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.