These quaint old doggerel songs are taken from an admirable selection
of sailor songs published by John Ashton. The names of the writers are
not given, but their strong nautical flavour and queer composition
indicate their origin. No landsman can ever imitate the sailor when
the power of song or composition is on him. He puts his own funny
sentiment and descriptive faculty into his work, which is exclusively
his own.
Many of the songs in Mr. Ashton's book I have heard sung with great
fervour in my early days, by a generation of men ahead of my own, who
must have long since passed away. Sometimes the audiences in the
forecastle or on deck were appreciative of the efforts of the singer,
but if they were not, they always had a boot or some other handy
implement ready to throw at him. The reception given to some of my own
singing efforts in boyhood on these merry occasions was mixed.
Sometimes I forgot both words and tune, and had, therefore, to pass
good-humouredly through the orthodox process of disapproval that was
regarded as part of the entertainment.
Any song or recital concerning Nelson, Collingwood, or the later sea
hero, Charley Napier, was eminently popular, and to break down in the
rendering of any one of these was an offence to their exalted
memories. "The Sailor's Grave," which I regret is not included in Mr.
Ashton's collection, was in great demand when the sailors were in a
solemn mood. Both the words and the tune were ridiculously weird, and
when it came to the details of the hero's illness, his looks after
death, the sewing up in his hammock, and the tying of two round shots
at his feet for sinking purposes, the artist always sang with his
hands linked in front of him and his eyes cast heavenward gazing
fixedly at a spot on the ceiling. Then came the burial verse:--
A splash and a plunge, and his task was o'er,
And the billows rolled as they rolled before,
And many a wild prayer followed the brave,
As he sunk beneath a sailor's grave.
This verse always drew tears from the sentimentalists in the audience,
and if the singer had pleased by his efforts the song ended in a roar
of tumultuous applause.
I have thought it appropriate to add to these doggerel rhymes "The
Battle of Copenhagen," "The Death of Nelson," and "The _Arethusa_."
These are sea songs, not sailor's songs, and are of distinctly greater
merit, but as two of them deal with Nelson, and as all three have
always been most popular, they may not be out of place here.
I