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Subject: Lyr Add: ROW, BULLIES, ROW (Dan Milner) From: Roberto Date: 23 Jul 03 - 06:02 AM I can't understand all the words of the text of Row Bullies Row as sung by Dan Milner (in Irish Ballads & Songs of The Sea, Folk-Legacy CD-124): here is what I get and the words I completely miss. Can somebody help me to complete a correct text? Thank you. Roberto When I was a youngster I sailed with the best On a Liverpool packet bound out for the West We sheltered one day in the harbour of Cork And then we set out for the ports of New York And it's row, row bullies row You Liverpool judies has got us in tow And it's row, row bullies row You Liverpool judies has got us in tow For forty-two days we were hungry and sore The winds were agin' us, the gales they did roar Off (?) Battery Point we anchored at last With our jib'boom hove to and the canvas all fast Them boardinghouse masters was off in a trice They were shouting and selling all that was nice Then one fat old crimp he (…) me He says – You're a fool lad to follow the sea He says – There's (?) a job, lad, just waiting for you With lashings of liquor and nothin' to do He says - what d' you think, lad, will you jump up to? Says I - You ol' bastard, I'm damned if I do But the best of intentions they never gets far After forty-two days on the floor of the bar I tossed off me liquor and what do you think The lousy old bastard had drugs in me drink The next I remembers, I woke in the morn On a three skys'l yarder bound south round Cape Horn We 'ad no suit of oilskins and free pairs of socks A bleedin' big head and a dose on (?) the pox Now all you young sailors take warning by me Watch out for the drinks, when the liquor is free Pay no attention to runner or whore Your head'll be sick, your (…) be sore |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: IanC Date: 23 Jul 03 - 06:04 AM Try Liverpool Judies in DT. It might help. :-) |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: radriano Date: 23 Jul 03 - 11:39 AM Roberto, here's what I have: Third verse: "Off Battery Point we anchored at last" is correct. Fourth verse: "Then one fat old crimp he COTTONED to me" Fifth verse: "He says - There's a job, lad just waiting for you" is what I have too. Seventh verse: "A bleedin' big head and a dose of the pox" Eighth verse: "Your head'll be sick and yer knob'll be sore" |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Roberto Date: 23 Jul 03 - 11:45 AM Thank you very much, Radriano! Roberto |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Megan L Date: 23 Jul 03 - 05:54 PM is this the orgin of a song called Golden Gate Angels sung by Jimmy Driftwood? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: toadfrog Date: 23 Jul 03 - 11:03 PM Megan L: I'm not sure what you are asking. Is that a complete question? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: toadfrog Date: 23 Jul 03 - 11:10 PM So far as can be determined on line, the Golden Gate Angels are an investment group in San Francisco, sponsoring breakfasts for young entrepeneurs. Sounds like an unlikely theme for a song, but if you are intrerested, click here. I don't think Jimmy Driftwood wrote a song about them, but some of the songwriters on Mudcat might give it a try. Groups like that are not so common now as they were 2 years ago. Not in San Francisco anyway. (Thank God!) |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Liam's Brother Date: 23 Jul 03 - 11:55 PM Hi Roberto! Our friend Radriano is quite right. In case it's not clear, "cottoned" is common British slang meaning "attached" or "caught on." The word "knob" is sometimes used to mean "head" but, in this case, refers to another protrusion of the male body slightly south of the belly button. All the best, Dan |
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Subject: Lyr Add: ROW BULLIES ROW From: Bert Date: 24 Jul 03 - 12:53 AM Here's how I sing it When I was a youngster I sailed with the rest On a Liverpool packet bound out for the West We anchored one day in the harbour of Cork And we put out to sea for the port of New York Chorus (after each verse) Singing Ho, row, Ho bullies ho bullies ho Them Liverpool judies have got us in tow After forty-two days we was randy and sore The winds were agin' us, the gales they did roar Off Battery Point we did anchor at last With our jib boom hove in and the canvas all fast Them boardinghouse masters was off in a trice a shouting and promising all that was nice and one fat old crimp he got cottoned to me Says he You're a fool lad to follow the sea Says he– There's a job, as is waiting for you there's lashings of liquor and fuck all to do He says - what d'you say lad, will you jump up to? Says I - Ye ol' bastard, I'm damned if I do But the best of intentions they never gets far After forty-two days at the door of the bar I tossed off me liquor and what do you think The lousy old bastard had fixed up me drink The next I remembers, I woke in the morn On a three skys'l yarder bound south round Cape Horn with an old suit of oilskins and two pair of socks A blooming thick head and a dose of the pox Now all you young sailors take warning from me keep a watch on your drinks, when the liquor is free and pay no attention to runner or whore Your head'll be thick and your prick'll be sore |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 14 Jun 08 - 10:06 PM I'm working on this song. does anyone know anything interesting about it? who wrote it, that sort of thing, when it was wrote...... It sounds a bit similar to Bold english Navvy, doesn't it? I distrust these songs with butch sailors/navvies poncing about. I'm just having fun with it in DADGAD. I just wish I felt more empathy with these blokes doing knots and pulling on ropes. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Dead Horse Date: 14 Jun 08 - 11:12 PM "He says - what d'you say lad, will you jump up to?" Should be "What d'ye say lad, will you jump HER too?" The boarding master (seeing this lad as a likely target for his nefarious games) is offering the lad a nice job ashore, but it would mean he has to "jump ship" (he has presumably signed on for the round trip New York and back). The job entails standing at the door of some sailors dive, maybe inducing others to enter, but after 14 (not 42 surely-must be an error handed down) nights of this, he gets drugged and ends up "shanghied" aboard a Cape Horner - not a kind fate for a green young lad who has only crossed the pond once (inferred in first verse) so, older and much wiser, he offers his advice to lads like he once was himself. And you can sing the chorus as Row, - Roll, or - Ho, row, Ho bullies ho. Whichever ya fancy. Ya takes ya choice, they's all tradishinal mateys. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 15 Jun 08 - 04:10 AM Yeh just looking. The main problem with that one seems to be - Liverpool doesn't really come into it. he goes from cork. goes to America, and now he's off to Cape Horn. In what sense do the judies have him in tow. I heard about the winds, but that seems a bit like a load of twaddle to me. Liverpoool and its judies is fairly well known - in England at least. i prefer the 'Liverpool to frisco a roving I went' song. itell you one thing aout that song though. It doesn't seem like a folksong to me. Its too well written. A clear narrative, quite literary language and descriptions. And very concise. The poets hand is very visible. I don't think the writer is too much before ourtime and possibly of our time. wonder what Malcolm Douglas knows about it. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Greg B Date: 15 Jun 08 - 10:03 AM The oldest recorded version of the song I've heard is from one of the old MacColl/Lloyd/Edwards records; 'Haul on the Bowline,' I think was the name of the album. They sang the "Liverpool to Frisco" variant, and had no Irish references, unless I recall wrongly. That's also the version I've heard Lou Killen sing: From Liverpool to Frisco a rovin' I went for to stay in that country was my good intent but with drinking strong liquor like other damned fools I soon was transported back to Liverpool For 42 days we was hungry and sore, the winds were against us; the gales they did roar off Battery Point we were anchored at last with our jibboom hove in and our canvas made fast The boarding house masters were off in a trice... After that it's the same general thing. Variants on the last line's Bowdlerization I've heard include "keep yer hat on yer head and your feet on the floor" Also, "your head'll be thick and your fid'll be sore." I'd suppose the variant to be a Gold Rush era song--- explaining the intent of our man to stay in California, and jump ship for the gold fields. Also the very real risk of being "shanghai'd" (at risk of mixing a metaphor) due to the fact that crews back from San Francisco were very hard to assemble when the gold fields beckoned. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Liam's Brother Date: 16 Jun 08 - 04:38 PM Well, weelitttledrummer, Liverpool does come into it. "When I was a youngster, I sailed with the best On a Liverpool packet bound out for the west." The ship then calls in at Cork (or Queenstown - Cobh). "We sheltered one day in the harbour of Cork And then we set out for the port of New York." Since no ship sailed non-stop from Liverpool to San Francisco, this ship was enroute to San Francisco via Queenstown and New York and, likely, a few other places in South America. But our hero was enticed off his ship in New York by a job. When the New York boarding house master got a call for sailors from another ship, our hero was doped and wound up in rough shape, penniless and headed around Cape Horn. I assume everyone knows Stan Hugill included this in Shanties from the Seven Seas. He said his version came from an Irish sailing ship mariner, Paddy Delaney. This song appeared in collections beginning about 1915. All the best, Dan |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: kendall Date: 16 Jun 08 - 07:25 PM Along comes the Mate in his jacket of blue Looking for work for the sailors to do It's jib topsail halyards he loudly does roar Lay out on the yardarm you son of a whore to me row... |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:21 PM To be honest, I could have seen Stan Hugill loads of times way back - but somehow i was too busy chasing my own fantasy of folk music - probably still am! The tune seems to offer some incredibly cool moves for a DADGAD guitar player and that's my way in. Speaking as someone who invariably loses his breakfast over the side when I go out mackerel fishing for a couple of hours - I can't relate too well to tales of seafaring derring do. Still - keep poking away at it! eh? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Greg B Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:11 PM I find it interesting that the song was bifurcated in lyric...one clearly a training song about the misery of shore-side life the other a bit of an homage to a rollicking good time 'round the Horn in a packet ship. And you usually hear them rather disjointly... the 'Frisco version is really all about what happens ashore after a brief account of a miserable 'round the Horn. The seagoing version details 'diving bows-under with her main skys'l set!' and downplays the condition of the crew when returning from shore, just mentioning they've 'shot all their whack and are looking for more.' Overall, though, the idea seems to be that with its ups and downs the life of the sailor isn't more than half bad. Hell, Lord Nelson was always sick as a dog for his first three days out, so don't feel bad. Fact is, many if not most people, including sailors, are... "We singled up and got the tugs alongside Warped her through the locks and out to sea With half the crew a-pukin' o'er the ship's side and the bosun with a rope-end chasin' me. More rare than a sailor who didn't get seasick was one who'd mastered DADGAD, methinks. The song in the original would probably be so down-tempo as to be intolerable as entertainment. The work it was designed for was rather slow. It's a tribute to the structure of these old songs that they adapt so well to becoming entertainment either in performance or community singing (sans work). If you get a chance to hear either Lou Killen's or Alf Edward's English concertina accompaniments to this, I think you'll enjoy it. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:24 PM Go to agree - the structure of this one is fantastic. I'm not sure about 'these old songs'. I was in a folk club tonight wishing somebody had left one gem in the library. i was thinking surely to God - nobody ever enjoyed that I think the real trouble I have is with songs written to sound like the really awful old ones - in the tradition, that sort of thing. The chord changes here though are quite exquisite. As I play DADGAD in a fairly instinctive way - I don't know the names of the chords. Another thing is, it seems to me that was very definitely written by a writer. theres none of this gobbledegook and metrical putty that you get in many 'folksongs'. Where you're thinking I've heard that verse somewhere before - and you have - in half a dozen other folksongs. In other words, there has been a writer - a presiding creative genius - who has put his vision down. Anyway, whatever turns you on, I guess! al |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: GUEST,Lighter Date: 17 Jun 08 - 10:11 PM Two songs, not one. Hugill even gives two different tunes, though he does say they're interchangeable. I believe the first appearance of the Liverpool-Cork-NYC lyrics was in David W. Bone's "Capstan Bars" in 1931. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Keith A of Hertford Date: 18 Jun 08 - 04:37 AM The Liverpool Judies bit makes an interesting story. Some say it refers to a current that made it difficult for ships to enter Liverpool. I prefer the story that the working girls of that city, when ships were waiting to come in, would row out and offer a tow. I think that a boat load of rowing ladies of the night should have replaced the tug in Turner's painting of Temeraire entering Liverpool |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 18 Jun 08 - 05:07 AM the other thing is if the bloke only gets as far as NY, then you'll miss all that poetry about going round Cape Horn. Do you guys know the Ralph McTell song about the guy going round Cape Horn? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Paul Burke Date: 18 Jun 08 - 09:53 AM the working girls of that city, when ships were waiting to come in, would row out and offer a tow. You wouldn't ask for a hand job off a girl who'd just towed a three- master with a rowing boat. Or to spoonerise the song a bit: So I licked off me tosser, and what d'ye think? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Keith A of Hertford Date: 18 Jun 08 - 12:00 PM Around Wild Cape Horn ? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Big Al Whittle Date: 18 Jun 08 - 12:32 PM that's it keith - are you a Ralph watcher? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: GUEST,Lighter Date: 18 Jun 08 - 04:46 PM Though known elsewhere, the use of "judy" as a synonym for "young woman" has long been associated with Liverpool. "The girls have hold of the tow-rope" was a nineteenth century phrase meaning, roughly, "Our ship is quickly nearing home." |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Barry Finn Date: 18 Jun 08 - 05:17 PM Right Lighter like a horse heading home for it's stable,the closer the ship neared it's port the harder the Judies would pull & the tighter their grip would be on the tow rope. Barry |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Milner's Row Bullies Row From: Jon Bartlett Date: 18 Jun 08 - 05:19 PM I've also heard 6.4 as: An IOU nailed to the lid of me box. (instead of: A bloody big head and a dose of the pox) Is this a conscious bit of bowdlerizing or is it a genuine variant reading? Jon Bartlett |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Row Bullies Row jimmie driftwood From: GUEST Date: 14 Nov 18 - 03:10 AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaTpPfHOv2o |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Row Bullies Row (sung by Dan Milner) From: Lighter Date: 14 Nov 18 - 08:03 AM Cool. I hate to say I enjoyed it. The album was advertised in Billboard (March 26, 1962). |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Row Bullies Row (sung by Dan Milner) From: Steve Gardham Date: 14 Nov 18 - 02:55 PM The version I picked up by osmosis in the 60s and still sing given the chance (to anglo accompaniment) is pretty much the asame as Bert's with a few notable differences. Having heard many versions over the years I now temper mine according to audience, particularly the expletives. When I was a youngster I served with the rest on a Liverpool packet bound out for the west We anchored a day in the harbour of Cork And soon we were bound for the port of New York And it's roll, roll, bullies, roll, Them Liverpool Judies have got us in tow. (I started out singing 'Liverpool gals' but everybody else sings judies so I go with the flow.) For thirty-two days we were hungry and sore And the wind was agin us and the gales they did roar At Battery Point we dropped anchor at last With our jib-boom hove to and our canvas all fast. Them boarding-house masters come aboard in a trice A shoutin and promisin all that was nice One fat old crimp took a fancy to me And said I was foolish to follow the sea. He said, 'I've a job that is waitin for you Wi lashins o' licquor and sod-all to do Now what do you say, lad, would you jump up too Says I, 'You old bleeder, I'm damned if I do.' But the best of intentions they never go far After thirty-two days, at the door of a bar I tossed off me licquor and what do ye think? The rotten old bastard put drops in me drink. Then next I remember I awoke in the morn On a three-skys'l yarder bound south round the Horn Wi an old suit of oilskins and a dose of the pox And an IOU nailed to the lid of me box. So come all you young fellas that follows the sea Keep an eye on yer drink when the licquor is free And pay no attention to runner or whore When yer hat's on yer head and yer feet's on the shore. |
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Subject: Req: Row Bullies Row (sung by Dan Milner) From: Lighter Date: 14 Nov 18 - 08:18 PM Steve, that is more or less Hugill's text (except for the word "pox"). He said he had to "camouflage" a few lines. Ian Campbell (I think) recorded it ca1964. |
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