High Barbaree- Gott (ME) pre1925 Barry A
[Barry and all (Briish Ballads From Maine) supplied three broadside texts and this version (A). Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
This will be seen to be distinctly better than the version published in the American songster (Philip J. Cozzens, New York, no date) ' A text in The Forget-rne-not Songster (Turner and Fisher, Philadelphia and. New York, about 1840-1850), is fairly close to Captain Gott's and is the probable source of most of the texts in oral circulation. But The Forget-Me-Not Songster published by J. S. Locke of Boston, about 1842, does not contain this song; but there is a chance that Captain Gott's words are truly traditional. The Locke songster was the songbook most widely known in Maine, with more influence upon our texts than any other printed book. Yet it is noteworthy that families which had their own tiaditional texts did not give them up, even after they came to own a copy of The Forget-me-not Songster. One of our singers, who has owned an incomplete copy of the book, and all we have examined have been in tatters- for over fifty years, still sings her songs from her grandmother. Traditional songs are much less influenced by print than is commonly supposed; for the singer invariably insist that his is "right," and all other texts must be wrong.
"High Barbary" it will be remembered, is based upon the Child ballad of "The George Aloe and the Sweepstakes" which recounts the early fight between "the French and the English." The two ballads have little in common but the idea of an alternating line of refrain and the phrase "coast of Barbary." "High Barbary" seems distinct enough to have been accorded a place of its own in Professor Child's collection. How old the song is no one can tell; but when the aggressions of the Algerine pirates in the late eighteenth century brought the phrase "coast of Barbary" to a definite meaning, sailors revived an old song
and sang it with a will. Steele's List of the Royal Navy (London, 1812), mentions the Prince of Wales, built in 1794. We may recall with pride that it was our own Admiral Stephen Decatur who, in 1815, after we had suffered much from these Algerine pirates and had paid them tribute since 1795, defeated them so decisively that they never again troubled our ships. The revival of the old song probably dates back to about this period of piratical depredations upon commerce.
Captain Gott's text resembles one given by F. J. Harvey Darton in The Soul of Dorset (1922), p. 250, taken down by himself from the singing of an English sailor and approved by Mr. John Masefield as of great age. Mr. Masefield thought this version "older than his [own]- probably going back, by oral tradition, almost to the seventeenth century, when the 'noble pirate' from the coast of New Barbaree was a real and present menace."
For comparison we may quote the text from the Amerccan Songster which ends with the magnificent lines lacking in Captain Gott's texts, and also the text from The Forget-me-not Songster.
HIGH BARBARY (cf. Child 285)
A. [High Barbaree] Sent in by Capt. Lewis F. Gott, Bernard, in 1925, who probably learned it of Capt. John Dawes.
1 There were two lofty ships from old England came,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
One was the Queen of Russia and the other Prince af Wales,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree.
2 "Aloft there, aloft!" our jolly boatswain cried,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
"Look ahead, look astarn, look aweather, rook alee,
Look down along the coast of the High Barbaree."
3. "There's nought upon the stern, there's nought upon the lee,"
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
But there's a lofty ship to windward and she's sailing fast and free,
Sailing down along the coast of the High Barbaree."
4 "Oh, hail her, oh, hail her," our gallant captain cried,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
"Are you a man-of-war, or a privateer," said he,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree?"
5 "Oh, I'm not a man-of-war, nor a privateer,'' said he,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
"But I'm a salt-sea pirate a-looking for a fee,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree."
6 Oh, 'twas broadside to broadside a long time we lay,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
Until the Queen of Russia shot the pirate's mast away,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree.
7. "Oh, quarter, oh, quarter," those pirates then did cry
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;
But the quarter that we gave them, we sunk them in the sea,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree.