My Fine Sailor Boy- Hugh Quinn (Belf) c.1895 Rawn Magazine
[No informant named. From Rann Magazine (Summer 1952). The author of the article, Hugh Quinn, was born on April 30, 1884, near Coalisland, County Tyrone. This was learned in the 1890s in Belfast, N. Ireland [ref. Roud].
The same text is reported in The Bell - Volume 1 - Page 75 by Seán O'Faoláin, Peadar O'Donnell- 1940
There were but two verses in this song, and we had, perforce, to leave Lizzie weeping on the Belfast quay. But we had another sailor and his lass to sing about, and away we were off again —
Oh, early, early all in the spring,
When my love &c
It stops incomplete after part of the 4th stanza.
R. Matteson 2017]
Quinn: It has, like most of these songs, a sad ending. Strange to say, the happy ending was not so popular then as it is with the present generation.
MY FINE SAILOR BOY
Oh, early, early, all in the Spring,
When my love, Willie, went to serve the King.
The night was dark and the wind blew high,
It was then I lost my fine sailor boy.
My father dear, he bought me a boat,
All on the ocean wide that I might float,
To watch the small boats as they passed by,
That I might enquire for my fine sailor boy.
"Oh, Captain, Captain, come tell me true,
Doth my love, Willie, sail on board with you?"
What kind of clothes does your Willie wear?
And What's the colour of your Willie's hair?"
"He wears a suit of the royal blue;
You might easy know him for his heart is true.
His hair is wavy like the rip'ning corn
Which the wind blows over on a July morn."
"Your Willie dear one night of wind and rain,
He went aloft and ne'er was seen again,
On the Rocky Fastnet where the waves roll high,
It was there we lost your fine sailor boy."
"Your Willie dear, alas he is not here!
On yon dim island, so far from here;
On yon dim island, as we passed by,
It was there we lost your fine sailor boy."
Oh, drape my coffin all in deepest black,
And a marble stone raise at my head and back;
And on my breast there put a turtle dove,
To let the world know that I died of love.