Ship's Carpenter- LaRena Clark (ON) c.1930 Fowke
[From: A Family Heritage: The Story and Songs of LaRena Clark by Edith Fowke, Jay Rahn and LaRena LeBarr Clark, 1994.
LaRena Clark’s (1929-1993) maternal great-grandfather, Edward John Watson, came out to Canada from northern England early in the nineteenth century and married Margaret Landau, the child of an Indian woman and a French fur trader. Their son, LaRena’s Grandad Watson, married Annie O’Neill, the daughter of George O’Neill, an Irish Catholic who was an early settler in Pefferlaw. Thus LaRena’s ancestry mingles English, Irish, French, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Indian strains, and her repertoire benefits from this mosaic.
Many of her Grandad Watson's ballads she learned as a child. This version is particularly confused and is missing several stanzas and a beginning. The repetition of lines in stanzas 1, 4, 5, 6 and 8 is done to replace forgotten lines. This version has elements from the early broadsides and is most similar to the Deming broadside of c. 1835 which was reprinted in The Forget-Me-Not Songster of 1844.
R. Matteson 2016]
Ship's Carpenter- From LaRena (LeBarre) Clark. Learned from her grandad Watson in Ontario, c. 1930.
1. "O Mary, dear Mary, will you take a walk?
Will you take a walk some friends for to see?
Will you take a walk some friends for to see?
And it's when we return home it's married we'll be.
2. He led her through groves and valleys so deep;
At length this fair damsel began for to weep,
"O Willie, dear Willie, you're leading me astray,
And you're ordering my innocent life to betray.
3. "O Mary, it's true are the words that you spoke.
I spent the whole of last night in digging your grave.”
They went a piece farther, and there she did spy
Her grave it was dug and the spade standing by.
4. She wrung her poor hands in grief and she cried,
"You perjuring villain, the worst of mankind!
You perjuring villain, the worst of mankind,
Let me go distracted if I can't be your wife.”
5. There was no time to argue her beauty to stun[1];
He instantly drew a knife in his right hand;
He instantly drew a knife in his right hand,
And it's blood from her bosom so quicklie he drew.
6. He covered her up and he hastened away,
Left nothing but the wild birds her grave to behold;
Left nothing but the wild birds her grave to behold,
And it's he by his trade was a ship's carpenter[2].
7. Oh, there had been a man in the bar-room that day
Who saw this fair damsel in the cabin so fair,
And she held in her ar-rums an infant most dear,
Which she [he] showed [told] to the Captain without further delay[3].
8. Oh, the captain he cried, ”There's a murder on board,"
And it's they then confessed then his life they would take.
It's they then confessed then his life they would take,
And they'd leave him upon the first island they'd meet[4].
9. Oh, poor perjuring Willie, on his two knees he fell;
"You poor injured ghost, your full pardon I beg,
You poor injured ghost, your full pardon I beg,
And it's soon I will follow you down to your grave."
1. stand.
2. This lie is misplaced from the first stanza
3. my [brackets]
4. make