Of this spirited ballad Alfred M. Williams, in his “Studies in Folk Song
and Popular Poetry,” says: “To this period, however [the Revolution],
belongs what is perhaps the very best of American sea-songs. We do not
know whether its authorship was of that time or not, although it
probably was, and from internal evidence it would seem to have been
composed by one of the very crew of the _Ranger_, Paul Jones’s ship,
which escaped from a British squadron in the Irish Channel in 1778. It
was first published, in 1883, by Commodore Luce, in his collection of
‘Naval Songs,’ with the statement that it was taken down from the
recitation of a sailor.” To this fact is doubtless due the very evident
break in the form of the fifth stanza. Most of the places mentioned in
the poem (save Dunmore, a promontory on the southwestern coast) are
situated on the southeastern coast of Ireland.
The spirit of the piece, the frequent recurrence of technical
expressions, together with the swinging measure, remind one (albeit
somewhat remotely) of the work of the foremost balladist of our
day,--Rudyard Kipling.