Those seventy five brass mounted guns she carried on her deck,
Her iron chests and magazines were safely stored below;
She had a Long Tom between her spars on a pivot inked in gold.

I shipped on board the Flying Cloud on a slaving voyage to go,
To the bonny shores of Africa where sugar canes do grow,
-------------------
-------------------

And in a short time after we reached the African shore,
Five hundred of those proud Africans from homes and friends we tore;
We brought them boldly to the ship and stored them down below,
And eighteen inches to a man was all they had to stow.

And in a short while after we reached the Arabian shore,
We sold them to the planters there as slaves forever more,
To toil in the rice- and sugar-fields beneath the burning sun,
And to wear away their weary lives till their courage was won.

And when our money was all spent we came on board again;
Captain More then called us all on deck and said to us, "My men,
There's gold in plenty to be had forever on the Main,
If you'll agree and come with me I'll tell you how it's gained."

"When we have the fastest sailing ship that ever crossed the seas,
Or ever frayed a main topsail into a heavy breeze."
And then he cried, "My bully boys, 'tis with me you'll remain,
We'll fly aloft the pirate flag and scour the Spanish Main."

They all agreed except five brave lads who told them to land,
And two of them were Boston boys, two more from Newfoundland,
The other was an Irisnman belonging to Tramore.
I wished to God I'd joined them now and landed safe on shore.

We robbed and plundered manys a ship down on the Spanish Main,
Caused many a widow and orphan child in sorrow to complain;
We made their crews all walk the plank we held all o'er the rail,
The saying of our captain was, 'dead men tell no tales.'

We were often chased by men-o'war and English skippers too,
But to over-haul our goodly ship was more than they could do,
Always in vain astern of us their cannon roared so loud,
But none of them by any means could match the Flying Cloud.

At length a Spanish man-o'war the Sanvo hove in view,
She fired a shot across our bows, a signal to heave to;
But we paid no attention but ran with the wind
A main shot struck our mizzen mast and we soon fell behind.

We cleared our decks for action as she ranged up 'long side,
And soon along her quarterdeck there ran a crimson tide,
We fought till Captain More was killed and eighty of his men,
A bombshell set our ship on fire, we had to surrender then.

Prisoners we were taken and into prison cast,
Tried and found guilty and to be hanged at last.
See what I have come to by my unlucky hand,
For it's on the gallows I must die by the laws of the Spanish land.

So fare you well sweet Waterford town, and the girl I loved most dear,
Your voice like music soft and sweet I never more will hear,
No more to kiss your ruby lips or press your lily-white hand,
For it's on the gallows I must die by the laws of the Spanish land.

Kenneth Peacock, 1965, "Songs of the Newfoundland Outports," Vol. 3, pp. 842-845. Sung by Howard Morrey, Ferryland, Nfld., 1951. Sheet music shown.
Another fragment, with a "superior" tune, is shown, sung by Mrs. Mary Ann Galpin, Codroy, Nfld., 1961.

I've often seen that clipper ship, when the wind it blew a gale,
With her top-sails and garn-sails set aloft taking sixteen from the rail.
We were ofttimes chased by men-of-war, frigates and miners too,
But to overhaul that Flying Cloud it was more than they could do.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Abby Sale
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 12:59 AM

All is pretty much said above but the song is so compelling and frustrating as to origin that there are many, many comments on it.
Several of the more sea-oriented comentators make the point strongly that the ship couldn't in any way have been the famous clipper. They go to lengths since they are deeply insulted that one of the greatest of all sailing ships might be so tainted and slandered. It is stressed that every day of the ship's history is recorded in existing logs from the day it launched till it died. Apparently, not only was there never a pirate ship of this name but no Flying Cloud at all before 1851 back to the early 1600's.

Another interesting aspect is the throw-away comment in Rickaby. In his great early study of Michigan logging songs he (like Doerflinger) records the many examples of sailors working off-season as loggers and bringing the sea songs with them. It was said (he said) that no one could get a job in a logging camp unless he could sing "The Flying Cloud" straight through. Exaggeration as this may be, it shows how popular the song was in North American tradition.

I sing the version from Palmer & I sang it a couple of months back at the local club. One person asked, if the FC actually:

9.The Flying Cloud was a Yankee ship of five hundred tons or more;
She could outsail any clipper ship hailing out of Baltimore.

then how come she got caught by the man-o'-war, the Dungeness?

This showed that a) at least one person was actually listening and b) one needn't take ballads totally literally.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 01:48 PM

Intrigued by the line in the Hollander version posted by Malcolm Douglas about selling the slaves on the Quebec shore. Were they used as loggers or to work in the sugar maple forests? The "Balfrasur" could be Valparaiso.

The Flying Cloud shows up in another guise in the Lakes song, "De Scow Jean La Plante." Here are three verses of dat epic.

Here kom dem fas' scow dey call Flying Cloud,
Cry Capitaine Batteece an' she's yall planty loud:
"Put de wheel port, look out fo' yo' head,
An' tol' Joe, de cook' fo' trow out de lead!"

Joe trow de lead and yall, "Leventeen feet!"
An'Batteece she's cry out, "Let go down do main sheet!
Trow de dog ovaire an' all yo' can spare,
We mus' beat dat scow boat 'cross Lac Sainte Claire!"

---------\
De mornin' she's kom wid de sun shinin' bright,
But de Flying Cloud scow she's nowhere in sight,
For her centerboar' catch on wan beeg catfeesh line,
An' dat was de reason she's got lef' behin'!

First printed in The Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1927, and reprinted in "Windjammers, Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors," pp. 161-162, Walton and Grimm, 2002, Wayne State University Press (Be sure and get a copy while it is still in print).

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 01:57 PM

Read the story and see a painting of the real Flying Cloud at: Flying Cloud

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 03:55 PM

Abby - the only Royal Navy ship called Dungeness was a WW2 repair ship/depot ship. She could do 11 knots. I've also heard Dunmore as the warship's name. There was never an HMS Dunmore. IMHO we're dealing with a song whose origins are probably a bit land-based.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 22 Feb 03 - 04:25 PM

Dungeness seems to have appeared late in the song versions, as a substitute for (misheard?) Dungeon in the Hollander text. The only constant name in the song is "Flying Cloud."

In the Newfoundland version (above) the Spanish ship, Sanvo, is misheard San --- or Santa ----, if not completely an invention. The lucky shot that hit the mast was the Flying Cloud's downfall in that version; nothing to do with speed before the wind. In the old naval chases I read about as a child, becalming could stop any ship.

Reading through George Washington's diaries, most daily additions have a description of the weather conditions. He wrote several times of "flying clouds." The ship's name may have come from one of the builder's remembering this, or another's colorful weather comments.

Subject: Tune Add: THE FLYING CLOUD (from Kenneth Peacock)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 01:43 PM

Here are the two tunes printed by Peacock (see Q's post above). Both are versions of tunes used for quite a number of songs. The first goes with the text given; the second was printed with one verse only. Whether it's intrinsically superior to the first I wouldn't like to say, but it's certainly more interesting.

X:1
T:The Flying Cloud
S:Howard Morry, Ferryland, July 1951
Z:Kenneth Peacock
B:Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, 1965 vol. 3 p. 842
N:PEA 10 No. 63
N:Roud 1802
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:6/8
K:C
(C/D/)|E2 E D2 C|(2DG B2 A/ A/|(GF) D C2 B,|
w:Come_ all ye ram-bling sai-lor boys, take a warn_ing here from
C4 z G|c2 B (2AB|(2cD D2 E /E/|
w:me, I'm bound in hea-vy i-rons strong for the
(2FG B2 A|G4 z G|c2 B (2AB|
w:crime of pi-ra-cy; With eigh-teen more I
(cD) D D2 E|(2FG B2 A|G4 z (C/D/)|
w:am_ con-demned in sor-row to com-plain, For_
E2 E D2 C|(2DG B2 A|(GF) D C2 B,|C3 z2|]
w:plun-dering and for burn-ing ships down on_ the Spa-nish Main.


X:2
T:The Flying Cloud
S:Mrs Mary Ann Galpin, Codroy, Sept 1961
Z:Kenneth Peacock
B:Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, 1965 vol. 3 p. 844
N:PEA 195 No. 1153
N:Roud 1802
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:3/2
K:G
(FG)|A2 B2 A6 A2|
w:I've_ of-ten seen that
M:2/2
G2 (ED) C2 D D|(EG) (GE) D3 C|
w:clip-per_ ship when the wind_ it_ blew a
D6 C C|(3D2D2D2 c3 c|(BA) G2 A2 B c
w:gale, With her top-sails and garn-sails set_ a-loft tak-ing
(dc) A2 F3 F|G6 C C|D2 D2 c3 c|
w:six-*teen from the rail. We were oft-times chased by
(BA) G2 A2 (Bc)|d3 c (AG) F2|G6 FG|
w:men-*of-war, fri-*gates and mi-*ners too, But to
M:3/2
A2 B2 A6 A2|
w:o-ver-haul that
M:2/2
G2 (ED) C2 D D|(EG) (GE) D3 C|D6|]
w:Fly-ing_ Cloud it was more_ than_ they could do.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 23 Feb 03 - 01:49 PM

Many thanks for filling out the tunes- something I should learn to do.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 27 Aug 03 - 11:21 AM

Does anyone have full text from the "Yankee" John Galusha version of this song?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Aug 03 - 11:46 AM

The one collected by Frank Warner? I don't have the book, but oddly enough I was looking at a friend's copy only yesterday. Probably someone else will have it to hand, but I'll see what I can do just in case.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: radriano
Date: 28 Aug 03 - 11:22 AM

"The Flying Cloud" is one of my favorite ballads. If you look at versions that contain all three elements discussed earlier you will realize that the main character of the song is lamenting the fact that he got caught for piracy. The slavery aspect of the song is almost incidental to the story and that's what makes the song. The slavery is condoned but robbing merchant ships is not.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Aug 03 - 12:42 PM

Ninety-one year old Charlie Cardinal of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (sometimes called Chippytown Falls) sang a great version of "De Lumber Scow Julie Plante" in French dialect for Judy Rose and Tom Martin-Erikson of Wisconsin Public Radio back in the late 1970s. I once had this lumber camp version on a tape, but no longer--- or so it seems. If I find it I will post it. Mr. Cardinal was found in a nursing home with every memory of those old times completely intact. Street names, place names that were now different, who was where and when, who owned what and who they sold it to coplete with the dates for all of it. Simply amazing. Mr. Charlie Cardinal originally sang his songs for the great collector of Wisconsin folksongs and lore, Helene Stratman-Thomas in the 1940s.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Aug 03 - 12:49 PM

Dave Ruch,

I will try to post Yankee John's version of the song, as collected by Frank Warner, later today---if nobody does that first.

Also, Dave, your cassette of Lyman King etc plus Utah's radio show featuring my tapes of Paul Durst will go out to you later today also. (Thurs. Aug, 28, '03)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 28 Aug 03 - 04:23 PM

You are wonderful, Art! Thanks.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Stephen R.
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 07:32 PM

I've been looking at "The Flying Cloud" recently and I will revive this thread after a year's dormancy to respond to some of the comments. Joanna C. Colcord includes it in _Songs of the American Sailormen_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938), pp. 144-147. This is, however, a revision of an earlier collection, _Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen_ (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1924); I haven't looked at a copy of this yet. The singer was Joseph MacGinnis, about whom I have no information. Colcord notes that he remembered the name of the F.C.'s nemesis imperfectly, but apparently thought it was the _Dunmore_. Colcord then comments: "I have found since found a references to a raid on the Chesapeake region by a privateer squadron under Admiral Collier during the War of 1812, which did sever damage to tidewater plantations and coastal shipping. One of the British vessesl was the _Dunmore_. The discovery adds on to the probability that this was a genuine contemporary ballad based on fact." Colcord also states: "This song probably dates from somewhere between the years 1819 and 1825, when the West Indies were finally cleared of pirates by the joint efforts of the United States and several of the European naval powers."

There is a degree of verisimilitude here, but a number of problems remain. The name of the ship is so consistently the _Flying Cloud_ that it is hard to believe that this replaced an earlier name when the reputation of the historical clipper _The Flying Cloud_ made the name synonymous with speed under sail. It is possible that an earlier ship of the same name left no record other than the ballad, but this does not seem a likely hypothesis for the nineteenth century.

Another issue is the narrator's original port of destination. It is Valparaiso in the versions of Captain Archie Spurling--see Fannie Hardy Eckstrom and Mary Winslow Smyth, _Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and Coasts (Boston: Houghton Mifflen Company, 1927), p. 214--; of Harry Sutherland--see W. Roy Mackenzie, _Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1928), p. 283--; of Captain Henry Burke--see William Main Doerflinger, _Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman_ (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 136--; of Howard Morry--see Kenneth Peacock, _Songs of the Newfoundland Outports__, National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 197, Anthropoligical Series No. 65 (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1965), Vol. 3, p. 843--; of Richard Hartlan--see Helen Creighton, _Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia__ (New York: Dover Publications, 1966; this is a photo-reprint of the first edn, Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1932), p. 127; of Yankee John Galusha--see Anne Warner, _American Folk Songs from the Collection of Anne & Frank Warner_, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984), p. 48; and of Clifford Wedge--see Edward D. "Sandy" Ives, _Drive Dull Care Away: Folksongs from Prince Edward Island_ (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Institute of Island Studies, 1999.

An impressive list. And the "Bellfrazer" or various other spellings of the same name sung by anonymous--see Michael Cassius Dean, _Flying Cloud: And One Hundred and Fifty other Old Time Songs and Ballads of Outdoor Men, Sailors, Lumber Jacks, Soldiers, Men of the Great Lakes, Railroadmen, Miners, etc._ (Virginia, Minnesota: The Quickprint, 1922; reprint edn, Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions, 1973), p. 1; unspecified (the James Ewing who supplied an unpublished tune? an unidentified broadside?)--see Gavin Greig, _Folk-Song of the North-East_ (Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Folklore Associates, 1963), CXVIII--; and A. F. Nelson--see H. M. Belden, _Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society_; _The University of Missouri Studies: A Quarterly of Research_, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1940), p. 129; sounds like a garbled version of "Valparaison." Otherwise the destined port is Bermuda in the versions some Boston newspaper of 1916 --see Roland Palmer Gray, _Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks with Other Songs of Maine_ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924; photo-reprint edn, Detroit: Singing Tower Press, 1969), p. 117--; anonymous--see Charles J. Finger, _Frontier Ballads Heard and Gathered (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Page & Company, 1927), p. 84--; and anonymous again--see Stan Hugill, _Shanties and Sailors' Songs_ (London: H. Jenkins, and New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 226. It is Baltimore in the version of Stephen White--see Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf and Grace Yarrow Mansfield, __Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland__ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1933), p.349, but this is probably the result of contamination from the F.C.'s home port, Baltimore in this and most versions. In Welcome Tilton's version--see
Gale Huntington, "Folksongs from Martha's Vinyard," _Northeast Folklore_ 8 (1966): 36--the narrator stays at home in Waterford and meets the ill-fated Moore there.

Well, Valparaison clearly wins in a democratic vote, but it makes little sense to me; why would the narrator go there, and why would Captain Moore leave from there to go slaving to Africa (especially if the trip took ten days or three weeks, which even for the Flying Cloud defies credulity)? Bermuda is more likely; but my preference goes to the once-reported "Beleeza" = Belize of Archie Lant--see Doerflinger, _Shanty Men and Shanty Boys_, p. 139.

The captain who leads the narrator to his downfall is Moore in just about all versions, and William Moore if he has a Christian name. I suggest that this is a reminiscence of the historical William Moore, the rebellious mate killed by Captain Kidd, who was later hanged for the deed, although if a respectable captain had done it it would certainly have been written of as justifiable homicide. Moore is mentioned in the Captain Kidd good-night ballad (is this why Kidd, William in history, is always renamed Robert in the song? Perhaps someone in the early history of the transmission felt that two Williams, one the slayer and the other the victim, were too many for one song and rebaptized the captain).

As for the very reasonable question of how come, if the F.C. was so blooming fast, the nemesis ship, whatever her name, caught her, there is an answer in several versions: "a chain shot took our mizzenmast, of course we fell behind" (Creighton, _Songs & Ballads from Nova Scotia_, p. 129), et al. The other ship surprised the F.C within range of cannon (come on, you've seen "Master and Commander"--these things happen!); the F.C. ran before the wind and would have escaped, but a lucky shot from a chaser on the pursuer's fo'c'sle destroyed the mizzen rigging and probable fouled the mainmast's canvas too.

And I cannot agree that the narrator justified the slaving voyage and was remorseful only about the subsequent piracy. In several versions he expresses real compassion for the slaves and regrets the horrible injustice commited against them. I expect that this subplot, which as someone has already noted is not essential to the main plot, survivied in the song because of anti-slavery sentiment. The song never spread in the Confederacy; the version in the Missouri collection is really from Wisconsin.

It did spread inland. Probably originating in Ireland, it became a favorite in New England and the Canadian Atlantic coast among seafarers. But since sailing was much curtailed in winter months, many sailors worked in the woods during that slack season, and it became even more of a favorite among loggers. That's how it got to Wisconsin and how it bacame one of Finger's Frontier Ballads. Horace Beck tells us--_Folklore and the Sea_ Middletown, Connecticut: Published for the Marine Historical Association by Wesleyan University Press, 1973; reprint edn, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1999), p. 165--". . . we are told that when times were hard and jobs were few in Michigan, no man would be hired to work in a lumber camp without being able to sing all of 'The Flying Cloud'."

I still have some reading to do on this, but if anyone cares to resume conversation in this thread, it might be fun.

Stephen

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 10:40 PM

This IS the greatest of the broadside ballads - too bad no broadside's ever been discovered!

Novelist Jack London reported learning the song in the 1890s around San Francisco Bay. This would seem to be about the time that it was so popular in lumber camps throughout the north. That might suggest an origin in the 1880s or a bit earlier: just a thought.

Most people don't realize that it was once usual to anglicize the sounds of any and all foreign words in an English context. (The pronunciation of Latin in legal contexts may be the last remaining example of this.) That said, I've always inmagined that the Spanish man-o'-war the "Dungeon" simply rationalized a mishearing of Spanish "Don Juan" (Don-Joo-Un). Lord Byron once used this very rhyme. (Of course it might just as easily have rationalized an unfamiliar "Dungeness"!)

FWIW, I've never come across any "keys" to the "mystery of the Flying Cloud" in decades of keeping my eyes open.

But don't let that stop you!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 11:05 PM

Wish I knew more about this publication, but a Google search reveals that a dime novel about pirates called "The Steel Mask; or, The Mystery of the Flying Cloud. A Romance of Sea and Shore" was published in May, 1899, as No. 1024 in the series Beadle's New Dime Library. The author was J. H. Ingraham, a prolific writer of such tales. The story had appeared earlier (site doesn't say when) as No. 93 of De Witt's Ten Cent Romances.

May be of no significance except as more grist for the mill.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FLYING CLOUD
From: Stephen R.
Date: 15 Sep 04 - 11:53 AM

Masato Sakurai called our attention to the version of "The Flying Cloud" collected by Sidney Robert-son Cowell from Warde Ford in 1938, as part of a WPA project, now in the Library of Congress. The collection is on the internet, courtesy of Library of Congress, in the form of: 1) a sound file of one stanza by Warde Ford, the first half sung and the second whistled; 2) the original field notes in which Cowell took down the words of the song from the singer, including corrections and the singer's comments during the singing; and 3) a transcript of the field notes.

The notes in this raw form bring us close to the original performance and give us a sense of the singer; a source from 1938 thus satisfies to an extent the interests in the singer and the actual performance context that had not come to the fore in that period but are now quite dominant. This is certainly a good thing, but on the one hand the transcript is not as complete as it could be and on the other something a little more refined is going to be wanted sooner or later. While the notes are rather as we should expect of a compiler trying to write down what is being sung, and not at all a fair copy, they are more legible than one would gather from the transcript. One gets the impression that someone not acquainted with the song or with anything similar made a single pass over the manuscript, and was unable to return to tease out answers to difficulties encountered at that first and last session. However that may be, most of the omitted words can be deciphered with confidence, and in a very small number of cases the reading in the transcript can be corrected.

I have prepared the following, which may represent a step toward a draft for publication (I do not pretend to have produced in a short time a final draft ready to be sent to the printer!). I wanted to preserve the two comments made by the singer during the course of his performance, but not to clutter the text with them as is done in the transcript; so I have made a short apparatus that will be immediately intelligible to anyone at all familiar with historical textual studies and easily figured out by anyone else. This displays the singer's comments with minimal discussion of their context; a correction apparently made by the singer (the original word is stricken through and the correction written above it), a couple of what may be either corrections or simply acceptible variant words known to the singer (like the foregoing, but without the strikethrough of the original word); and a few corrections of the transcript.

The Flying Cloud.

1 My name is Edward Anderson, as you shall understand;
I was born in the city of Waterford, in Erin's lovely land,
And being young and innocent, and beauty on me smiled,
My parents doted on me, for I was their only child.

2 So with my parents [I] grew up in Waterford's own(?) town;
They bound me to a cooper by the name of William Brown.
I served him long and faithfully for eighteen months or more;
Then I went on board of the Ocean Queen, bound for New Britain's shore.

3. 'Twas in the City of Trimore I fell in with Captain Moore,
The owner of the Flying Cloud, fresh from a distant shore;
So kindly he invited me on a slaving voyage to go
To the burning shores of Africa, where the sugar cane doth grow.

4. The Flying Cloud is as fine a ship as ever sailed the main,
With her sails as white as the driven snow, on them no spot nor stain—
I have often seen that gallant bark when the wind blew off her steel,
With her royal skysails set aloft, going eighteen by the reel.

5. About a fortnight after that, we set out from Afric's shore
With eighteen hundred of those poor souls to be slaves for evermore.
We lined then up along our decks and stored them down below,
Till eighteen inches to a man was all we could allow.

6. Then with our cargo we set sail upon a Monday morn;
It had been better for those poor souls if they had ne'er been born.
For a plague of fever came on board and swept them half away;
We lined their bodies on our deck, and threw them in the sea.

7. 'Twas but a few weeks after that, we reach the Cuban shore,
And sold them to the planters there, to be slaves for evermore,
The rice and coffee there to hoe beneath a burning sun,
To lead a sad and mournful life, until their career was run.

8. And when our money was all spent we went to sea again;
Then Captain Moore, he came on deck, and said to us his men:
"There's gold and silver to be had, if you with me agree,
We will hoist aloft a pirate flag, and scour the raging sea"

9. We all agreed excepting five, and those return to land.
Two of these were English boys, and two from New Found Land.
The other was an Irish lad, his home was in Trimore;
How oft I have wished I had joined those boys, and stayed with them on shore.

10. We robbed and plundered many a ship down on the Spanish Main,
Caused many a man's poor wife's heart to break, when he came not again.
We caused them all to walk the plank, their prayers of no avail,
For the saying of our captain was: "A dead man tells no tales".

11. And we were chased by men of war, liners and frigates too,
But all in vain astern of us their burning shells they threw,
And all in vain astern of us their cannons roared full loud;
'Twas all in vain down on the main to chase the Flying Cloud.

12. Till at length a British man of war, the Dungeon, hove in view,
And fired a shot across our bow, a signal to heave to,
To her we gave no answer as we steered before the wind,
Til a chance shot cut our mizzenmast; then we were left behind.

13. "Prepare for action" was the cry, as we lined along her side,
And soon across our quarterdeck there flowed a crimson tide.
We fought till Captain Moore was slain, and eighteen of his men,
When a bursting shell set our ship on fire; we were forced to surrender then.

14 To Newgate prison we were sent, bound down in iron chains,
For the plundering of many a ship down on the Spanish Main.
'Twas drinking and bad company that made a wretch of me;
Come all young people, a warning take, and beware of piracy.

15 Farewell to dear old Ireland and the maid that I adore;
Your voice like gentle music will charm my heart no more.
No more I'll kiss her ruby lips or press her lily-white hand,
For I must die a shameful death all in a foreign land.


1.2 lovely] "happy" was written first, but stricken through and replaced by a word that the transcriber read as "lonely"; but which I think is "lovely"; cf. the version sung by Captain Archie S. Spurling in Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), p. 214, that sung by Captain Henry Burke in William Main Doerflinger, Shantymen and Shantyboys (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 136; and that sung by Howard Morry in Kenneth Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1965), Vol. 3, p. 842; and Stan Hugill's version in Shanties and Sailor's Songs (London: H. Jenkins, and New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 225. The rejected "happy" is the word found in the majority of versions.
2.1 own(?)] –These letters are repeated in the following word and so easily compared in terms of handwriting; they seem unproblematic, but they are preceded by a misshapen circle that may be a capital "O". That is the cause of the uncertainty as to what is intended here.
3.4 cane] the field notes and transcript have "can"       doth] "does" is written above it.
4.1 as a fine a] "the finest" is written above it. Probably what is intended is "as fine a ship as" in the original reading and "the finest ship that" as the revision.
4.3 bark] a word that is legible as "ship" has been erased and "bark" written in place of it. But there was more written after "bark," almost a complete line, that is illegible. From what remains, it is probably "when the wind blew off her steel," as in the following line. Apparently the words were written twice in the process of recording the song as sung, and later corrected with the eraser; there are other places in the field notes that appear to have been erased and written over.
4.4. set] "set set" in the field notes and transcript.
At the end of this stanza Cowell recorded comment: " 'Of course I don't know what this all means, but it's sure enough the way the song goes,' says EWF."
12.3-4 It appears that the singer at first sang here the text belonging to 13.1-2. Catching the mistake, he sang instead the proper second half of the stanza and proceeded to stanza 13, with the comment "There! I like a song to make sense!"

Warde Ford's comment "Of course I don't know what this all means, but it's sure enough the way the song goes" expresses what must have been the experience of many singers as the song moved inland with the westward spread of logging. The problem is twofold, both aspects arising from the landsman's unfamiliarity with the sailor's specialized vocabulary First, corrruption of the text, which is probably responsible for "When the wind blew off her steel" and for "royal sky-sails," the sky sail being the one above the royal. Second, correctly preserved text incomprehensible to landlubbers: "going eighteen by the reel." Compare version A in Roland Palmer Gray's Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks: "I have oftentimes seen our gallant ship / As the wind lay abaft her wheel, / With the royal and the sky-sail set aloft, / Sail nineteen by the reel."

One point of interest in this version is that the initial journey is to New Britain, the most distant destination of any recorded, and the most improbable and irrelevant to the plot. However, the narrator only goes aboard the vessel bound for New Britain; there is nothing about his arrival there, and he meets the ill-fated Captain Moore in "Trimore," the form in which Tramore, the port serving Waterford, usu-ally appears in this song. In this it resembles the version taken down by Gale Huntington from Welcome Tilton—see Northeast Folklore 8 (1967): 35-37—in which there is no initial voyage abroad at all; the encounter with the Captain occurs in the narrator's native Waterford, and the slaving voyage takes its departure directly from there. So the trip to New Britain constitutes a bit of an absurdity; one won

ders whether the singer knew where either New Britain or "Trimore" was, and whether he may have thought that the latter was a port in the former. Whether meeting the Captain in County Waterford represents the well-known process of distilling a song down to essentials (imperfectly carried through in the Ford version), or whether it represents an early form of the song, before the accretion of new matter from some song of emigration, is a question open to discussion.

Stephen

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 15 Sep 04 - 12:13 PM

Wonderful version, that.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Sep 04 - 06:02 PM

Traditional Ballad Index has expanded the biblio since Toadfrog posted it almost two years ago:

Flying Cloud, The [Laws K28]
DESCRIPTION: Singer Edward (Hollohan) abandons the cooper's trade to be a sailor. At length he falls in with Captain Moore, a brutal slaver. Moore later turns pirate. When his ship is finally taken, the remaining sailors are sentenced to death
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1894
KEYWORDS: sailor slavery pirate execution gallows-confession
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,NE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (15 citations):
Laws K28, "The Flying Cloud"
Belden, pp. 128-131, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doerflinger, pp. 135-139, "The Flying Cloud" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Greenleaf/Mansfield 173, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior, pp. 223-225, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text plus 1 fragment)
Rickaby 41, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Leach, pp. 778-781, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text)
Friedman, p. 411, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Warner 2, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
FSCatskills 115, "The 'Flying Cloud'" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fowke/MacMillan 9, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-ABFS, pp. 504-507, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-AmFolklr, pp. 845-847, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NAS, pp. 98-100, "The Flying Cloud" (1 text)
DT 409, FLYCLOUD*
Roud #1802
RECORDINGS:
Warde Ford, "The Flying cloud" [fragment] (AFS 4202 B1, 1938; tr.; in AMMEM/Cowell)

Stephen

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Sep 04 - 10:23 PM

Warde H. Ford came originally from Crandon, WI, according to the notes on Folkways LP "Wolf River Songs" (ca.1955), which features Ford and members of his family as Cowell recorded them in the early '50s. (Sorry I don't have the booklet, but you can get the album on CD through Smithsonian Folkways for about $20.)

Ford was a significant trad singer, perhaps in his forties when he sang "The Flying Cloud" for collector Cowell. Between 1938 and 1954 he sang about sixty songs for Cowell and the Library of Congress - songs of all kinds, from Child ballads like "Barbara Allan" and "Andrew Batann" to sentimental broadsides and lumbering ballads("My Bonnie Black Bess," "Foreman Monroe") to bawdry ("Sergeant Tally-Ho") to Civil War ballads ("The Cumberland's Crew") to vaudeville songs ("Barney McShane," "Jerry Will You Ile that Car" and "Alderman of the Ward") to miscellanea like "Putting on the Agony," "Granny Will Your Dog Bite?" and "Bill Bailey."

As "The Flying Cloud" shows, he liked long ballads with plenty of detail and melodrama: his L. of C. recordings of the very rare "Battle of Antietam Creek" and "Custer's Last Charge" (beginning "Along the Big Horn's crystal tide...") are classics of this long-forgotten and now utterly alien musical genre. Such songs were ideal - one supposes - for singing under the stars when the campfire flickered low and there seemed to be all the time in the world to spin a tale of the sadness of fate, even in a dream-world of Victorian gentility that was at least a world away from the real lives of lumbermen, soldiers, and sailors.

At any rate, Ford's "Flying Cloud" has roots in Wisconsin rather than in California.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Stephen R.
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 08:03 PM

Thanks for the info, Lighter! The "California Gold" site had enough background to locate the version properly--Warde and his two brothers, it tells us, came from Wisconsin to California to work on the Shasta Dam. But you fill out the picture excellently, and call our attention to a little-known set of songs.

Stephen R. (disguised as "Guest" because I'm in the local library rather than at home)

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 08:44 PM

Any time!

If I learn anything new about the song I'll post it.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,williamwall
Date: 12 Sep 10 - 03:57 PM

The sea terminology is accurate and unusual (allowing for landsmen's inventions). The placenames in Ireland generally circle around Waterford and the nearby resort of Tramore. Tramore is not the port for Waterford, which has its own docks. But Dunmore is a fishing port at the entrance to Waterford Harbour. I have a relative, by the way, who is descended from a family who owned ships that traded to the West Indies. In McColl's version the protagonist (Arthur Hollander) is apprenticed to a butcher in Wicklow, further up the east coast, and contains the wonderful line 'I wore the bloody apron there for three long years and more'.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,williamwall
Date: 13 Sep 10 - 01:58 AM

Just to add to my last comment the fact that the relative's family traded from Tramore to the West Indies. In the version I'm referring to, when the young man gives up his apprenticeship he ships 'on board of the Ocean Queen belonging to Tramore'. Here is a link to that version:
Click here

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,JOE PROVOST
Date: 08 Jan 12 - 12:05 AM

THERE ARE 21 VERSES TO THE FLYING CLOUD I LEARNED 17 THE OTHER 4 I CAN,T FIND MABYE YOU CAN HELP ME ON THIS TKS

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 01:39 AM

The version cited by Malcolm Douglas I heard sung by John Doyle.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 03:19 AM

I understand that the great Waterford Irish language singer, the late Nicholas Tobin sang a version of this which had the same refrain as 'Benjamin Bowmaneer'.
I never heard it because nobody thought to record any of his sixty-odd English language songs (if this is not the case, I would be very interested to learn that they did)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:22 AM

Jim

I have a vague memory of hearing Nioclas singing this many years ago. I reckon it was an archive recording from Radio Eireann, as it was then called. Curiously, I seem to recall, not a chorus but a kind of half-verse coda sung at the very end of the song. No idea of the content (of the coda) or air used. I think he had learned the song during his time in London.

Should be well worth an enquiry to ITMA.

Regards
p.s. As I write, I'm getting flashes of a TV documentary on Nioclas from a few years back.... Wonder if it's mentioned there?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:37 AM

Hi Martin
Good idea to contact ITMA - will try to remember and pass on what I get.
Would love to know if anybody ever did record his English language songs - seems inconceivable that nobody did.
Annoyingly, I caught the last five minutes of the documentary - but I'm not sure it was exclusively on Nioclas, but rather on the area, Ring - will check that out too.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 10:18 AM

A fascinating and useful thread -- mudcat at its best. Apologies if any of the comments below repeat what's been said -- I don't think they do, but it's a long thread.

A version of this song, with full lyrics and score with chords, is in the book A Bonnie Bunch of Roses by Dan Milner and Paul Kaplan (Oak Publications 1983.) There is a brief introductory note there which doesn't, I think, give any information that hasn't been mentioned above, but it does say that the version in the book is taken "from the singing of Ewan MacColl, with additional verses from other sources," implying that this collated text may be different from those found elsewhere. That note also refers to a recorded version on MacColl's Haul on the Bowlin', a 1962 LP, though according to the Ewan MacColl site he also recorded it elsewhere.

The song seems to me to use a technique relatively rare in English-language folk music, using a rather jaunty melody as a setting for tragic lyrics.

I haven't seen a definitive statement of the provenance of the air, but to me it sounds definitely Irish, though mostly attested from North America. I wonder if it might be found in old song books under a different name.

I've adapted the tune for a musical setting of an A. E. Housman poem, here.

Jon Corelis

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 10:31 AM

Great setting, Jon!

Personally, I'd never describe MacColl's tune as "jaunty." "Dramatic," certainly. Hugill says he heard the tune used for "Go to Sea No More."

A related but gloomier melody is in Doerflinger's "Shantymen and Shantyboys."

MacColl's performance on "Haul on the Bowline" is, I believe, the same as that on "The Singing Sailor" (1956).

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 12:27 AM

Thanks for the comment on the Housman.

My memory of Go To Sea No More (I probably have a recording of it somewhere but can't remember just where) is that it is quite similar to The Flying Cloud air, but with a different meter. Thinking about it, it occurs to me that the melody of Dylan's I Am A Lonesome Hobo from the John Wesley Harding album is also quite similar.

Jon Corelis
Abergenny: A welsh Song

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 03:07 AM

Bingo!

There's a tape in the Comhaltas archive of Nioclas singing The Flying Cloud , together with some print references to their journal Treoir.

For a sample from the tape Click here

You need to be a member to play the full (6 minutes) tape - which has an aural "watermark" on it. I haven't played it in full yet but there is no sign of either chorus or coda.

I'll follow up the print references another time.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:13 AM

In fact the print references mentioned in my last post are not relevant.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 02:06 PM

I have looked at several of the versions of the song above and in regard to the size of the Flying cloud and number of guns. I would add that a ship of about 1000 tons would need a crew of about 40 and would carry about 14 guns if compared with ships of the 1800s. Comparable with a frigate of that period.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 03:43 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by "compared with ships of the 1800s", but aren't your figures low? The only stats I have to hand are for ships built around 1800, but the approx. 1000 ton ships among them (e.g.Diana, Leopard) have complements in the hundreds and guns in the dozens.

Jon Corelis
Songs by William Blake

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,oldtimer
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 03:59 PM

Fair play Martin , I am again astounded--- saw your item about the wounded Hussar , great , Mrs Flannery

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 04:18 PM

In the version I know (largely MacColl's) the Cloud is "500 tons or more."

The 1000-ton ships JC describes were large (though not the largest) naval vessels, not "clipper ships" fitted with guns as in the ballad.

Whatever its origin, I wouldn't take anything in it literally. The story with its temperance moral was the thing.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: MartinRyan
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 09:16 AM

No fewer than three versions of The Flying Cloud - by Luke Cheevers, Dan Milner and Sean Garvey now available at The Goilin Song Project:

Click here

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:25 AM

This gives me a chance to say I've searched innumerable newspaper databases over the past two years and found no earlier reference to the song.

The 1870s or '80s seem to me to be the most likely time of origin.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:48 AM

Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman, William Main Doerflinger
page 334 Flying Cloud, the
From the singing of Captain Henry E Burke, Toronto. Formerly of Lenenburg Nova Scotia . probablt inspired by the Dying Declaration of Nicolas Fernadnez (1830) etc etc - the discussion.
and p136 -138. - the song.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:22 AM

The similarities between the song and the "dying declaration" appear to be too generic to show a real connection.

Not just my opinion - but I can't recall who first pointed it out. Horace Beck?

In any case, Beck did argue that the song came from not one but *two* "lost" broadsides. Which is probably at least twice as unlikely as coming from either one lost broadside or from the Fernandez leaflet more than 50 years before the song's first known appearance.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 10:20 PM

Hi all- there are numerous versions of this in the Maine collections I have been studying. It was very popular among the lumbermen as well as the coastal singers. In addition to the Minstrelsy of Maine reference above Barry, Linscott, Colcord and Beck all have it . It also appears in the Helen Hartness Flanders collection, sung throughout New England.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 17 - 05:56 PM

When I sing this song, I often get comments saying it is strange that the song seems to regard "piracy" as worse than slaving. Actually, the 1829 Act of Parliament outlawing the slave trade declared it to be a form of piracy. Logically enough, as the English were upset by the practice of the Barbary Pirates, which was to make slaves of Englishmen captured in the Mediterranian.

I would say these comments are anachronistic. A generation raised on "Pirates of the Caribbean" has learned to believe that "pirates" are just quaint early Libertarians. So piracy seems less threatening to us today than it seemed to our ancestors. But Parliament dealt the slave trade a shrewd blow by designating it piratical.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 09:45 AM

On Oct. 13, 1926, retired seaman Joseph McGinnis wrote to American collector R. W. Gordon about "The Flying Cloud" :

"I learned what I think is the original song in the foc'sle in about 1883 from an old Liverpool Western Ocean sailor and it gives the singer's name as Edward Hollander and it has a very tuneful melody to it....

"I gave Miss J.C. Colcord the words and music... and she published it in her book 'Roll and Go' or Songs of American Sailor-men....

"The name of the man-o-war I gave her was the 'Dungeness.' I thought at the time it was the wrong name. I have come to the conclusion since that it was the 'Diogenes.' As I have reeled off sixty years I am not always too positive about matters that happened years ago. ...

"It was and is a popular song wherever sung and particularly with Sailors."

1883 is, so far, the earliest alleged date for the song. No other collected text includes the name "Diogenes." Sing "Diogenes" and "Dungeness" might have sounded similar when sung (think "Dodge-ness") it's impossible to be sure which name McGinnis heard.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 10:31 AM

There was never an HMS Diogenes. I don't think that anyone has ever discovered any historical basis for this excellent ballad. As recorded in this thread there are many details that don't stand up to scrutiny. Certainly a thousand ton eighteen knot barque wound be an unusual slave ship in any period. Sing what you like or what you've 'collected'!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Sep 17 - 11:32 AM

> Certainly a thousand ton eighteen knot barque wound be an unusual slave ship in any period

Probably so. But how about the way I heard it:

"The Cloud she was a Yankee ship, five hundred tons or more....

"And her canvas taut in the rattling breeze, logging fourteen off the reel...."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 30 Sep 17 - 08:06 AM

Among much else, this ballad offers some fascinating illustrations of the "folk process" in action. The ship is consistently the Flying Cloud (even though the only known real ship of that name came well after the main era of slaving and piracy and was never used for those purposes), her captain is always Moore, and the protagonist's place of birth almost always Waterford, but everything else varies: the protagonist's name; whether he was apprenticed to a butcher or a cooper; where he met Moore; the ship's size, speed and complement of crew and guns; where the slaves were sold; and the name of the naval vessel that eventually made the capture. Also there are many verses that occur in some versions and not in others.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jan 19 - 10:50 PM

This site seems to give the earliest known printed text. Note the 1894 copyright:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/songster/42-the-flying-cloud.htm

I haven't seen a copy of the original source and don't know where the website found it.

An extensive (though not exhaustive) search of newspaper databases turns up nothing relevant about Leonard D. Geldert.

He would appear to have been a vaudeville performer.

But beware! Nothing above tells us anything about the song's actual origin. Was Geldert (whoever he was) the author? That seems unlikely if McGinniss's much later recollection (see up-thread) of hearing the song in 1883 was accurate.

Who can say?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 06:19 AM

That 1894 version (presuming the attribution to be accurate) had already suffered significant corruption:
Verse 1 line 2 "Dyman's land";
Verse 2 line 1 "Water street so fair" instead of "Waterford's fair town" (or similar) which rhymes with "Brown" in the next line;
plus other missing rhymes.

That is confirmation that the song had been on the go for a while before that date, but otherwise only of interest as an instance of the folk process being degenerative.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 06:52 AM

True, Richard, but a single corrupt text could have appeared in no time at all.

Somebody can hear a freshly made song, try to learn it, then get it jumbled in no time at all. (Learning a song while intoxicated would make this even easier; and "FC" is a long song telling a complex story.)

I'm not saying this is what happened here, only that corruption in a single text is not a reliable indicator of a song's age.

The existence of *several* independent corrupt texts from 1894 or earlier would be far more significant.

Without the recollections (from many years later, regrettably) that the song existed between 1883 and 1892, we'd have little enough basis for believing so.

"FC" may not predate 1894 by much.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 07:03 AM

Lighter. The source is Wehmans Universal Songster, Vol 42 and according to the site This collection of around 6000 songs was taken from a set of 61 song books published quarterly roughly between 1884 and 1899 by the Henry J. Wehman publishing company of New York and Chicago.. If they were quarterly, vol 42 would be somewhere about 1894.

That attribution "sung with...". looks like the sort you get on sheet music. I've looked at several of the sheet music sites and though I found a Flying Cloud Gallop, Flying Cloud Schottische and Flying Cloud Waltz (all from around 1850), I didn't find a song.

Mick

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 08:34 AM

Thanks, Mick.

Interestingly (but no more than that), a site search for "The Flying Cloud" turns up no text in "Hyland's Hibernian Songster" (1901), "A Collection Of Over 500 Songs That Are Dear To The Irish Heart ."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Jan 19 - 09:04 AM

The Oxford Book of English Traditional Verse (1983) calls the "British man-o'-war" the "Dungemore."

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 03:58 AM

Heard this sung by Dave Brady [Bradley] many years ago

Vinyl of Louis Killen ~ Ballads and Broadsides 1964/65 notes by Angela Carter (?) mentions that the ballad makers were were originally inspired by a pamphlet ~ The Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez~ on the eve of his execution in 1829 (for piracy) published as a temperance tract!

There is she states[Angela] no record of a ship called the Flying Cloud

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 06:01 AM

Perhaps worth re-iterating Lighter's comment from years ago on this thread "This IS the greatest of the broadside ballads - too bad no broadside's ever been discovered!"

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 06:55 AM

Dying declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, who with nine others were executed in front of Cadiz harbour, December 29, 1829 For piracy and murder on the high seas.

Some 30 odd pages of his life story (he was a young man) as how piracy led to his downfall and this it seems was published the year after he waswhanged with others (9) it was translated from his native Spanish and there should be some copies still availble to read per my google research in US libraries etc

This does not of course answer the question Who constructed the lengthy song? or if indeed this really was the source of the ballad/broadside of the Flying Cloud ~ those with good eye sight may want check this further

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 10:07 AM

The "Fernandez" theory was floated by William M. Doerflinger in the early 1951.

Two years later folklorist Horace Beck cast extreme doubt on the theory, saying that the correspondenc es (for example, caring parents, piracy, Cuba, repentance, temperance message, "Dead men tell no tales") are generic and virtually inevitable for the time and topic.

On the other hand, Fernandez explicitly says "I am a Spaniard," whereas Hollohan/ Hollander/Anderson in the song is just as explicitly Irish. Fernandez serves no apprenticeship, his downfall begins not in Bermuda but New Orleans. There's no "Captain Moore" or "Flying Cloud," no slaving voyage, no British man-o'-war.

So I agree with Beck. (However, I and William of Ockham disagree with his thesis that "FC" is a conflation of two entirely hypothetical "lost ballads.")
It may be that the author of "The Flying Cloud" read Fernandez's confession at some point. It is more likely, perhaps, that he didn't. And he probably read other stories of piracy as well.

So the influence of Fernandez on "FC" was probably slim to none.

Read the entire "Dying Declaration" and judge for yourself:

https://tinyurl.com/yam4pb5k

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 11:30 AM

Yes Lighter the Declaration is as far I got ~ what is being suggested is that the background to the song may have been influenced by "The Dying declaration" of one (Fernandez) who's life had been"coloured" by his Piracy exploits

As you say No Flying Cloud existed as far as can be seen, so imagination comes into play as with many a good song!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: r.padgett
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 11:39 AM

Looking at the top of the thread it seems that there was infact a Flying Cloud circa 1851!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 07:58 AM

There has to be some reason why whoever first made this song picked the name Flying Cloud. That must surely have been some time after the real Flying Cloud began (legitimate) operations, most likely during her active career or possibly fairly soon after her end. I'm imagining a conversation in a pub, with someone saying "The Flying Cloud is/was a marvellous fast ship. What a ship she would be been for a pirate captain a hundred years ago!". And then the other party in the conversation taking that thought and running with it, grafting in memes about pirates, young men being led astray, etc.

If the song's wide dissemination was then partly through print, what has happened to all the copies of the broadside? Were the likes of Baring-Gould and Kidson mainly interested in earlier broadsides and not bothering to collect recent ones? Who collected broadsides printed in the USA in the second half of the 1800s?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 10:22 AM

> Who collected broadsides printed in the USA in the second half of the 1800s?

Among folklorists, seemingly nobody. But a very large number are available online from the Library of Congress, and many more are available in songster form from Google Books, etc.

No "Flying Cloud" before 1922.

Maybe the song first appeared (as a poem) in some local newspaper. If so, it hasn't been found in a search of vast newspaper databases.

Maybe it appeared as part of a vaudeville act or in a medicine show. (Consider "Sung with great success by Leonard D. Geldert.")

Maybe the author circulated it in handwritten copies, and/or (in preferred fashion) sang it on shipboard or elsewhere many, many times.

It's so good that many hearers (relatively speaking) would have wanted to learn it.

Those are the only theories I can think of at the moment. None address the date of composition. Personally, I'm reluctant (in general) to date things to a date far earlier than their first report (ca1880-1892 in this case) without concrete evidence.

Folk ballads were not considered "newsworthy," except when readers wrote in to ask for a complete text of one song or other. These were usually parlor songs, and the practice seems to have become common only after 1900.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 12:29 PM

The print history is very sparse. After the Wehman edition, I think the next documented is the 1919 version in Mackenzie's The Quest Of The Ballad.

I have a couple of new references, which as far as I can see are not in the Roud index:

From 1916: The Duluth Herald for Monday March 26th prints a version sent in by Mrs.F. La Freniere of Grand Rapids, Minn. This version is almost identical to that published in the Journal of American Folklore, Vol 35, 1922 (which refers to Minn versions) Duluth Everning Herald (top left of left page - magnify to see).

1926: Adventure Vol60 No.03 (Aug 1926) prints a copy contributed by a Captain A K St.Clair of Vancouver, who I also can't find in Roud. I haven't compared this with other versions yet. Adventure 1926.

Mick

Subject: RE: Origins: The Flying Cloud
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jan 19 - 01:33 PM

Thanks for the post, Mick.

The same text then appeared in the Norton County News (Norton, Kans.) (Oct. 12, 1916), p. 8; and a very similar one in the Boston Evening Transcript (Dec. 30, 1926), "a true copy" credited to "S.H."

"S.H.'s" text reappeared, via an intermediate source, in in the Journal of American Folklore in 1922.

A similar version is printed in the Saskatoon Daily Star (Apr. 7, 1922), p. 4.

I suspect that Mrs. LaFreniere's lies behind all of these.

The tunes I've encountered are all clearly related. What else is related?

(Either Hugill or Doerflinger also weds it to "Go to Sea No More.")