In the 231st number of that excellent New York periodical, _The Literary
World_, published on the 5th of July, there is an article on "Steamboats
and Steamboating in the South West," in which I find the following
passage:--
"I mentioned the _refrain_ of the firemen. Now as a particular one
is almost invariably sung by Negroes when they have anything to do
with or about a fire; whether it be while working at a New Orleans
fire-engine, or crowding wood into the furnaces of a steamboat;
whether they desire to make an extra racket at leaving, or evince
their joy at returning to a port, it may be worth recording; and
here it is:
"'Fire on the quarter-deck,
Fire on the bow,
Fire on the gun-deck,
Fire down below!'
"The last line is given by all hands with great vim (_sic_) and
volume; and as for the chorus itself, you will never meet or pass
a boat, you will never behold the departure or arrival of one, and
you will never witness a New Orleans fire, without hearing it."
The writer says nothing about the origin of this Negro melody, and
therefore he is, I presume, unaware of it. But many of your readers will
at once recognise the spirited lines, which when once they are read in
Walter Scott's _Pirate_, have somehow a strange pertinacity in ringing
in one's ears, and creep into a nook of the memory, from which they ever
and anon insist on emerging to the lips. The passage occurs at the end
of the fifth chapter of the third volume, where the pirates recapture
their runaway captain:--
"They gained their boat in safety, and jumped into it, carrying
along with them Cleveland, to whom circumstances seemed to offer
no other refuge, and pushed off for their vessel, singing in
chorus to their oars an _old ditty_, of which the natives of
Kirkwall could only hear the first stanza:
"'Thus said the Rover
To his gallant crew,
Up with the black flag,
Down with the blue!
Fire on the main-top,
Fire on the bow,
Fire on the gun-deck,
Fire down below!'"
So run the lines in the original edition, but in the revised one of the
collected novels in forty-eight volumes, and in all the subsequent ones,
the first two stand thus:
"Robin Rover
Said to his crew."
This alteration strikes one as anything but an improvement, and it has
suggested a doubt, which I beg to apply to the numerous and
well-informed body of your readers to solve. Are these lines the
production of Walter Scott, as they are generally supposed to be; or are
they really the fragment of an old ditty? The alteration at the
commencement does not seem one that would have found favour in the eyes
of an author, but rather the effect of a prompting of memory. I believe,
indeed, the lines are inserted in the volume called _The Poetry of the
Author of the Waverley Novels_ (which I saw some years ago, but cannot
refer to at this moment), but that is not decisive.
There is a case in point, which is worth quoting on its own account. In
_Peveril of the Peak_, in the celebrated scene of the interview between
Buckingham and Fenella, where Fenella leaps from the window, and
Buckingham hesitates to follow, there is this passage:
"From a neighbouring thicket of shrubs, amongst which his visitor
had disappeared, he heard her chant a verse of a comic song, then
much in fashion, concerning a despairing lover who had recourse to
a precipice.
"'But when he came near,
Beholding how steep
The sides did appear,
And the bottom how deep;
Though his suit was rejected
He sadly reflected,
That a lover forsaken
A new love may get;
But a neck that's once broken
Can never be set.'"
This verse, also, if I mistake not, appears in _The Poetry of the Author
of Waverley_, and is certainly set down by almost every reader as the
production of Sir Walter. But in the sixth volume of Anderson's _Poets
of Great Britain_, at page 574. in the works of Walsh, occurs a song
called "The Despairing Lover," in which we are told that--
"Distracted with care
For Phyllis the fair,
Since nothing could move her,
Poor Damon, her lover,
Resolves in despair
No longer to languish,
Nor bear so much anguish;
But, mad with his love,
To a precipice goes,
Where a leap from above
Would soon finish his woes.
"When in rage he came there,
Beholding how steep
The sides did appear,
And the bottom how deep,
His torments projecting,
And sadly reflecting
That a lover forsaken,"
&c. &c. &c.
In this instance it is shown that Sir Walter was not indebted for the
comic song to his wonderful genius, but to his stupendous memory; and it
is just possible that it may be so in the other, in which case one would
be very glad to see the remainder of the "old ditty."