Shipwreck- Shibley (MO) 1911 Belden - Hamilton
[From: Ballads and Songs- Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society edited by Belden 1940- also printed in JOAFL XXV.
Belden's notes follow. This version uses the extended last line as found in Carmina Collegensia 1868 (also Child B, C, and D).
R. Matteson 2014]
The Mermaid
(Child 289)
Despite the antiquity and range of the belief that the sight of a mermaid is an omen of shipwreck, this song has been traced. no further back than the latter part of the eighteenth century and Child found no corresponding ballad's in other tongues. Half of his texts are English, half Scotch; but the place names in the latter point rather to English than to Scotch origin. Its persistence
in popular song is no doubt connected, as cause or effect or both, with the frequency of its appearance in broadsides and songbooks. See Kittredge's bibliographical note in JAFL XXX 333. It is indeed not improbable that its familiarity in print has caused it to be overlooked sometimes by modern collectors. Yet even so it has been reported in recent years from a wide territory: from scotland. (ord 333-4), Oxfordshire (FSUT 84), Hampshire (JFSS III 47-8), Cheshire (JFSS III 49, tune only), Dorset (JFSS IU 50-1), and Devonshire (JFSS III 139); from Prince Edward Island (BBM 364-5), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 65), and New Brunswick (BBM 365-6); from Maine (BBM 363-4), Vermont (JAFL XVIII 136, XXII ?8), Massachusetts (JAFL XXVI 175-6),
Virginia (TBV 521-8, SharpK I 293), West Virginia (FSS 172-3), Kentucky (FSKM 45-9, SharpK I 291-2), Tennessee (FSSH 133-4), North Carolina (SharpK I 293, SCSM 189-90), Mississippi (FsM L27), Texas (PFITST X 162-3), Iowa (MAFITS XXIX 14-5), Wyoming (ABS 26-7), and Missouri.
For the sake of completeness I give here the text in the Missouri collection, altho it has already appeared in JAFL XXV 176-7.
"Shipwreck." Secured by Miss Hamilton in 1911 from Agnes Shibley of the Kirksville State Teachers College, who learned it from her mother.
One Saturday night as we set sail,
Not being far from shore,
'Twas then that I spied a pretty fair maid
With a glass and, a comb in her hand, her hand,
With a glass and. a comb in her hand.
The stormy wind did blow,
And the raging sea did roll,
And we poor sailors came leaping to the top
While the landsmen lay down below, below, below,
While the landsmen lay down below.
Then up came a boy of our gallant ship
And a noble-spoken boy was he,
Saying, 'I've a mother in distant York town
This night is a-weeping for me.
Then up came a lad of our gallant ship
And a beautiful lad. was he,
Saying, 'I've a sweetheart in distant York town
This night is a-looking for me.
Then up came the clerk of our gallant ship
And a noble-spoken man was he,
Saying, 'I've a wife in distant York town
This night a widow will be..
Then up came the captain of our gallant ship-
There is no braver man than he,
Saying, 'For the want of a yawl-boat we'll be d'rowned,
And we'll sink to the bottom of the sea.'
Then three times round our gallant ship turned,
Three times round. turned, she;
Three times round. our gallant ship turned,
Then she sank to the bottom of the sea.