Songs for white slaves?

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 01 May 18 - 11:48 PM

“America” - from Deadhorse to Puerto Williams. Seriously? But if your answer isn't “China” - you're not done “reading.” And chattel beats sacrificial by a long shot. Property may fight or flee.

Speaking of French, one line of a mid-19th century Nile pulling shanty, with on topic context, no less:

“...Ils aiment leur état et travaillent avec ardeur: mais chaque fois qu'il faut exécuter une manœuvre un peu difficile, ils poussent des cris étourdissants, et ils ne se tirent pas toujours à leur honneur de ces difficultés passagères: lorsque le vent est vif et contraire, par exemple, on est exposé à voir chavirer le bâtiment chaque fois qu'on vire de bord. Au surplus, les matelots ne mettent jamais la main à l'œuvre sans chanter ou plutôt sans réciter des espèces de litanies sur un rythme très-monotone, mais qui paraissent les exciter beaucoup. Il en est qui, pour s'encourager, expriment des vœux essentiellement matériels dans un chant improvisé, et l'espoir de voir ces voeux exaucés redouble leur ardeur: Allah! Allah! fais-moi l'époux d'une esclave blanche, s'écrie le matelot noir, et tous les auires répètent son refrain avec des transports frénétiques, et les manœuvres s'exécutent avec plus de promptitude et de vigueur. Ces marins, comme ceux du Nil, ont toujours des taraboukas* et quelque mauvais instrument de musique, et dès qu'ils découvrent, je ne dirai pas la terre, puisqu'ils ne la perdent jamais de vue, mais une ville quelconque, les instruments retentissent et se marient aux danses, aux chants et aux battements de mains de tout l'équipage rassemblé. Le voisinage et la fréquentation des lieux saints font que la plupart de ces marins sont fanatiques ou, au moins dévots. Ils mettent généralement en pratique les préceptes du Coran, et les prières prescrites par le prophète sont récitées avec assez de régularité sur les barques de la Mer Rouge. Le riz est la principale nourriture de ces marins; ils pêchent beaucoup, et lorsqu'ils prennent du poisson, ils le mangent rôti sur la braise: ils ont toujours à bord une espèce de four dans lequel ils font cuire quelquefois de très-mauvais pain sans levain. Leur eau est renferinée dans d'énormes caisses de bois de forme carrée, qu'ils appellent ?antass, mais il est rare qu'elle s'y conserve bien, ce qui, joint à la mauvaise qualité ordinaire des eaux du littoral de la Mer Rouge, la rend souvent impotable. Les équipages ont peu d'égards pour les passagers, et en règle générale, des Européens, des chrétiens qui ne seraient pas chaudement recommandés, voyageraient avec peu d'agrément parmi eux.”

[Combes, Edmond, - Voyage En Egypt, Et En Nubie, dans les Deserts, vol. 2 (Bruxelles: N-J. Slingenmeyer Jeune, 1846, pp.354-356)]

* aka Darabukkeh or 'goblet' drum.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 06:06 PM

Guest, #, that's the perfect summary of a reflection I've been mulling all day.

1. The distinction between worse treatment is not mine. It's reality.
2. Europeans did suffer some types of slavery.
3. The minute a culture that has known slavery in any form, as the victims, agrees to do it to another culture, and create generations of death thereby, instead of applying compassion to end it for all people-- that's the moment they lose claim to whatever cachet their own ancient victimization carried morally.

Now as to types of slavery. It all boils down to one fulcrum-type question. Did the persons kidnapped come from a culture with a ransom mechanism or not??? I am pretty sure, after days of actual study of the Algerine slavery, that only US chattel slavery came with no hope of ransom-- or military recapture.

I'm also well aware of Europeans whose enslavement memories were used to color their indenturement experiences, to attempt to justify and deflect attention away from their eventual participation in enchattelment.... instead of ending it.


Now I know that this is a 'song' thread. Since the other applicabe thread was closed and I have no interest in starting a fresh round of the pissing contest, what the hell. I'll post here.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 01:12 PM

"Where I do not agree with Guest,# though is in believing that people ownership has gone away, that is alive and kicking, even in the UK."

I agree with you and thought I'd made that clear. Clumsy writing on my part if I left that impression. I'd meant I see the ownership coming into slavery on a broader scale, less individual. I may feel I don't own slaves, but the minute I buy stuff (chocolate from Sierra Leone for example) that is the product of slave labour is the minute I become an owner whether I care to call myself that or not.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 01:04 PM

not my thing to offset one type of oppression against another.

Not mine either.
Whose "thing" is it?

bridle at the suggestion that the lot of 'White Slaves' were different in any way than any other group os slaves

Me too.
Who has suggested that though?

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 12:00 PM

My last posting seems to have gone astray
I have never entereed into a slanging match with Keith over the relative demerits of one type of slavery or another - on the contrary, I have pointed out that there is no difference; not my thing to offset one type of oppression against another.
I have, and will continue to bridle at the suggestion that the lot of 'White Slaves' were different in any way than any other group os slaves - "slaves are slaves", black, white purple..... and or nations has as dirty hands as any other.
As you say, slavery is still very much with us to the tune of nearly 30 million human beings, and the wealthier nations capitalise on that fact if we buy our cheap shirts from Primark and our trainers from Aldi and Lidl
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 11:37 AM

Jim,
I'm sure it isn't - nothing is with you Keith!!

That is true Jim.
I have never argued the relative merits of any religions, nor ever advocated one over another.
Are you insinuating that I have?

Dave,
A slanging match between Keith and Jim over whose slavery was worse

Jim has tried to engage me in such a slanging match, but I refused to accommodate him.
I have not claimed than any slavery was better or worse than any other.
All is evil.

Please try not to falsely accuse.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 10:50 AM

I agree with Guest,#. Slavery is dreadful, and is very much still with us. A slanging match between Keith and Jim over whose slavery was worse in the past does not do anything towards eliminating this scourge today, which is surely the priority. Where I do not agree with Guest,# though is in believing that people ownership has gone away, that is alive and kicking, even in the UK.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 09:41 AM

"This is not a religious argument Jim,"
I'm sure it isn't - nothing is with you Keith!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 09:12 AM

Slavery has never gone away. It has however changed form. What Susan calls systemic slavery contains within it all the earlier types of 'people ownership'. Today, slavery is almost solely economic. We no longer load people aboard ships and transport them. We don't have to, because now we can be slaves in our own countries. Ethnicity and religion do play roles, but they're roles promulgated by media based on perceptions flung about regarding race, religion and any other generalization that can be used to divide common people.

We face a growing crisis in the world today. It's not new at all, but it is diabolical and insidious. People planet-wide have become chattel slaves, and until such time we throw off the yoke, we will continue to play our parts. Dave the Gnome (on an older thread) brought up a most important consideration when he referred us to media as being not only culpable but also responsible for how we view things and interpret the results. The 'official' media is owned by a relatively small group of people, and the unofficial media is silently coerced along selected paths by social media moderating companies interested in herding us to given positions and Hobson's choices that are of benefit to their bottom lines. They have made excellent use applying aspects of John Donne's Meditation XVII, very effectively imo. Indeed, ask not for whom the bell tolls.

YMMV and please pardon the thread drift.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 08:13 AM

This is not a religious argument Jim, and I am not going to join in with your vindictive malice and hate.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 08:03 AM

"It was English who were abducted from Baltimore Jim."
It was the English who were abducting slaves from all over the world (in the name of Christianity) for many centuries, and were treating them far worse than were the residents of Baltimore.
The Empire was set up to Christianise the savage world (allegedly)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 07:51 AM

It was English who were abducted from Baltimore Jim.
This is about the evil of slaving, not a religious argument.
It is just you and Greg trying to make it that.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 06:08 AM

"Nasty vindictiveness."
How about past record, which goes before you in spades?
As somebody famous once said, You'll never eat lunch in this town again.
"WysiwiG, how do you take two such consummate evils and rank them as to which is worse?"
By putting them into context of who was doing what to whom at the time
The events that you describe were being perpetrated by all the Christian "Civilised" nations on the "savages" they were civilising and the man chained for life to an oar - lasted for centuries for these "savages".
On the original point, the pirates who came into Baltimore where said to have done so with the co-operation of the authorities, or certainly, high ranking members of same, implicating England in the abductions   
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 04:29 AM

I know why Jim.
Nasty vindictiveness.

WysiwiG, how do you take two such consummate evils and rank them as to which is worse?

Would you say to the child snatched from its parents and raped every day, or the man chained for life to an oar with no hope but death, "think yourself lucky you are not a plantation worker?"

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 04:19 AM

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 04:01 AM

"I can not express a view without being attacked and accused."
Do you never wonder why?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 15 - 03:48 AM

You people accuse me of things I neither say, mean or believe.
I can not express a view without being attacked and accused.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 08:34 PM

my view

https://soundcloud.com/denise_whittle/capitalist-blues

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 07:56 PM

Oh dear - has he managed to turn this into yet another of his Islamophobic rants?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 06:57 PM

You're wasting your time with Weasel, Susan.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 04:28 PM

Reposting the above now that I'm off the fone and its autospell hell:

Keith, I am not denying the horrors of white enslavement.

What I am saying is that the US enslavement of Blacks was worse.

One horror cannot cancel out the other. As human beings, we have to learn how to encompass both horrors-- in all their differences of type and degree. Most of all, white folks need to learn how to respect our own histories while not denying the vastly deeper harms Systemic Racism has done to all people. Systemic Racism hurts white folks, too.

~S~

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 11:37 AM

Yes I quoted a respected non racist who agreed with me.
Why not?

Now, as many others have told you before, FUCK OFF!

As I have told them, no.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 09:32 AM

(The quote was his Greg)

Yes it was, Weasel, but YOU quoted it in support of YOUR opinion, which was the same.

Now, as many others have told you before, FUCK OFF!

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 06:36 AM

Ard Mhacher did not like the British very much, but he was no racist.
A much respected and missed Mudcatter.
(The quote was his Greg)

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 15 - 03:27 AM

A hint of white slavery in C19 in The Tailor In The Teachest, set in days of the China tea-trade -- Cutty Sark & all that. Having discovered the adulterous tailor hiding in the teachest to evade his doxy's vengeful husband whom they thought safely away at sea, the shipmates "took him out to China, and they traded him for tea"; for, it appears, a considerable sumsworth of tea which "made a fine supply for the whole ship's company".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 04:31 PM

...leaves[sic] me to the conclusion that they fared worse than the black slaves.

Bullshit.

Another thinly disguised attempt by KA-HoH to paint Arabs/Muslims in the worst possible light; the old "Muslims Bad - Christians (and Israelis)Good" mantra he so favors."

Or he knows absolutely bugger-all about Black chattel slevery.

Or, probably more likely, both.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 04:17 PM

Keith I am not denying the horrors of white enslavement. What I am saying is that the US enslavement of Blacks was worse. One horror cannot cancel out the other. As human beings we have to learn how to encompass both horrors-- in all their differences of typeople aND degret. Most of all wHite folks need to learn how to respectacular oUr own hI stories whike nit denying the vastly deeper harms Systemic Racism has done to all psoles. SR hurts wHite folks, too.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 04:11 PM

To reiterate what I said in 2003 about what the victims had to endure,

Would a young girl snatched from a tiny English hamlet, thrust into an utterly alien environment and valued only for her vagina agree with you?
Or the man, whose value was comparable to an onion, chained permanently to an oar until the day the lash could no longer animate him, and then disposed of. Had he been taken as a boy (highest value white slave) subjected to years of systematic buggery until he lost his boyish looks.

And as another contributor said,

ard mhacha - PM
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 01:55 PM

I taped that programme on the Arab Slavers and after another look, , I have to agree with Keith, this exsistence for the captives was hell on earth, the books I have read on this, leaves me to the conclusion that they fared worse than the black slaves. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,cujimmy
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 04:02 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLLH1i5_LlQ

Heres a song by Damien Dempsey "to hell or Barbados", which tells the story very well

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 03:52 PM

One of the largest of the pre-African-slave-trade groups of white slaves were the Ukrainian and Caucasian slaves traded to the Ottoman Empire. At its height, this business extended to North Africa, and was run as their major business enterprise by the Knights of St John, based at Rhodes until the Ottomans threw them out in 1522. So the upstream end of the enterprise was Christians selling pagans and fellow-Christians to primarily Muslim buyers.

One interesting angle was that Islamic law forbade castration, but didn't restrict the importation of eunuchs. So the supply route was deliberately taken outside Muslim territory so that slaves could be castrated to meet the demand for eunuchs.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 03:17 PM

"A xebec (/ˈziːbɛk/ or /zɨˈbɛk/), also spelled zebec, was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and protruding mizzen mast. It can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Xebecs were similar to galleys used by Algerian corsairs and Barbary pirates" --- Wikipedia

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jul 15 - 02:46 PM

Modern Irish scholarship draws a clear distinction between US chattel slavery and any form of white slavery including the Algerine/Barbary form. The distinction is not new; the perspectin of the need to imagine worse horrors than the Algerine slaves experienced may be.

Excerpts from a book at Gutenberg summarize:

"'Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among the professing Christians of civilized America; and yet here sensibility bleeds at every pore for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery.'

Such testimony would seem to furnish a decisive standard or measure of comparison by which to determine the character of White Slavery in the Barbary States. But there are other considerations and authorities. One of these is the influence of the religion of these barbarians.... the generally kind treatment bestowed by Mohammedans upon slaves. The lash rarely, if ever, lacerates the back of the female; the knife or branding iron is not employed upon any human being to mark him as the property of his fellow-man. Nor is the slave doomed, as in other countries, where the Christian religion is professed, to unconditional and perpetual service, without prospect of redemption. Hope, the last friend of misfortune, may brighten his captivity."

I offer this as information, not argument.....my fone does not facilitate making links and pasting multiple text quotes but the information is out there.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 01:53 PM

McGrath of Harlow said, in part:


But whereas in many places a slave is just that, a fellow human being who for various reasons has become obliged to work for someone else in a master slave relationship - in the American system they were regarded as essentially less than human. A more degrading situation for both parties.

McGrath, why do you think that (bad as it indubitably was) was peculiar to the American system? Or to put it differently, why do you think that aspect was absent from every other slave system in the world in history?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,SHANNON LEDFORD
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 03:53 AM

AMAZING GRACE!!!!!!! (SHORT AND TO THE POINT!)

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 06:52 PM

Did anyone say Haiti was part of the USA? I know I didn't.

The system of slavery developed in America wasn't confined to the USA.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 10:44 AM

Now I'm confused. Republic of Haiti is part of the US? Taxation, representation, citizenship, etc? How many states *does* the US have?

Subject: Lyr Add: COME THE GLOBAL CALAMITY (Paul Spencer)
From: Clean Supper
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 08:47 AM

It might be of interest to know that in England certainly and I believe in the USA and Australia and qute probably other places, people serving jail sentences are given "useful work" to occupy them and are paid a pittance a day, enough to buy the crap, expensive cgarettes in the jail if they´re lucky. They make road signs, for example, and other things for the government but the idea has been floated to sell their labour to private companies. This is already slavery and the rich are getting in on it in yet an other way.

In addition, I have written a relevant-ish song last year, to an Irish slip-jig (9-8) called The Disused Railway. My song is called

             Come the Global Calamity
by Paul Spencer

1. Waching telly hypnotically,
Spending money neurotically,
Making choices robotically,
Turning into a slave,
School to make me employable,
Work to make me reliable,
Just when life gets enjoyable,
Lay me into my grave.

Chorus:
Come the global calamity,
Markets crashing dramatically,
Final show of insanity,
Time to start anew,
People starving to death,
Even over here in the West,
And you won´t have time for a breath,
But we´ll all have something to do.

2. Life is easy n benefit,
Drinking beer for the fun of it,
Smoking weed for the zen of it,
Nearly dying on smack.
Try to stand on my feet,
But I find there´s nothing to eat,
And it´s cold out here on the street,
So I soon come grovelling back.

chorus

3. Spend the day on the phone,
Like a dull mechanical drone,
And I might as well be alone,
´Cause I´ve got no time for a chat.
Work till 6 and then leave,
With a lousy wage for teh week,
And I don´tknow what I´ve achieved,
But it nearly pays for my flat.

chorus

Sorry I couldn´t give anything that answers the question at the top of the thread.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 06:24 PM

Republic of Haiti, that is to say. Situated a few miles south of another republic known as the USA.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 06:20 PM

Haiti

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 03:49 PM

Is it? Which state?

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 12:53 PM

Haiti is in America.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 12:14 PM

Read a biography of Toussaing l'Ouverture; I think slavery is slavery, and absolute power over another person doesn't lead to virtuous behaviour.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 11:56 AM

The difference between the American system, especially in the USA, and slavery elsewhere wasn't so much a matter of greater cruelty - I suspect wherever you go that was much the same, ranging from horrific to relatively humane (after all slaves were worth money).

But whereas in many places a slave is just that, a fellow human being who for various reasons has become obliged to work for someone else in a master slave relationship - in the American system they were regarded as essentially less than human. A more degrading situation for both parties. A slavemaster in most places would be aware that it could just as easily be the other way round, and a former slave would just be the same as anyone else. I suspect that that kind of thinking would have been regarded as absurd and offensive in the South.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 03:53 AM

There's a book about the Irish sent to the Caribbean: MacInerny, Rev. M. H. (1909). Irish Slaves in the West Indies. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker.

Here's an interesting family-genealogy page with some stuff:

http://www.kavanaghfamily.com/articles/2003/20030618jfc.htm

Of course, Irish people in earlier times had made lots of money from slavery; I understand that they used to trade Scandinavian slaves down to Rome at one stage, the main slave market being around where Mulligans is in Dublin now.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 08:25 AM

Gareth, You are right, and regarding the Yoke, I thought it came from an egg, until I worked for Wimpey. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Gareth
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 07:26 PM

Wot appauls me is the way PC history has put the question of "white on white" or "black on black" slavery into Orwell's memory hole.

I had the misfortune to attend a "Workshop", on Slavery, in Canterbury some years ago.

I suppose I should have walked out from the start. When we walked in we were invited to pick an identity. Your choice was an African Tribe Child being abducted by English Slavers fron Ghana, or "The Bight of Benin"

"Oh remember, remember the Bight of Benin,
One sails out, but 20 go in"

I was stuborn, and insisted that I was a Bristol Man, sentanced to life as a slave in Barbados by Judge Jeffries ( The BLoody Assizes).

It went down hill from there. This "Socialoagist" insisted that there was no such thing a whites enslaving whites - Ye Gods even Ard M will admit that.

No mention of the Cromwell enslavement resulting from his adventures in Ireland.

The deportations to Virginia, Barbados, or the Bahamas (SP, or OZ - Oh they never existed.

And of course there was no mention of the East African Slave trade, young Boys and Girls to Saudi Arabia.

The final straw came at lunch time "Oh No Alchol, as good muslems you will not touch it".

I will let the more intelligent catters work that stupidity out.

Errr ! If the only exterior contact we have is from Bristol and Liverpool Slavers, how come the Readers of the Book, are involved?

The Bight of Benin was historically well south of the Tetse Fly belt / boundary where the Hausa raiders from the north were stopped by thier horses/cammels dying beneath them.

I walked out, others walked out, including the only two attendees who were of Afro Origin, One borne in Barbados, the other borne in Somalia.

Like I said some months ago, in this thread earlier, I think this might upset the Politiclly Correct.

And for those of you who may wish to ponder:-

1/. What role did the "Kurbah" and the "Yoke" play ??? Do you know what they were ?

2/. What was the fate of a prisoner of war in the Bight, prior to the arrival of the Slave Trailers ?

Answers here please. A vitual pint to the first correct answer.

The slave trades were horific - but not confined to european villans.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 01:55 PM

I taped that programme on the Arab Slavers and after another look, , I have to agree with Keith, this exsistence for the captives was hell on earth, the books I have read on this, leaves me to the conclusion that they fared worse than the black slaves. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 09:32 AM

Slavery is a horrible thing wherever it happens. But all I have read indicates that the most de-humanising system of slavery ever was that associated with the North Atlantic Slave Trade.

I'd imagine that to find songs about the topic of this thread the best place to look would be North Africa, where the slaves mostly ended up - any Arabic or Berber folklorists among us?

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 05:04 AM

Kevin M.
Rough but not as bad?
Would a young girl snatched from a tiny English hamlet, thrust into an utterly alien environment and valued only for her vagina agree with you?
Or the man, whose value was comparable to an onion, chained permanently to an oar until the day the lash could no longer animate him, and then disposed of. Had he been taken as a boy (highest value white slave) subjected to years of systematic buggery until he lost his boyish looks.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 12:54 AM

I rather expected an eventual re-surfacing of inherited resentments in a discussion of this kind, and will not join in with it on this occasion. I can, however, provide a tune for the Algier Slave's Releasement.

The tune, Awake, Oh My Cloris (or, Ah! Chloris Awake) appears in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20, IV 313); this seems to be the only surviving example, though it was named as tune for quite a few broadside ballads in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It is the only one identified by Claude M. Simpson in The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (1966; 2-4), though he does not absolutely guarantee its identity. Here is the tune as it appears in Pills:

X:1
T:Ah! Chloris Awake
B:Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719-20, IV 313
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:3/4
K:Bb
d2|g2 g2 f2|d2 (cB) (AG)|^F2 G2 (A/B/c)|B4 AA|
g2 g2 f2|d2 B2 e2|c2 A2 (G=F)|G4 d2|
g2 g2 f2|f3 g (ag)|f2 d2 d2|d3 d cB|
f2 A2 A2|(Ac) (dc) (ed)|^F2 (ED) D2|D4 d2|
A3 B (A/B/c)|=B2 B2 f2|d2 (de) (fd)|e4 d2|
c2 (fg) (fd)|c3 B A2|(Bc) A3 G|G4|]

It would require some modification to fit the text given earlier; but nothing much beyond what is normally needed in such circumstances.

I fear that I shall have to forego the prize of a holiday in Baghdad for now. I have a nasty cold and my passport has expired.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 04:49 PM

Hee are some beautiful hookers from Galway. But it's a common name for this kind of small boat in many places, and in most English-speaking countries I believe.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 03:56 PM

It must have been pretty rough being a slave in North Africa, or an Irish transportee to Australia - but nothing was as bad as the slave system in America.

Slaves in other times and places were often treated badly, even as badly, but they were not not seen as lower than human, which was the peculiar quality of that kind of chattel slavery which survived so long in America.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 01:07 PM

Hooker was-is a Galway fishing boat, the name derives from the hook and line method of fishing. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 12:35 PM

Slight thread creep here. In Thomas Davis' poem "The Sack of Baltimore," referenced w-a-a-y up above, there are two references to "hookers" . These appear not to have quite the same meaning as "prostitute" - does it mean fishermen, or is there another more obscure meaning ?? It's a bit unclear from the context.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 08:39 AM

Robert Hughes in his book The Fatal Shore, states, " The Irish [prisoners], on arriving in Australia were treated as as a special class.

As bearers of Jacobin contagion, as idealogically and physically dangerous traitors, they were opressed with special vigilance and unusually hard punisments.

They formed Australia`s first white minority. From the outset, the Irish in Australia saw themselves as a doubly colonised people".

A descripition of the type of punishment meted out to the Irish prisoners was described by Joseph Holt an Irish political prisoner, "They were tied to a tree and squeezed tightly to the trunk,
There were two floggers, Richard Rice and John Johnson [the hangman from Sydney], Rice was left-handed and Johnson right handed, so they stood at each side, and I never saw two threshers in a barn move their strokes more handier than those two man-killers did.

Maurice Fitzgerald the recipient of the two butchers handi-work stood up manfully as pieces of his flesh blew in my face as it flew of the cats".

Fitzgerald was being made an example of on the whim of a protestant clergyman Marsden who suspected, wrongly, that Fitzgerald along with other Irish prisoners was making Pikes in readiness for a revolt, an earlier version of the non-exsistence of WMD`s.

Hughes goes on decribe the opression and cruelty handed out to the Irish prisoners on Van Diemans land, this was nothing in comparsion to the native inhabitants who were wiped out by 1836, Eichmann could have taken lessons in genocide from the colonists. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 05:30 AM

Oh, ooah, [Did you walk on a rusty nail]. my humble apoligies to you and super Brit Gareth, how bloody stupid of me, and after there sojurn in Van Diemans Butlins, the felons of our land were grant R&R on Bondi Beach. Aye, and Cromwell was cashing in on the Irish long before the Britsh made their millions on the Blacks. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: paddymac
Date: 21 Dec 03 - 09:43 PM

It'll take a bit of time to dig up my reference, but The English crown issued slaving patents for Counties Kerry & Cork in Ireland, sometime in the middle 1500s. They were revoked after about 15-20 years, when the slavers (English) started taking members of the ascendancy of the day (Anglo/Norman-Irish). Slaving was a popular commercial venture there long before the English turned it into big business. When talking about St Patrick, you can never be really sure where to draw the line between fact and fiction, but most accounts consider that he first came to Ireland as a slave. And then, of course, Cromwell profited handsomely selling Irish folk in "the barbadoes." Without getting over-wrought about racial or ethnic injustice, it's probably more productive to consider slavery as an aspect of the corruption wrought by near absolute power.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Gareth
Date: 21 Dec 03 - 07:24 PM

Guest Ooh-Ah

Please recall that Ard Mhacha has a fixation that anything the Brits did was wrong, which is a pity, because if he could remove this fixation his comments are otherwise objective.

I have my copy of Hughes "The Fatal Shore" on my book case to hand as I write, I think your synopsis is a little oversymplified, and there where those who took a delight in the powers in petty vindictivnes, and prejudice.

But as an alterntive to the "Tyburn/Newgate Jig" transportation had its points.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,Ooh-Aah
Date: 21 Dec 03 - 04:52 PM

Ard Mhacha is indulging in hyperbole when she claims that "...Van Diemen's land and other hell holes were worse than slavery for the poor unfortunates." As someone who both lives in Tasmania and has read Robert Hughes' excellent book 'The Fatal Shore' I can assure you that this is nonsense unless you were silly enough to buck the system and get yourself sent to Macquarie Harbour. We all know that people were trasported for absurdly trivial offences but it was only the real hard cases who ended up in places like the harbour and Norfolk Island, which was the worst hell-hole of all.Keep your nose clean and serve your time and you could end up not only free but prosperous in the new colony. Convicts also had some limited rights and were protected by law when they were sent out as labour to farms etc - Hughes shows convicingly that the well known cases of abuse were well-known precisely because they were uncommon. Comments like Mhaccha's are in danger of trivialising the absolute unrelieved horror of slavery.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Dec 03 - 02:36 PM

Willie O, the numbers surprised me too. They were for white slaves, but perhaps they were taken from other shores besides these.
The programme was authoritative, with contributions from professors and historians from UK, Irish Rep., Morroco, and USA (Univ of Ohio).
When the figures were given, the camera was scanning documents and old papers.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 10:37 PM

"Amazing Grace" written by ex-slave ship owner, after being himself captured....

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 05:54 PM

I guess I will not amaze the singaround with a song of Moorish abduction from a seaside village.

Unless you write one...

YY

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Emma B
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 12:03 PM

I saw the rerun last night too - thanks for the information about the song; do you know who was singing? Why do they never put that type of information on the credits? (winge winge)
I have been in The Algiers in Baltimore a number of times (en route to Cape Clear) but never knew the full history of the original abandoned village further up stream.
109 people were taken from Baltimore alone (all of whom reportedly/suprisingly survived the journey) so I suppose over a couple of centuries the estimated numbers are probably quite credible.There must be a song in there somewhere even if it hasn't been written yet - quite touching was the story of the slave who became the Sultans beloved wife and was buried next to him. One woman was 'sold back' for £1300, a small fortune in those days! as opposed to 'male christians' who (I quote!) could be exchanged for an onion!

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 07:30 AM

Maggie Gordon? Peggy Gordon? I can't see that there's anything more sellable about the latter. But it seems to me, using the plosive consonant "P" instead of the nasal consonant"M", it just is better for singing out, and I'd assume thta's where the change comes in.

Anyway they are both versions of the same name, Margaret. He might well have called her both ways.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Willie-O
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 07:29 AM

Interesting subject, but I gotta be dubious about those numbers, Keith. One to two million? Wouldn't that be most of the population? If it was that regular, it would have gotten a lot more press. Say, a minimum of ten thousand raids if they got a hundred people each time...we hear a lot more about Viking raids ten centuries earlier and I bet they didn't have anything like those numbers. Besides, it seems clear that as far as the Barbary pirates went, the UK & Ireland area was not where they did most of their plundering...

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Gareth
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 06:37 AM

Keith

Zebeck

Gareth

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 03 - 04:42 AM

I have just seen a rerun of the programme I mentioned in the opening post.
The wreck is just off Morsands, near Saltcombe, Devon.
It was believed to be of a Barbary seebeck (sp?)
Only artefacts were found, suggesting that it overturned. The lightly timbered vessel would then have come ashore, the bodies of the crew very likely giving Morsands its name.
It was dated to 18th century. The finds included guns , a fortune in African gold colns and jewelry, and part of a N.African cauldron.
A number of artefacts of Dutch origin were also found.
Research shows that between one and a quarter and two million whites slaves were taken from these shores and inshore vessels during the period from 17th to 19th centuries.
A lovely song was used in the programme with opening line, My love is gone.
Keith.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 04:22 PM

Her real name was Maggie Goddon, but her song-writer lover realized that name wouldn't sell.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 12:56 PM

Peggy Gordon?, the way Luke Kelly sang about her, she must have been some Dame, but oul Betty, the slaves dream, it seems would have gave her a run for her money. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,kendra
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:45 PM

excuse me, but who is Peggy Gordon?

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 01:51 PM

"The Algier Slaves Releasment"

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 01:32 PM

Algier Slave's Releasement or the Unchangeable Boat-Swain (see Ard mhacha, above), 1671-1704, is in the Bodleian, Douce Ballads 1(3b).
Suggested tune, Awake, Oh My Cloris. The copy is clean and readable.

No prison like the Jayl of Love
Nor no such torments found, ...

Bodleian Library

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 09:09 AM

In the book,- Piracy, Slavery and Redemption, there are two Ballads, the first , The Algerian Slave’s releasement or The Unchangeable Boatswain, this Ballad is from A Century of Ballads, edited by John Ashton [London, Elliot Stock 1887] pages 221-224, no date given for the Ballad, but the Publisher who issued the Ballad a J Deacon was active circa 1684-95. to the tune of "Awake, Oh my Cloris,"
[And three weeks holiday in Baghdad to the first person who knows the tune].

The Ballad is strung out in 12 verses mostly of the poor man’s longing for his beloved Betty, here are three verses which give the gist of the man’s plight,

Sometime in the Galleys
I am forced to go
Though amongst all my fellows,
Like a Slave I do row,
And when I am spent
With this labour and pain
The thought of my love
Doth revive me again.

But a renegado
To make me thy strive
I’ll never consent to it
Whilst I am alive
But will a courageous
True Protestant be
I’ll be true to my faith
And be constant to thee.

And now, through providence,
I am returned
By shipwrack I ‘scaped
For our ship it was burned.
No torment like mine was
When I was a slave,
For the want of my Betty
Was worse than the grave.

Peggy Gordon eat yer heart out.

And the second Ballad no Title given, the information on the footnote reads, From C. H. Firth, Naval Songs and Ballads [London] Navy Records Society, 1908] Pages 31-33. The text is taken from a manuscript in the Bodleian Lbrary, [MS Rawlinson Poet, Clii, F 36]. Originally printed in 1624. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 02:56 AM

The raids persisted through the 18th and into the 19th Century, a prolific period for songs in use today.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 06:40 PM

It's just occurred to me thatbthere are versions of the Golden Vanity song in which the ship the lad sinks is "the Turkish Reverie" - which would very likely mean a corsair.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 06:26 PM

I suppose there might be some songs out in Morocco or similar places. Slaves can still sing.

I suspect the problem is that, though we talk about folksongs as being ancient, most of them don't date back that far - and by the 18th and 19th century such episodes were long gone. There could well have been songs about this, but they haven't come down to us. Or perhaps in some cases they were rewritten to deal with a more contemporary phenomenon, such as the press gangs or transportation.

Though you'd have thought there'd have been contemporary broadsheet ballads about such things - after all, the pirate raids in the early 17th century were quite a political hot potato, since they were used as the grounds for the King trying to raise Ship Money, which caused ructions.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 05:29 PM

She only smiled, O'Driscolls child, she thought of Baltimore.

Thanks for that poem Ard Mhacha and McGrath. Interesting that conspiracy theories abounded then.

Thanks Lady Jean for giving another literary reference, but how few there are. As mentioned above, abduction by press gang, recruiters and gypsies (though the latter usually of willing females) is well represented in the tradition.

I guess I will not amaze the singaround with a song of Moorish abduction from a seaside village.

Keith.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: LadyJean
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:21 AM

I don't know any songs about Algerian Corsairs, but I do know a novel; "The Sea Hawk" by Raphael Sabatini. It's available as a trade paperback, with a preface by Bernard Cornwell. Sabatini was no Patrick O'Brian, but his historical novels are fun. The Sea Hawk does indeed raid Cornwall, to abduct his brother, and his erstwhile ladylove. He has them both sold into slavery. No one wants to buy his brother because the skinny boy wouldn't be any good for physical labor. That there were other uses for skinny boys wasn't mentioned in Sabatini's time, at least not in polite circles.
I know two songs about convicts who became slaves in the Americas. I believe the one is called "Virginia" and the other, a recent piece by a local singer is called "It's a Hard Row to Hoe".

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 04:49 PM

Of course I should have added that Thomas Davis the poet behind "The Sack of Baltimore" also wrote "A Nation once again", which was voted the World`s number one song in a poll on the BBC World Service. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:29 PM

One of the most intriguing thigs about the Baltimore story is that the Corsair captain was actually Dutch. Actually there seems to have been a fair bit of cooperation in the 17th cebtury between pirates based in North Africa and in the Low Countries (notably Dunkirk) and in the Hebrides.

There were lots of other raids by Corsairs and others - in 1640 thirty people near Penzance were carried away by them - so there really were "Pirates of Penzance"

One song about a captive escaping from "Turkish" captivity is of course Lord Bateman, though he's not envisaged as having been captured by Corsairs.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:02 PM

that last one was me, my cookie had been carried away by Algerines.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 08:42 AM

I regularly play in Baltimore,Skibbereen, Sherkin Island and Cape Clear. Given that the O'Driscolls are still pretty much in control round there, we always keep a cautious eye on the sea for approaching lateen sails.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 08:35 AM

Q, Thanks for the credit, but, this poem by Thomas Davis has never been converted to song.
The many songs concerning transportation could readily qualify as slave songs, Van Diemans Land and other choice hell-holes were worse than slavery for the poor unfortunates. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:53 PM

"O Bear Me Away from this Corsair," from 17-, is in Bodleian Ballads, but is unreadable.Johnson Ballads 3070.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:59 PM

From Byron's The Corsair -

On Conrad's stricken soul exhaustion prest,
And stupor almost lull'd it into rest;
So feeble now - his mothere's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept:
It was the very weakness of his brain,
Which thus confess'd without relieving pain.
None saw his trickling tears - perchance, if seen,
That useless flood of grief had never been:
Nor long they flow'd - he dried them to depart...


But you wouldn't want to sing that...

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:43 PM

Baltimore (Ireland) was sacked by Algerine pirates in 1631; many citizens carried off as slaves.
Several Americans wrote of their experiences as slaves taken by the Algerines (Algerine Slave Narratives, by both men and women).
Much history, and ransom negotiations (Thomas Jefferson Papers, George Washington papers, etc.) at American Memory.

Ard Mhacha- so far the only song contribution.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:36 PM

And here's what a Baltimore (Cork) website says about it: "The allegation is sometimes made that the raid may even have been organised by the O'Driscolls, who did not care to see their lands being taken over by English settlers - You'd never know!"

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:35 PM

There appears some controversy about what actually happened. From thta site I linked to: "Baltimore, by 1631, was an English settlement. founded by Thomas Crooke in 1607, having been sold away by Finín the Rover. Early one morning, at 2am, two Barbary Corsairs arrived in Baltimore Harbour, under the command of Captain Matthew Rice, a Dutch renegade.

They plundered and pillaged and caused general mayhem and departed that afternoon loaded with booty and 119 prisoners. Not one of these was an O'Driscoll, and it appears that, in fact, all or most of the captives were English. Some say that, on meeting the fiersome native women, the pirates determined not to risk taking them aboard their galleys."

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:34 PM

Here's a site with more about this event which happened in 1631.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:29 PM

I wonder if "the maid on the shore" (if I have the title right, Carthy used to sing it) reflects this sort of raiding.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:26 PM

A good read on this particular subject is, Piracy, Slavery and Redemption, Barbary captivity narritives from early modern England.
Selected and edited by Daniel L Vitkus. I got my copy at Amazon.

Another piece on the Baltimore incident,
Baltimore in 1631 was an English settlement founded by Thomas Crooke in 1607.
Early one morning in 1631, two barbary Corsairs arrived in Baltimore Harbour under the command of Captain Matthew Rice a Dutch renegade.

They plundered and pillaged and caused general mayhem and departed that afternoon loaded with booty and 119 captives, most of the captives were English. Some 15 years later the English sent a Mr Cason to reedeem captives from raids around the coast of England.
Two of those reedemed were Baltimore captives.

Following the the sack of Baltimore, the English built a number of protective beacons around the coast, the English settlers later moved upriver from Baltimore founding the town of Skibereen. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:19 PM

Well done that man - and here it is, courtesy Google and this site, all 56 lines.

Exceot that since I'm having troubles posting anything longer than a paragraoph or two becuase of a hard disk problem, I leave it to others to follow that link.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:16 PM

I've just re-read the note in Sam Richards and Tish Stubbs' anthology, "The English Folksinger" for "When that I was weary":

Broadside ballad in the Douce collection. Also in Pepys, Crawford and Roxburgh. The Roxburgh copy tells us that this ballad was printed c 1690. The Virginia Company was formed in 1606, and the government offered incentives for traders and colonizers to go there. One way of providing labourers for the colony was simply to kidnap and sell into slavery any victims that could be conveniently seized, and petty criminals were given transportation sentences as well. The system had ceased by the end of the century, although white slavery (euphemistically referred to as "indentured servitude" in old history books) continued for some time.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 05:04 PM

Keith, This poem which I was taught at school, a long time ago, always fascinated me.
I do remember clearly the third verse,

All,all asleep within each roof along that rocky street

and these must be the lover`s friends, with gently gliding feet-

A stifled gasp,a dreamy noise!"the roof is in a flame"

From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame,

And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre`s fall,

and o`er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl.

The yell of "Allah" breaks above the the prayer, and shriek and roar,
O blessed God the Algerine is lord of Baltimore.

And it goes on and on, something like eight verses, the Author was Thomas Davis. Ard Mhacha

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: fretless
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:31 PM

Thread creap (perhaps): Keith A -- do you have any more information or a further source for the program you saw last year some time about the discovery and excavation, off the South coast of England, of a slaver from the Barbary Coast of North Africa?

Informative book on the Barbary coast slaves: Clissold, Stephen, The Barbary Slaves (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1977).

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 02:22 PM

McGrath, the site you linked to has interesting song
excerpts about fishing the Newfoundland coast and up the Labrador. Many thanks!

Mozart wrote a comic opera, "Maid in Algiers" (? not exact title). The romanticization of the corsairs and their masters on shore started when they were still active, 18th century.

Still plagued by posts not keeping to the point.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 01:33 PM

Chattel slavery is something else, introduced by the settlers. An extraordinary and relatively modern invention.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,Casual Observer
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 01:27 PM

McGrath, the Native Americans were making slaves of each other long before white settlers touched the shore.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 01:14 PM

The September 2003 issue of National Geographic Magazine has an apalling article entitled "21st-Century Slaves". Exerpts are online here, though I don't know if that link will last.

"There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach — and in the destruction of lives."

There's hardly a nation that's immune, although there is no country where it is legal.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 12:38 PM

There's a reference in this page about French traditional songs to "ballads about the corsairs".

And the 19th Century Romantics used to see Corsairs as glamorous and picturesque - Byron wrote a poem called The Corsair, which later became a ballet.

And here is an extract from this year's Hay on Wye (literary) Festival programme: Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600–1850 Linda Colley talks to Christopher Hitchens The historian discusses her stories of the flipside of Imperialism: the soldiers ans settlers seized in India and North America, the men and women captured from Devon and Cornwall by Moroccan slavers, or taken at sea by Barbary corsairs. She explores the parallels with empire today, and the West's relationship with Islam.

All the makings - but no sign of any folk songs, so far.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:45 AM

I tried Lord Exmouth, but the only song at the Bodleian is about the Crimean War.

Like McGrath, I would expect songs about the Barbary pirates (Corsairs). I tried American Memory as well but found only tons of government papers about them but no pertinent songs.

Odd, Keith, most postings here have nothing to do with the search for Corsair (Barbary) songs. They apparently missed your reference to Cornwall.

I will search for Decatur later. It may lead to one.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:26 AM

Slavery exists in all kinds of varieties. Perhaps the vilest form of alkl was the chattel slavery introduced by the settlers in the Americas, with slaves being seen as subjuman property, and the system backed up by the legal structure, but there are plenty of other forms. Debt slavery is one of the most widespread.

If there really are no songs about people being carried off as slaves by raiders, analogous to the songs about that other form of slavery, the press gang, I'd be very surprised. I'd have thought it'd be a natural for a broadsheet ballad. But I can't think of any.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:58 AM

And within the last few years some folks in the US (Southern California, I believe) were tried and convicted under the anti-slavery statutes. They would buy "natives" from different countries to work as domestic servants, pay no wages, "discipline" them, provide only minimal foor and care.

Children are treated as slaves in some areas on the Ivory Coast, I believe I've heard.

Piracy is also making a comeback, and pirates have enslaved "boat people" in the past.

Slavery is one of the few things I actually hate.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Charcloth
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:49 AM

Contrary to what most folks think slavery isn't outlawed worlwide. In Sudan, Moslem raders often attack Christian villages & capture the children & then sell them as Slaves.
In the middle seventies (I can't remember the specific country or tribe) a South American country was putting Native Americans in concentration camps & then selling them as slaves for $4.00 or less. All because they were in the way of "progress"

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:15 AM

Thanks.
Anyone from Baltimore (Eire) who can cast more light on the memorial there?
There is such a wealth of songs from that period, often inspired by much less dramatic events than these, you might expect something to have come down to us.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 09:30 PM

The Barbary pirates were also known as the Corsairs. They cruised from Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and were a terror for merchantmen in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. They ranged as far north as Cornwall, Ireland and even Iceland.
Their beginning stemmed from the persecution of the Moors in Spain, and the exiles looked for vengeance. They were joined by Levantine adventurers. The North African states developed with much income from their actions. The expedition to Algiers by the Americans under Decatur in 1815 stopped much of their depredations, and the end came with Lord Exmouth's victory in 1816.
In 1805, the Americans had signed a treaty at Tripoli, but this was soon broken.
Extracted from Chamber's Encyclopaedia and American Memory.

By the latter part of the 19th century, their exploits became romanticised. See "Come, Maiden, With Me, Serenade of the Corsair," 1855, Henry Tucker, at American Memory. Haven't found anything at the Bodleian- surprised by that.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 08:33 PM

Although slavery is no longer legal, we still have people who are enslaved. Prostitutes, for one group. If you don't believe me, read about how the system works and how they suffer.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 08:27 PM

The only song that comes to mind for modern day "white slaves" is Nigel Russell's "White Collar Holler". Slavery is still alive and well and working for corporate America.

Mike

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:57 PM

High Barbaree" is about a clash with a corsair from the Barbary coast, though not necessarily one engaged in slaving.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:46 PM

In fact in the island of Montserrat there is a great appreciation of the islanders' Irish herritage. (Though the island's troubles with an erupting volcano has rather overshadowed such matters in recent years.)

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:45 PM

"And that should enrage the 'Politically Coreect'"

That's a term I loathe and disrust, whoever uses it, whether they say they like it or that they don't.

But I can't imagine why anyone would feel in any way threatened or hostile to the idea that the mix of people in the Caribbean includes slaves from Europe as well as all kinds of other people.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 06:55 PM

I believe that Keith A was asking specifically about raids by the Barbary pirates from North Africa, who were finally put out of business about 1830.
Their booty included Europeans who were sold for ransom or as slaves.
I haven't found any songs.

The Turks, when they occupied parts of eastern Europe, sold slaves well into the 19th century. A famous English African explorer bought the woman who became his constant companion, and explored with him, while on a tour of eastern Europe. I believe he paid 50 pounds for her. As I recall, she was a redhead. Have to look up the book; will give the names later.

Subject: RE: Songs for white slaves?
From: Gareth
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 06:21 PM

Keith - Two sepparate issues here.

First the enslaving of raid victims by Corsairs, Viking, French, Irish etc. (Oh Yes, the Welsh Coast was plagued by these raids up untill the time that Henry IV dealt with the Irish)

Secondly the enslaving and transportation of felons, the loosing side in rebellion,etc. Judge Jeffries, notoriously, had a hand in this, victims being sent out first to the America's, then later Australia.

Transportation Ballads to Australia are well covered, and some of them are genuine. (ie sung by transportees)

Please hold in mind that a significant proportion of the population of the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Barbados are decended from transportees.

Some of the Eastern American States had significant population growth through transportees.

Funny how history seems to overlook this aspect.

But back to the music - I suspect if a proper analasis is done (and HELP has anybody done this - Some 'Catter must know !!) root traces of 16th an 17th Centuary Welsh, Irish, and Scots,and West Country Folksong will be found in the West Indies and Eastern USA.

Just a thought.

And that should enrage the "Politically Corect"

Gareth

Subject: Songs for white slaves?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 03:18 PM

A mention of slavery in a current thread reminded me of a program I saw last year some time.
It was about the discovery and excavation, off the South coast of England,of a slaver from the Barbary Coast of North Africa.

It emerged that such vessels raided remote settlements on the SW coast of England and of Ireland. These raids persisted into the 19th Century.
Men who were taken ended their days chained to an oar on a galley. Women, and children of both sexes, were sold for sexual use. Blondes commanded an especially high price in the slave markets of N.Africa.

The program showed a monument in the Irish town of Baltimore commemorating people taken in such a raid.

Is anyone aware of these events being commemorated in song?