The Sea Captain- Curtis (NL) 1930 Karpeles C
[From Maud Karpeles, “Folksongs from Newfoundland” 1934, version C- single stanza with music, titled The Sea Captain or The Maid on the Shore.
R. Matteson 2014]
The ‘Lost Voices’ of Maud Karpeles, “Folksongs from Newfoundland”
by Glenn Colton
In September 1929, Maud Karpeles of the English Folk Dance and Song Society arrived in Newfoundland for the first of two pioneering expeditions. A disciple of Cecil Sharp and friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Karpeles was a central figure in the British folk revival and later co-founder of the International Folk Music Council. She had initially planned to visit the island with Sharp as early as 1918, however that trip was cancelled due to funding concerns and Sharp’s untimely death foiled similar plans seven years later. Undaunted, she undertook the challenge alone, notating more than 200 tunes from singers in forty outport communities in one of the earliest Newfoundland folksong expeditions of its kind.
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C. The Sea Captain, sung by Mrs. Isaac and Miss Stella Curtis at Trepassey, 2nd August 1930.
She robbed them of silver, she robbed them of gold,
She robbed them of costly ware -O,
And the captain's broadsword she took for an oar,
And she paddled away for the shore, shore, shore,
She paddled away for the shore.