April 16, 1703. Admiral Benbow succumbed to his wounds November 4, 1702, at Port Royal, and was buried at Kingston. His portrait is, or was, in the Painted Hall, Greenwich, to which it was presented by George IV. Mr. Ashton states that there is a tradition “that his body was brought to England and buried in Deptford Church.”
It is a little difficult to account for the popularity Benbow excited. Personally brave he certainly was; but he has been described as “an honest rough seaman,” who, it is alleged, treated his inferiors with scant courtesy. Their failure to stand by him in the French fight wag, of course, a disgraceful act of cowardice; but it may also be attributed, to some extent, to their want of personal regard for their chief.
No. 88. Bold Nelson’s Praise
This is the only version of this song that I know. The singer mixed his words in all the verses except the first one, necessitating a certain amount of rearrangement. The air is in the Dorian mode, and is a variant of “Princess Royal,” a well-known Morris-Jig tune. Shield adapted the air to the words of “The Saucy Arethusa,” one of the songs in the ballad-opera The Lock and Key (1796). The composition of the air has sometimes been attributed to Carolan. The tune is also printed in Walsh’s Compleat Dancing Master (circa 1730), under the title “The Princess Royal: the new way.”
No. 89. Spanish Ladies
This is a Capstan Chantey. It is also well known in the navy, where it is sung as a song, chanteys not being permitted, Captain Kettlewell, R.N., who has made a special study of this song and has very kindly revised the words for me, tells me that when it is sung on board ship, the conclusion of the chorus is, or always used to be, greeted with a shout of “Heave and pawl!” (the pawl is the catch which prevents the recoil of the windlass).
The tune is in the Æolian mode and, in my opinion, it is one of the grandest of our folk-tunes and one of which a seafaring nation may well be proud. Nowadays, alas! sailors sing a modernized and far less beautiful form of the air in the major mode.
No. 90. The Ship in Distress
For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iv, pp. 320–323). Ashton, in his Real Sailor Songs (No. 44), prints a broadside version of the words. A similar song is sung by French sailors, “Le petit Navire” (Miss Laura A. Smith’s Music of the Waters, p. 149), of which Thackeray’s “Little Billee” was a burlesque.
The tune is in the Dorian mode.
No. 91. Come all you worthy Christian men
Several versions of this moralizing ballad with tunes are printed in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 74; volume ii, pp. 115–122). The tune is one of the most common, the most characteristic, and, I would add, the most beautiful of English folk-airs. The version here given is in the Æolian mode, but it is often sung in the major, Dorian, and Mixolydian modes. For other versions of the tune set to different words, see English County Songs (pp. 34, 68, and 102); and Songs of the West (No. 111, 2d ed.). The well-known air “The Miller and the Dee” is a minor and “edited” version of the same tune. Chappell, too, noted down a version of it which he heard sung in the streets of Kilburn in the early years of the last century (Popular Music, p. 748). For an exhaustive note by Miss Broadwood upon the tune and its origin, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, p. 119).
No. 92. Wassail Song
The old custom of wassail singing still survives in many parts of England, though it is fast dying out. The ceremony is performed on January 5, i.e., the eve of Epiphany. It is of Saxon origin, the word “wassail” (accent on the last syllable) meaning “be of good health,” from A.-S. wes=be, and hāl=whole or hale. The cup “made of the good old ashen tree” takes us back to the
