CAPTAIN RICE
Dan paused for some time after he had finished the ballad,
and then said with much feeling in look and voice, "Captain
Rice, poor chap, he died after I'd gotten yon lines finished,
and I had to alter them, ye knaw. It took me three weeks to
get 'em altered."
The captain was well remembered; he had "paid for many a galling of ale." But the family that Dan most admired were the Halls, the old man and his three eldest sons—Jim, Bill and Tom. Young Ted he despised; he cared nothing about shooting, he would rather sit in a train!
He tells in two other short ballads of how they hunted the seal on the bar or on the long sand, and there is a poetic touch in the way he makes the seals talk, and in the description of their eyes and teeth.
But "The Swan" is Dan's great achievement, and is a real good folk song, and has lines with the true ballad ring. "Down come the swan" is a fine expressive line, and "He was a hearty old cock, As ever sailed on the sea" has a ring in it like Sir Patrick Spens.
When Dan came to the astonishing kill of ninety-nine he never failed to make the ejaculation I have given above; the geese were Brent geese and were feeding in a creek or wet furrow. There was a big gun used in the "Gruft holes" or deep channels in the sands going seaward, where the gunner sat waiting for the "flighting" of the ducks. This was called a "raille," and was fired from the shoulder. The gun which weighed a ton is a poetic exaggeration; but the old duck-shout guns were more than one man would care to lift, and about six to eight feet long. The man lay on a board to sight and fire this miniature cannon or demi-culverin, which was loaded to the muzzle, and the rusty piece of ordnance shot back with the recoil underneath him; had it been made fast to the canoe or duck-shout it would have torn the little boat to bits.
The ballads of the seals are as follows:—
SEALS ON THE BAR.
1.
There is two seäls upon the bar,
Tha lay like lumps of lead.
When tha see Sam and Tom coming
Tha begins to shaäke their head.
