The Gun Tackle Fall

The perils to seamen on shore do not seem to have changed much over the centuries, as this song, originally a 19th Century broadside makes clear.  According to Stan Hugill, who spent a lifetime collecting sea songs -- including this one:  

London's "Ratcliffe Highway, in the old days, was a tough quarter, full of pubs and 'dives,' its pavements cluttered with drunks, pimps, crimps, and prostitutes... Just the place to spend a pound -- and there were many Pollies and Sallies awaiting to help Sailor John spend it with gusto.  Nowadays this famous highway is still there, but under another name.  It is called Commercial Road.

In the third stanza here, the maiden states she is sailing in ballast, that is, she is not carrying cargo, and by extension, is unattached.

Just listen to me and a story I'll tell
All about an adventure that did me befall.
As I was out cruising the town for to spree,
I met a fair lass goin' wing and wing free,
	Singin' fal-diddle-laddidie, 
	Fal-diddle-laddidie
	Folderol-day, di-doodle-die-day.

Now the country she came from I couldn't tell which,
But judged by her appearance I think she was Dutch,
For she flew the tricolor; her masts they were low;
She was round in the counter and bluff on the bow.
	Singing, etc.

"Oh, what is your cargo, fair maiden," I cried.
"I'm sailing in ballast, kind sir," she replied,
"And I'm as fast-going clipper as ever was seen,
And I'm just fit for you for my hold is swept clean."
	Singing, etc.

So I handed me hawser and took her in tow,
And yardarm in yardarm away we did go.
We chaffed on so lightly, so frisky and gay
Till we came to an anchor down Ratcliffe Highway.
	Singing, etc.

Then I fired away at her all to me desire,
And all the night long I kept up a sharp fire.
My shot-locker got empty and me powder was spent
And me gun it wanted spongin' for 'twas choked in the vent.
	Singing, etc.

Says I, "Fair Lass, now it's time to give o'er.
For between wind and water I've sculled you ashore."
And I never before saw shots fired so well
But she had a hole in her counter to sink her to -- Jerusalem.
	Singing, etc.

	Known also as "While Cruising Round Yarmouth" or "Ratcliffe Highway," it is recorded by A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl on Blow Boys Blow (Tradition 1026).  Hugill, pp. 200-01, prints it with two verses deliberately omitted;   Doeflinger, pp. 114-16, has it in fragmentary form.  The melodies for the refrains of all three of these variants have points of similarity; the tunes for the stanzas are less clearly related.  Hugill offers a second, unexpurgated variant in his Songs of the Sea (New York: McGraw Hill, 1977), p. 74, sung to an unrelated tune.
The text printed here was mailed, without tune, to Robert W. Gordon sometime in the late 1920's, and was culled from the Gordon Collection of American Folk Song at the University of Oregon by J. Barre Toelken.  No further information is available. 
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