Famous Single Poems
zine containing it is a prized possession of a few fortunate collectors.
This publication gave a new impetus to the poem, which by this time was coming to be recognized by the discriminating as something of a classic. But very few people outside of Louisville had ever heard of Young E. Allison, the name meant nothing to the exchange editor, and before long it was again dropped and old “Anon.” was brought back into service. It had such an air of verisimilitude that most people assumed that it was a real pirate song, dating from the days of the Spanish Main. It was this assumption which caused one of the editors of the New York Times to get tangled up in a controversy which served to lighten the sky a little during the first dark days of the European war.
On July 26, 1914, the Times published a letter from Mr. Edward Alden asking if there was any more to Billy Bones His Song than the four lines given in Treasure Island.
On the September 20 following, an answer signed “W. L.” was published, to the effect that the verse “is the opening stanza of an old song or chantey of West Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as ‘The Dead Man’s Chest.’ The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance
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