There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea


DESCRIPTION: "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea, There's a hole (x2), There's a hole in the bottom of the sea." "There's a rock in the bottom of the sea... There's a rock in that hole in the bottom of the sea." "There's a frog in the bottom of the sea."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1923 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: nonballad cumulative
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 135, "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" (1 text)
Roud #15766
File: Br3135

There's a Hole in the Bucket


DESCRIPTION: Circular song, "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza." "Then fix it..." "With what?" "Straw." "The straw is too long." Etc., until "...too dry." "Then wet it." "With what?" "Water." "With what shall I fetch it?" "The bucket." "There's a hole..."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1961 (recording, Pete Seeger)
KEYWORDS: questions tasks dialog humorous husband wife
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
DT, HOLEBCKT*
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "Hole in the Bucket" (on PeteSeeger31) (on PeteSeeger47)
File: DTholebc

There's a Lady Over Yonder


See Wheel of Fortune (Dublin City, Spanish Lady) AND The Drowsy Sleeper [Laws M4] (File: E098)

There's a Little Box of Pine on the 7:29


DESCRIPTION: "'Dear warden,' wrote a mother, 'how much longer must I wait'" until her boy is sent home. The warden is forced to answer, "There's a little box of pine on the 7:29 Bringing back a lost sheep from the fold." The mother and community mourn the dead sinner
AUTHOR: Jos. Ettlinger, George Brown (Billy Hill), and De Dette Lee (De Dette Lee Hill)
EARLIEST DATE: 1931 (copyright; recording by Tommy Reynolds an Wilie Robinson)
KEYWORDS: death train mother funeral prison
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Cohen-LSRail, pp. 338-340, "There's a Little Box of Pine on the 7:29" (1 text, 1 tune)
RECORDINGS:
Asa Martin/Martin and Roberts, "There's A Little Box of Pine On The 7:29" (Conqueror 8062, 1933)
Tommy (Reynolds) and Willie (Robinson), "There's A Little Box of Pine On The 7:29" (Champion 16432/Champion 4518/Montgomery Ward 4958/Superior 2935 [as by Reynolds and Robinson], 1931)
File: LSRai338

There's a Little Hand Writing on the Wall


DESCRIPTION: "There's a little hand writing on the wall, There's a little hand writing on the wall, All I say and all I do, that hand writing on the wall."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: religious
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 519, "There's a Little Hand Writing on the Wall" (1 fragment)
Roud #11814
NOTES: The "hand writing on the wall" is obviously an allusion to Daniel 5. But, as 5:24-28 reveal, it was not writing the actions of King Belshazzar (who, incidentally, was never King of Babylon; he was the son of the last King, Nabonidas, if he is historical at all). Rather, the hand wrote a message of condemnation.
The bit about "all I say and all I do" may be an allusion to John 8:6, 8, where Jesus writes upon the ground. A few late manuscripts say that he wrote "the sins of every one of them," though most omit (and the earliest manuscripts all omit John 7:53-8:11).
If it is not an allusion to John 8, it may be a reminiscence to John 4:29, where Jesus told the Samaritan woman "all that I ever did." - RBW
File: Be3519

There's a Little Wheel a-Turning


DESCRIPTION: "There's a little wheel a-turning in my heart, In my hear, yes, Lord, in my heart... O, for you, yes, Lord, for you." Remaining lines are variations on this theme
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 641, "There's a Little Wheel a-Turning" (1 short text)
Roud #11936
File: Br3641

There's a Long, Long Trail


DESCRIPTION: The singer misses (his sweetheart), noting that "Nights are getting very lonely, days are very long." He remembers her in dreams. Chorus: "There's a long, long trail a-winding To the land of my dreams Where the nightingales are singing...."
AUTHOR: Words: Stoddard King / Music: Zo Elliot
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: separation loneliness nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England) US
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Fuld-WFM, pp. 573-574, "There's a Long, Long Trail"
DT, LNGTRAIL
RECORDINGS:
[?] Campbell & [Henry] Burr, "There's a Long, Long Trail" (Little Wonder 563, c. 1916)
John McCormack "There's a Long, Long Trail" (Victor 64694, 1917)
SAME TUNE:
There's a Long, Long Worm A-Crawling (Pankake-PHCFSB, p. 162)
NOTES: Not a proper folk song, but its popularity in World War I argues for its inclusion here. - RBW
File: DTlngtra

There's A Man Going Round Taking Names


DESCRIPTION: "There's a man going round taking names (x2), And he took my mother's name, And he left my heart in pain, There's a man going round taking names." Similarly with father, sister, brother, etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1921 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: family death
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Sandburg, p. 447, "Man Goin' Roun'" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Randolph 606, "The Angel of Death" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-ABFS, p. 591, "Man Goin' Round" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 56, "There's A Man Goin' 'Round Takin' Names" (1 text)
Roud #7548
RECORDINGS:
Carolina Tar Heels, "There's A Man Goin' Round Takin' Names" (Victor V-40053, 1929, rec. 1928)
G. B. Grayson & Henry Whitter, "There's a Man Going 'Round Taking Names" (Victor, unissued, 1928)
Paul Robeson, "Dere's a Man Goin' Round Takin' Names" (HMV[UK]8637/Victor 25809, 1937)
Kenneth Spencer, "There's a Man Goin' Roun' Takin' Names" (Sonora 1119, n.d.)
Joshua White, "There's a Man Going Around Taking Names" (Melotone 12861, 1933/Conqueror 8271, 1934)
File: San447

There's a Meeting Here Tonight (I)


DESCRIPTION: "I take my text in Matthew, and by the Revelation, I know you by your garment, There's a (Meeting/Blessing) here tonight." ""Brother John was a writer, he write the word of God." "Sister Mary said to Brother John, 'Brother John, don't write no more.'"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1867 (Allen/Ware/Garrison)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Allen/Ware/Garrison, p. 9, "There's a Meeting Here Tonight" (1 text plus a partial variatn, 2 tunes)
Roud #11854
File: AWG009

There's a Set o' Farmers Here About


DESCRIPTION: The work of the men hired by farmers "here about": "They yoke at sax and lowse at ten, And then at twa they do the same; At sax at nicht comes whistlin' hame, And that's the boy for me"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1911 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: farming work
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 385, "There's a Set o' Farmers Here About" (1 text)
Roud #5918
NOTES: GreigDuncan3 quoting Robertson, Song Notes: ." .. a protest of servants against the treatment they got." - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3385

There's a Star in the East


See Rise Up, Shepherd (File: LoF253)

There's a Tavern in the Town


See Tavern in the Town (File: ShH94)

There's Bound to be a Row


DESCRIPTION: Singer has "an awful wife." "If I do everything that's right, she'll find a fault somehow." He sleeps on the sofa when she takes in a lodger. She takes his money, gives him a meager allowance, "and if I spend it all at once, there's bound to be a row"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1867 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 11(3778))
KEYWORDS: shrewishness marriage humorous wife
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan7 1287, "There's Bound to be a Row" (1 text)
Roud #1616
RECORDINGS:
Jimmy McBeath, "Bound to be a Row" (on Voice01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(3778), "There's Bound to be a Row," J. Harkness (Preston), 1840-1866; also Harding B 11(3777), "Theres Bound to be a Row"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Devilish Mary" [Laws Q4] (theme)
cf. "The Wearing of the Britches" (theme)
File: RcTBTBAR

There's Many a Man Killed on the Railroad


See perhaps The Fate of Talmadge Osborne (File: RcTFOTO)

There's Mony a Dark and a Cloudy Morning


See The Banks of Sweet Primroses (File: ShH51)

There's Nae Luck at Tullo's Toon


DESCRIPTION: "The maiden queen o' buttermilk She couldna get a man, To be revenged on the male sex, She tried the soor milk plan." At Tullo town "stinkin'" oatmeal and buttermilk force the men away.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: farming work food humorous nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 394, "There's Nae Luck at Tullo's Toon" (1 text)
Roud #5927
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Come A' Ye Buchan Laddies" (some lines)
File: GrD3394

There's No One Like Mother to Me


DESCRIPTION: The singer thinks of his childhood home "in that cottage far over the sea" He recalls that his mother had asked him to wait but then blessed him with a kiss. "I'll go back to that home o'er the sea For there's no one like mother to me"
AUTHOR: Gussie L Davis (1885)
EARLIEST DATE: 1885 (broadside, LOCSheet sm1885 25967)
KEYWORDS: homesickness separation nonballad mother home
FOUND IN:
Roud #17330
RECORDINGS:
The Carter Family, "There's No One Like Mother to Me" (Decca ???, 1935)
BROADSIDES:
LOCSheet, sm1885 25967, "There's No One Like Mother to Me ," J. C. Groene & Co. (Cincinnati), 1885 (tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Gray Haired Irish Mother"
cf. "My Mother's Last Goodbye" (subject)
NOTES: "There's No One Like Mother to Me" and "My Gray Haired Irish Mother" are clearly related but clearly distinct. The question is: which is the original and which the derivative?
The tunes are closely related though the rests in "There's No One Like Mother To Me" are filled with text in "My Gray Haired Irish Mother."
The theme of both songs is: an expatriot remembers his childhood in a "cottage far over the sea" and recalls especially the mother that blessed him with tears on her cheeks.
"There's No One Like Mother to Me" has two verses and a chorus. "My Gray Haired Irish Mother" has five verses and no chorus.
Here is the first verse of "There's No One Like Mother to Me"
Sadly I'm thinking tonight
Thinking of days long gone by
Memories of childhood so bright
Come back like a dream with a sigh
I'm thinking of friends and of home
In that cottage far over the sea
Oh no matter where-ever I roam
There is no one like mother to me.
and the first two verses of "My Gray Haired Irish Mother"
How sadly I'm thinking tonight of my sire-land
Thinking of scenes and of days long gone by.
Memories of childhood so bright and so airy
Come rushing back to me with many's a sigh
I'm thinking of one whom I left far behind me
In that little thatched cottage far over the sea
Oh the one only cried Barney every noon and morning
Darling won't you come back to me.
The pattern is repeated in the remaining verse of "There's No One Like Mother to Me" and the third and fourth verses of "My Gray Haired Irish Mother."
We have sheet music dated 1885 for "There's No One Like Mother to Me" (LOCSheet sm1885 25967, by Gussie L Davis). The version recorded in 1936 by The Carter Family is almost identical to that original (source: Country Music Sources by Guthrie T Meade Jr, p. 324; the Bluegrass Lyrics site)
The John McGettigan recording of "My Gray Haired Irish Mother" in 1929 demonstrates that the songs co-existed. - BS
File: BrLsm188

There's No One Like the Old Folks


DESCRIPTION: A father tells his wandering boy not to go away, saying, "There's no one like the old folks after all...but your dad and mother too / Will always stand by you..." But the boy goes away, never to return, while his father grieves
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (recording, Frank Stanley)
KEYWORDS: grief rejection farewell home parting father family
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
Roud #17222 and 11512
RECORDINGS:
[Leonard] Rutherford & [John] Foster, "There's No One Like the Old Folks" (prob. Brunswick, c. 1930; on KMM)
Frank Stanley, "There's No One Like the Old Folks" (Manhattan 208, c. 1906; Columbia A-314, 1909)
NOTES: There *must* be a broadside or sheet music for this someplace, but I haven't found it yet. - PJS
File: RcTNOLOF

There's Plenty o' Donside Calfies


DESCRIPTION: There are plenty of Donside calves and cows, and "plenty of bonnie young lassies If the laddies werena sae shy"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: courting nonballad animal
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1857, "There's Plenty o' Donside Calfies" (1 text)
Roud #13593
File: GrD81857

There's Tillydeask


DESCRIPTION: The people of Tillydeask, Piltochie, Turnerha and Dudwick's Hill "think themsel's nae sma' But they canna cope wi Elphin For Elphin capes them a'"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: pride farming nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 440, "There's Tillydeask" (1 text)
Roud #5954
NOTES: GreigDuncan3 has a map on p. xxxv, of "places mentioned in songs in volume 3" showing the song number as well as place name; Tillydesk (440) is at coordinate (h3-4,v9-0) on that map [roughly 19 miles N of Aberdeen]. - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3440

There's toons wi' lasses roon aboot


See The Lass o' Gonar Ha' (File: GrD4724)

There's Whiskey in the Jar


See Whisky in the Jar (The Irish Robber A) [Laws L13A]/The Irish Robber B (McCollister) [Laws L13B] (File: LL13)

These Are All My Father's Children


DESCRIPTION: "These all my father's children (x3), Outshine the sun." "My father's done with the trouble o' the world, with the trouble o' the world, with the trouble o' the world. My father's done with the trouble o' the world, Outshine the sun."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1867 (Allen/Ware/Garrison)
KEYWORDS: religious death nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Allen/Ware/Garrison, p. 101, "These Are All My Father's Children" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #12059
File: AWG101

These Temperance Folks


DESCRIPTION: "These temp'rance folks do crowd us awfully, crowd us awfully, crowd us awfully. These temp'rance folks.... they think I do not care." The singer complains about the threat to his liberty, concedes that drink has made him poor, and asks to be left alone
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1916 (Cox)
KEYWORDS: drink political
FOUND IN: US(Ap,So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Randolph 323, "These Temperance Folks" (1 text, 1 tune)
JHCox 130, "Forward, Boys, Hurrah!" (1 text)
Roud #7797
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Jolly Grinder" (theme)
File: R323

They All Love Jack


DESCRIPTION: "Oh, for 'is heart is like the sea, Ever hopen (sic), brave, an' free, And his girl must lonely be, Till 'is ship comes back. But if love's the best of all, What can a man befall? For every girl at all, They all love Jack!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1943
KEYWORDS: sailor love separation
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Doerflinger, p. 166, "They All Love Jack" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #9444
File: Doe166b

They Are A' A-Teasing Me


DESCRIPTION: The singer complains that "he I love sae well, who has my heart and a' ..., he's owre the seas awa'." Meanwhile, Charlie, Davie, and Willie "They winna lat me be ... they're a' teasing me." Rich Carl would marry but she'll wait for her Jamie.
AUTHOR: words by Kirby, Music by Latour (source: Whitelaw)
EARLIEST DATE: 1845 (Whitelaw)
KEYWORDS: courting separation nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
GreigDuncan7 1337, "They Are A' A-Teasing Me" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Alexander Whitelaw, A Book of Scottish Song (Glasgow, 1845), p. 477, "They're A' Teasing Me"
Roud #7220
NOTES: NLScotland, L.C.1269(156b), "They're A' Teasing Me" ("O' wha is he I love sae well?"), unknown, c.1880
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD71337

They Ca' My Faither Windy Tam


DESCRIPTION: "They ca' my faither windy Tam, An' my mither gley'd Girsy; An' me mysel', a fine fudgell...." "He bocht to me a paor o' glo'es" and bad the singer wear them because she was a fine fudgell. Similarly, the man supplies gown and shoon
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1873 (Laing correspondence, according to Lyle)
KEYWORDS: clothes nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: Emily Lyle, _Fairies and Folk: Approaches to the Scottish Ballad Tradition_, Wissenschaflicher Verlag Trier, 2007, p, 223,(no title) (1 short text)
NOTES: A fudgel, or fodgel, according to Alexander Warrack, The Scots Dialext Dictionary, Waverly Books, 2000, as an adjective means plump or fat, and hence as a noun means someone who is fat, or even a fat animal. It may be that the person if pleasant and plump, but it might also be an insult. So is the gift-giver in this song genuinely courting the singer, or making fun of her? Based on the amount of text in Lyle, it doesn't appear possible to be certain. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: AddTCMFW

They Locked Me Up in Bonavist' Jail


See The County Jail (File: GC147)

They Put Me up to Kill Him


DESCRIPTION: "They put me up to kill him, my pore old white-haired dad, I done it with a horseshoe rasp, The only thing I had." The singer describes the murder, then voices his regrets at his foolishness
AUTHOR: Lloyd Robinson?
EARLIEST DATE: 1935 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: murder father family
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
June 3, 1935 - Lloyd Robinson murders his father, Robert Robinson. The younger Robinson was sentenced to life imprisonment, and allegedly wrote this song in prison
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph 174, "They Put Me up to Kill Him" (1 text)
Roud #5489
File: R174

They Say I Am Nobody's Darling


See Nobody's Darling on Earth (File: R723)

They Say It is Sinful to Flirt


See Willie Down by the Pond (Sinful to Flirt) [Laws G19] (File: LG19)

They Sell't His Teeth to Teethe a Rake


DESCRIPTION: "They sell't his teeth to teethe a rake ... They sell't his ribs for riddle rims, His rumple banes to be claes pins. The blacksmith bocht his iron brogues, His carcase feasted the tanner's dogs."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: death horse
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 644, "They Sell't His Teeth to Teethe a Rake" (2 fragments, 1 tune)
Roud #6077
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Besuthan
NOTES: The current description is based on the GreigDuncan3 fragment.
GreigDuncan3 quoting a 1906 letter in Aberdeen Free Press: "['They Sell't His Teeth to Teethe a Rake'] refers to an old crofter or wandering tinker who had lost his horse, and the song goes on to tell how they disposed of his [i.e. the horse's] remains." - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3644

They Were Standing by the Window


See The Broken Engagement (I -- She Was Standing By Her Window) (File: R771)

They Were Very Very Good to Me


See I Wish They'd Do It Now (File: Gil111)

They're Down and They're Down


See A Comical Ditty (Arizona Boys and Girls) (File: JHCox057)

They're Moving Father's Grave


DESCRIPTION: "They're moving Father's grave to build a sewer." Father's remains are being moved "to irrigate some posh bloke's residence"; the singer hopes his ghost will haunt the pipes, "for they had the bleeding nerve/To muck about a British workman's grave"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: death burial worker ghost humorous
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Silber-FSWB, p. 267, "They're Moving Father's Grave" (1 text)
DT, SEWERMOV SEWERMO2
Roud #10391
NOTES: Pity we don't have the keyword "class-struggle". - PJS
File: FSWB267

Thief of the World, The


DESCRIPTION: The singer loves "the thief of the world ... My heart was gone, my head was gone, my peace of mind likewise ... I'll have her up in court, I'll charge her with the felony." Her sentence: "Around my neck she'll have to hang until her dying day"
AUTHOR: Francis Arthur Fahy (1854-1935) (source: OLochlainn-More)
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (OLochlainn-More)
KEYWORDS: love humorous nonballad
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
OLochlainn-More 63, "The Thief of the World" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: Francis Arthur Fahy is probably most famous as the author of "The Ould Plaid Shawl." - RBW
File: OLcM063

Thimble Buried His Wife at Night


DESCRIPTION: Thimble's scolding wife dies; preparations are made for her burial. Thimble regrets that her diamond ring must stay on her finger. When an attempt is made to remove it, the dead woman walks to protect it. Thimble refuses any dealings with her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: death husband wife burial corpse ring
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownII 205, "Thimble Buried His Wife at Night" (1 fragment)
Roud #6494
File: BrII205

Things About Comin' My Way


DESCRIPTION: "Ain't got no money, can't buy no grub... Now after all my hard trav'ling, Things about comin' my way." The singer complains about all the effects of poverty: Mother's cupboard is bare, the rent is due, sister can't get a doctor
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973
KEYWORDS: poverty hardtimes food disease
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Silber-FSWB, p. 76, "Things About Comin' My Way" (1 text)
DT, COMMYWAY*
NOTES: Without the other text it's hard to be sure, but I think this is a separate song from "I've Got the Left Hind Foot of a Rabbit, Things Are Coming My Way." - PJS
Paul is right; the latter is indexed as "Things Are Comin' My Way." - RBW
File: FSWB076A

Things Are Comin' My Way


DESCRIPTION: "I've got the left hind leg of a rabbit, And things are comin' my way." "He said, oh me... I feel happy all the time." "How good I feel, I got possession of an automobile, And I can eat chicken and I don't have to steal, Because things are comin'..."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1977 (Sing Out)
KEYWORDS: animal nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
DT, EVMYWAY
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 26, #2 (1977), p, 20, "Things Are Comin' My Way" (1 text, 1 tune, the Bessie Jones version)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Everything's Going My Way
NOTES: Not to be confused with "Things About Comin' My Way," which is a near-blues about an out-of-luck singer who expects things to turn around. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: SOv26n2a

Things I Used to Do


DESCRIPTION: "Things I used to do I don't do no mo' (x3), There's been a great change since I been born." "Chickens I used to steal I don't steal no mo' (x3), There's been a great change..." "Whisky I used to drink, I don't drink no mo' (x3), There's been...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad virtue
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Sandburg, p. 482, "Things I Used To Do" (1 text, 1 tune)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Great Change Since I Been Born
File: San482

Things Impossible


DESCRIPTION: "As I was walking in a grove All by myself as I supposed," the singer meets a pretty girl who asks "To tell her when I would marry." He sets conditions: "When saffron grows on every tree," "When Michaelmas falls in February," etc., then he will marry
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1869 (Logan)
KEYWORDS: love courting humorous rejection
FOUND IN: Britain(England) US(MW)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Gardner/Chickering 158, "Things Impossible" (1 text)
Logan, pp. 360-362, "Improbability" (1 text)
ST GC158 (Partial)
Roud #3686
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Wife Went Away and Left Me" (lyrics)
NOTES: This song has lyrics in common with the one indexed as "My Wife Went Away and Left Me"; both involve lists of impossible conditions. But this is a song in which the girl seeks the young man's hand; that is a song in which the man begs her to return after she abandons him. The conditions set are similar, the plots are not.
In addition, although there is a report of this song from Michigan, it seems to exist mostly in Britain, whereas "My Wife Went Away and Left Me" seems to be mostly from the southern United States. On this basis, I split them; Roud of course lumps them.
Rorrer's notes on "My Wife Went Away and Left Me" mention a song by Charles D. Vann called "Then My Darling I'll Come Back to Thee." I have not seen it, but it strikes me as possible that Vann took the English piece and rewrote it, resulting in the American version. - RBW
File: GC158

Think of Me


DESCRIPTION: The singer remembers Maggie. "How I wish love, I were near you as in happy days long past" He hopes she'd "think of golden summer evenings and think kindly dear of me"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan6)
KEYWORDS: love separation nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan6 1255, "Think of Me" (1 text)
Roud #6791
File: GrD61255

Thinnest Man, The


DESCRIPTION: "The (thinnest/skinniest) man I ever saw Lived over in (Hoboken), And if I told you how thin he was, You'd think that I was joking." Various tall tales about the thin man's exploits, and the dangers he faces (e.g. falling through his pants and choking)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1881 (Tom Warfield's "Helen's Babies" Songster)
KEYWORDS: humorous talltale
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Pankake-PHCFSB, p. 175, "The Skinniest Man I Ever Knew" (2 text, tune referenced)
Roud #15357
NOTES: The Pankakes list at least one of their versions as being to the tune of "Take Me Back to Tulsa," but as they date that song to 1941, it can hardly be the original melody.
The gag in the song seems to be widely known. For example, Peter and Iona Opie, I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth, #96, runs, "Chartlie, Charlie, in the tub, Charlie, Charlie, pulled out the plug. Oh my goodness, oh my soul, There goes Charlie down the hole." - RBW
File: PHCFS175

Thirteen Yule Days


See The Twelve Days of Christmas (File: FO213)

Thirteenth Lock, The


DESCRIPTION: A canal boat sails for the unlucky thirteenth lock. Women on shore cry. The man at the mast refuses to steer and is kicked overboard as a mutineer. A monster appears. Those on shore, including one who had lent the captain half his gold, wait in vain.
AUTHOR: Arthur Griffith (1872-1922)
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (OLochlainn-More)
KEYWORDS: canal humorous mutiny drowning parting disaster ship talltale monster sailor
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
OLochlainn-More 1, "The Thirteenth Lock" (1 text, 1 tune)
File: OLcM001

Thirty Bright Guineas Was to Be Your Fee


DESCRIPTION: "Thirty bright guineas was to be your fee, Right fal de diddle al de diddle dee; Other thirty and married ye shall be Wi' your firl a tirl a right Fal de diddle al de diddle dee"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: marriage money
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1791, "Thirty Bright Guineas Was to Be Your Fee" (1 fragment)
Roud #12993
NOTES: The current description is all of the GreigDuncan8 fragment.
A real stretch. Is this couplet all that's left of "The Old Man Outwitted," a broadside "supposed by Mr Halliwell to date about the middle of the eighteenth century," [Leigh] which has the same general plot outline as "The Old Miser." That broadside includes the following lines: "'Here's thirty bright guineas I'll freely give thee If you can contrive to take him to sea" [lines 49, 50], "And that very minute you bring her to town, That moment I will pay thee five hundred pound. Nay that is not all, for to finish the strife, I'll freely agree for to make her your wife" [lines 131-134]; all lines are spoken by the old man but the first lines are spoken to the sea captain paid to arrange the impressment of the hero, while the second are spoken to the hero to arrange for the rescue from supposed impressment of the daughter.
See Egerton Leigh, editor, Ballads and Legends of Chesire (London, 1867 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 66-74, "The Old Man Outwitted"; Broadsides Bodleian, Douce Ballads 3(31a), "The Fortunate Lover" or "The Old Man Out-Witted" ("Let all loyal lovers which around me do stand"), Diceys or Marshall (London), no date; also Harding B 3(77), "The Fortunate Lover" or "The Old Man Out-Witted" - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81791

Thirty Days in Jail


DESCRIPTION: "Good mornin', Blues; Blues, how do you do? (x2) I just come here to have a few words with you." "Thirty days in jail... back turned to the wall... Mr. Jailkeeper, put another man in my stall." "I don't mind being in jail, but I got to stay here so long."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (Warner)
KEYWORDS: prison nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Warner 174, "Thirty Days in Jail" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST Wa174 (Partial)
Roud #7492
File: Wa174

Thirty White Horses


DESCRIPTION: "Thirty white horses Upon a red hill, Now they tramp, Now they champ, Now they stand still."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1849 (Halliwell) (but see NOTES)
KEYWORDS: riddle animal
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Opie-Oxford2 229, "Thirty white horses" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #704, p. 275, "(Thirty white horses)"
NOTES: Chances are, if you've met this riddle, it's from Tolkien'sThe Hobbit (p. 85 in my edition, in the chapter "Riddles in the Dark"; he uses a slightly different form). But it is much older (even Gollum calls it a "chestnut"). Tolkien's use of an item from oral tradition is not coincidence; Tolkien uses familiar riddles to imply the common ancestry of Gollum and Bilbo.
The answer is "the teeth" or "the teeth and gums."
The Opies refer this to a riddle in the Holme manuscript, "Four and twenty white Bulls sate upon a stall, forth came the red Bull & licked them all." I suppose they're related, in that the answer is the teeth (plus, in this case, the tongue). But I wouldn't consider it exactly the same (apart from the fact that neither gets the number of teeth right: A person with wisdom teeth will have 32 teeth; one whose wisdom teeth are out will have 28).
The "Thirty white horses" form goes back at least to Halliwell.
Duncan Emrich seems to think there is an American version of this; he quotes almost exactly this form on page 168 of Folklore on the American Land. But he cites no precise source, simply crediting much of the chapter to the research of Archer Taylor. - RBW, (BS)
File: BGMG704

Thirty Years Ago (The Stinger)


DESCRIPTION: "In a recent Independent I read a sketch that told of affairs and folks in Ashland way back in days of old When the Stinger ran each Sunday...." The singer looks back on his good old days as he worked for the newspaper
AUTHOR: Rush Pennypacker?
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Thomas)
KEYWORDS: nonballad age
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Thomas-Makin', pp. 194-196, "Thirty Years Ago" (1 text)
NOTES: Frankly, if this is the way the guy edited the newspaper, it's no wonder he's out of the job. - RBW
File: ThBa194

Thirty-Two Special on a Forty-Four Frame, A


See Railroad Bill [Laws I13] (File: LI13)

This Day (The Battle of Bull Run)


DESCRIPTION: "This day will be remembered by America's noble sons! / If it hadn't been for Irishmen, what would our Union done? / It was hand to hand we fought 'em, all in the blazing sun, / Stripped to the pants we did advance in the battle of Bull Run."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (Warner)
KEYWORDS: Civilwar battle
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 21, 1861 - First Battle of Bull Run
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Warner 25, "This Day (or, The Battle of Bull Run)" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, BULLRUN
Roud #7465
NOTES: We can only assume this song refers to the First Battle of Bull Run; presumably, had the second (fought Aug. 29-30, 1862) been meant, the song would say so.
It's hard to imagine what the Unionists were boasting of in this song. The First Battle of Bull Run was a fairly closely-fought fight, but ended with the complete rout of the Union forces. Federal commander Irvin McDowell, whose army was composed mostly of ninety-day volunteers (!), was pressured by Washington to do something before the enlistments ran out. He had no choice but to push his raw army forward. The Confederate troops were equally raw, but were on the defensive, and held off the Federals. The Union army then went completely to pieces -- but the Confederates, their forces just as badly off as the Federals, could not pursue. - RBW
File: Wa025

This Day Week I'll Nae Be Here


DESCRIPTION: "And this day week I'll nae be here This day fortnight I'll see my dear This day three weeks I'll be his bride And this day month I'll lie by his side"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan7)
KEYWORDS: marriage sex nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan7 1356, "This Day Week I'll Nae Be Here" (1 short text)
Roud #7234
NOTES: The current description is all of the GreigDuncan7 text. - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD71356

This House is Haunted


See Calliope (This House is Haunted) (File: San349)

This Is Halloween


DESCRIPTION: "This is Halloween, And the morn's Hallowday; If you want a true love, It's time you were away. Tally on the window-board Tally on the green, Tally on the window-board, The morn's Halloween."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: nonballad courting
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
GreigDuncan3 368, "This is Halloweven" (1 text, 1 tune)
Montgomerie-ScottishNR 130, "(This is Hallowe'en)" (1 text)
Roud #5911
File: MSNR130

This is Halloweven


See This is Halloween (File: MSNR130)

This Is Nae My Ain Lassie


DESCRIPTION: "O this is nae my ain lassie, Fair tho' the lassie be, For weel keen I my ain lassie, Kind love is in her e'e." His Jean can "steal a blink by a' unseen" and only he sees "the kind love that's in her e'e"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (GreigDuncan4)
KEYWORDS: courting nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan4 714, "This Is Nae My Ain Lassie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6156
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Are You There Moriarity" (tune, per GreigDuncan4)
cf. "This Is Nae My Plaid" (tune, per GreigDuncan4)
File: GrD4714

This Is No My Ain House


DESCRIPTION: "O this is no my ain house." "A carle came ... claim'd my daddy's place." The "cringing foreign goose" seized it. "Was it foul, or was it fair, To come a hunder mile and mair, For to ding out [beat] my daddy's heir, And dash him with the whiggin o't?"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1819 (Hogg1)
KEYWORDS: political Jacobites home royalty children
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Hogg1 37, "This Is No My Ain House" (1 text, 2 tunes)
GreigDuncan1 119, "This Is Nae My Ain Hoose" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #3790
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "This Is Nae My Plaid" (tune)
NOTES: Hogg1 refers to "the allegory here of Scotland losing its rightful owner." - BS
A pretty thin allegory. The interesting question is whether it refers to the Williamite succession of 1689 or the Hannoverian of 1714.
Ewan MacColl, in "Songs of Two Rebellions," argues for 1714. Certainly some of the allusions argue that way -- e.g. the "cringing foreign goose" certainly sounds like Madame Kielmansegge, one of George I's mistresses, widely known as "the Goose." Thackerey (quoted by Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, Blood Royal, the Illustrious House of Hannover, Doubleday, 1980, p.26), described her as follows: "The Countess [Kielmansegge was George's Countess of Darlington] was a large-sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denominated the Elephant."
On the other hand, the reference to "com[ing] a hundred mile and mair" could refer either to William III's invasion of 1688 or George III's arrival in 1714. Both are hundreds of miles from London, but from the Netherlands to the Thames is only about half the distance from Hannover to England, and it's all sea distance. Most of the distance from Hannover is over land; the fastest route there (via the North Sea and the Weser) is probably three times the distance from the Texel to the English coast. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD1119

This Is No My Plaid


DESCRIPTION: "This is no my plaid... Bonnie though the colours be." "The ground o' mine was mixed with blue, I gat it frae the lad I lo'e." The lad who wore the plaid "is now upon a distant shore," and "his name I daurna tell," but she hopes he will return and wed her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1904 (Ford)
KEYWORDS: love clothes Jacobites separation exile
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Ford-Vagabond, pp. 260-262, "This Is No My Plaid" (1 text, 1 tune)
GreigDuncan5 1063, "This Is Nae My Plaid" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6720
SAME TUNE:
The Croppy Boy (Hogg1 37)
NOTES: Neither Ford nor Whitelaw connects this with Bonnie Prince Charlie, but there seems no doubt that he is the subject; hence the "Jacobite" keyword. - RBW
Apparently broadside Bodleian, 2806 c.11(140), "This Is No My Plaid" ("O this is no my plaid"), unknown, no date is this song but I could not download and verify it. - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: FVS260

This Is the Key of the Kingdom


DESCRIPTION: "This is the Key of the Kingdon: In that Kingdom is a city; In that city is a town; In that town there is a street" all leading to "A basket of sweet flowers. The game reverses: "Flower in a basket, basket on the bed... this is the key of the Kingdom"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1923 (de la Mare)
KEYWORDS: playparty nonballad flowers
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #664, pp. 264-265, "(This is the key of the kingdom)"
ADDITIONAL: Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #1=#483, "This Is the Key" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I Got a Key to the Kingdom" (lyric)
File: CHit483

This Is the Nicht My Johnnie Set


DESCRIPTION: "This is the nicht my Johnnie set, And promised to be here; Oh, what can stay his longing step? He's fickle grown, I fear." She describes how carefully she has prepared for his coming. At last he arrives and they prepare for a snug evening.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1845 (Whitelaw)
KEYWORDS: love separation nightvisit
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Ford-Vagabond, pp. 84-86, "This Is the Night My Johnnie Set" (1 text)
GreigDuncan4 795, "This is the Nicht My Johnnie Set" (4 texts, 3 tunes)
Ord, pp. 146-147, "This Is the Nicht My Johnnie Set" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Alexander Whitelaw, A Book of Scottish Song (Glasgow, 1845), pp. 243-244, "This is the Nicht My Johnnie Set"
Roud #5553
File: FVS084

This Is the Night My Johnnie Set


See This Is the Nicht My Johnnie Set (File: FVS084)

This Is the Trouble of the World


DESCRIPTION: "I ask Father Georgy for religion, Father Georgy wouldn't give me religion; You give me religion for to run to my elder; O this the trouble of the world. This is the trouble of the world, O this is the trouble of the world."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1867 (Allen/Ware/Garrison)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad clergy
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Allen/Ware/Garrison, pp. 99-100, "This Is the Trouble of the World" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #12057
File: AWG099B

This Is the Truth Sent From Above


See The Truth Sent From Above (File: Leath196)

This Is the Way We Wash Our Clothes


DESCRIPTION: "This is the way we wash our clothes, Wash our clothes, wash our clothes, This is the way we wash our clothes, (all on a summer's day)." Similarly, "Here we come with our dollies dear," "This is the way we comb their hair," etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1918 (Cecil Sharp collection)
KEYWORDS: playparty nonballad clothes
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
BrownIII 96, "The Dolly-Play Song" (1 text)
SharpAp 264, "Early Sunday Morning" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #3645
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" (lyrics)
cf. "The Old Soap-Gourd" (form)
NOTES: This looks much like "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," and the two share lyrics, but the intent seems different, so I tentatively split them, pending discovery of more versions and tunes. - RBW
File: Br3096

This Lady She Wears a Dark Green Shawl


DESCRIPTION: "This lady she wears a dark green shawl, A dark green shawl, a dark green shawl, This lady she wears... I love her to my heart." "Now choose for your lover, honey, my love...." "Now dance with your lover, honey, my love...." "Farwell to your lover...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Scarborough)
KEYWORDS: playparty clothes courting
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Scarborough-NegroFS, pp. 142-143, "This Lady Dhe Wears a Dark Green Shawl" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST ScaNF142 (Partial)
File: ScaNF142

This Land is Your Land


DESCRIPTION: Singer, a wanderer, describes beauty of American (or other) land, sometimes with verses lamenting poverty. "As I went walking that ribbon of highway/I saw above me that endless skyway/I saw below me that golden valley/This land was made for you and me"
AUTHOR: Woody Guthrie
EARLIEST DATE: February 1940 (composed)
KEYWORDS: patriotic nonballad rambling beauty America
FOUND IN: US(All)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
PSeeger-AFB, p. 30 "This Land is Your Land" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, THISLAND*
Roud #16378
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "This Land is Your Land" (on PeteSeeger41)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Lovin' Father (When the World's On Fire)" (tune)
cf. "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" (tune)
SAME TUNE:
Is This Land Your Land? (Silber-FSWB, p. 315)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
God Blessed America (Guthrie's original title)
Esta Es Mi Tierra
NOTES: I include this composed song (originally an "answer song" to Irving Berlin's jingoistic "God Bless America") because it has entered into oral and aural tradition within my lifetime; it's taught in schools and camps, often as a traditional song, and is in oral currency among most of America's children.
More important, there have been dozens or hundreds of variants collected in the last forty years, in many nations and languages. These include an American Indian version: "This land is your land/But it once was my land..." Heck, my eight-year-old student wrote a couple of verses. - PJS
To me, there is no doubt that this is now a folk song. It is interesting to note, however, that unlike most folk songs, the establishment has largely managed to circulate "cleaned up" versions, so it no longer attacks the faults of the American political system....
The tune is a slight modification of "When the World's On Fire," perhaps learned from the Carter Family's recording (Victor V-40293). - RBW
No perhaps about it: Guthrie was a devoted admirer of the Carter Family. There's also a strong resemblance to another Carter Family song, "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" (Victor 21638, 1928), which we have not indexed. - PJS
File: PSAFB030

This Little Light of Mine


DESCRIPTION: "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine (x3), Ev'ry day (x4), Gonna let my little light shine." The singer thanks God for gifts given every day, warns that there is no hiding from sin, and urges all to let their lights shine.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1956 (recording, Montgomery Improvement Association high school trio)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Silber-FSWB, p. 352, "This Little Light of Mine" (1 text)
DT, LITEMINE
RECORDINGS:
W. Emmons & Mt. Olive Soul Stirrers, "This Little Light of Mine" (Fortune 1318, n.d.)
Pete Seeger, "This Little Light of Mine" (on PeteSeeger27)
NOTES: I've heard another song by this name floating around in Sunday School classes. Mercifully, I have forgotten it, but it clearly wasn't a traditional song. - RBW
File: FSWB352C

This May Be Your Last Time


DESCRIPTION: "This may be your last time (x3), May be your last time, I don't know." The singer travels about, observes various people and their misdeeds, and warns against the dangers of sin.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (recording, Jaybird Coleman)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Courlander-NFM, pp. 70-71, "(This May Be Your Last Time)" (1 text); pp. 229-230, "This May Be Your Last Time" (1 tune, partial text)
Roud #10965
RECORDINGS:
Rich Amerson, "This May Be Your Last Time" (on NFMAla4)
Jaybird Coleman, "May Be My Last Time, I Don't Know" (Gennett, unissued; rec. 1927)
File: CNFM070B

This Night We Part Forever


DESCRIPTION: "This night we part forever; Thou are nothing more to me. From thee each tie I'll sever That binds my heart to thee." She will not admit to sorrow, says she does not want his love, tells him to court another, says he blighted her hopes, and blesses him
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: love separation nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownII 159, "This Night We Part Forever" (1 text)
Roud #3630
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I'll Be All Smiles Tonight" (theme)
NOTES: Sort of an "I'll Be All Smiles Tonight" with less smiling and more griping. - RBW
File: BrII159

This Old Hammer


See Take This Hammer (File: FR383)

This Old Man


DESCRIPTION: "This old man, he played one, He played knick-knack on my thumb, With a knick-knack, paddy wack, Give the dog a bone, This old man went rolling home." Similarly, "This old man, he played two, he played knick-knack on my shoe," and on upward
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (recording, Pete Seeger)
KEYWORDS: nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE) Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Silber-FSWB, p. 390, "This Old Man" (1 text)
Peacock, p. 21, "Old Tommy Kendal" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, THOLDMAN*
Roud #3550
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "This Old Man" (on PeteSeegeer3, PeteSeegerCD03)
SAME TUNE:
All Gall ["Cognac, Armagnac, Burgundy and Beaune, This old man thinks he's Saint Joan"; Charles de Gaulle song] [by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann] [from "At the Drop of Another Hat"]
File: FSWB390C

This Old World


DESCRIPTION: Chorus: "This old world is full of sorrow, Full of sickness, weak and sore, If you love your neighbor truly, Love will come to you the more." Floating verses from other hymns: "We're all children of one father." "I will arise and go to Jesus." etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1966
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad floatingverses
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Darling-NAS, p. 259, "This Old World" (1 text)
ST DarN259B (Full)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (I)" (tunes)
SAME TUNE:
Mercy O Thou Son of David (Sacred Harp, pp. 52, 56, 458)
NOTES: The background to this song is confusing. The Golden Ring lists it as a set of words for "Mercy O Thou Son of David" (listed as by John Newton). But the Sacred Harp lists three tunes for those lyrics (which it also credits to John Newton): "Charlestown," "Villulia," and "Friendship."
To make matters worse, while all of those tunes fit "This Old World," none appear (at least in my copy of the Sacred Harp) seem to exactly match it.
If this song is anything, it's a placeholder for a variety of texts. There is almost a continuous gradation from this to songs of the "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" group. - RBW
File: DarN259B

This Old World Ain't Going to Stand Much Longer


DESCRIPTION: "Because this ole world ain't goin' to stand much longer... Gettin' us ready for the judgment day." The singer praises his mother for teaching him to pray, warns of judgment, and points up the example of King Hezekiah
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1944 (Wheeler)
KEYWORDS: religious Bible death
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
MWheeler, p. 73-75, "This Ole Worl' Ain't Goin' to Stan' Much Longer" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Little Black Train Is A-Comin'" (subject)
NOTES: The story of Hezekiah's bout with sickness, God's threat, Hezekiah's repentance, and Isaiah's promise of fifteen additional years of life is told in 2 Kings 20:1-11 and briefly summarized in 2 Chronicles 32:24-26.
This story of Hezekiah is told in much the same words in "Little Black Train"; the two are certainly dependent in some way. But it may be just a case of spirituals mixing themes. The two songs appear to be independent except for that one bit of material. - RBW
File: MWhee073

This Ole Worl' Ain't Goin' to Stan' Much Longer


See This Old World Ain't Going to Stand Much Longer (File: MWhee073)

This Pretty Girl of Mine


DESCRIPTION: "Here's a pretty little girl of mine Who's brought her bottle and glass of wine." She kneels on the carpet, then stands to choose her lover. When they're married they'll have a girl, then a boy, "seven years after, son and daughter"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: courting marriage nonballad children drink
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Greig #159, pp. 2-3, ("Do you see this pretty girl of mine?") (1 text)
GreigDuncan8 1572, "This Pretty Girl of Mine" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Roud #8371
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Hokey Pokey" (one verse)
File: GrD81572

This Train


DESCRIPTION: "This train is bound for glory... If you ride it, you must be holy." "This train don't pull no gamblers..." (And so forth, through various sinners the train doesn't pull.) "This train don't pull no extras... Don't pull nothin' but the Heavenly Special."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1922 (recording, Florida Normal Industrial Institute Quartet)
KEYWORDS: train religious
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Cohen-LSRail, pp. 629-632, "This Train/Same Train" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FSNA 255, "This Train" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-ABFS, pp. 593-594, "This Train" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 56, "This Train" (1 text)
DT, THSTRAIN*
Roud #6702
RECORDINGS:
Biddleville Quintette, "This Train is Bound for Blory" (Paramount 12448, 1927)
Big Bill Broonzy, "This Train" (on Broonzy01)
Florida Normal Industrial Institute Quartet, "Dis Train" (OKeh 40010, 1924; rec. 1922)
Garland Jubilee Singers [pseud. for Bryant's Jubilee Quartet] "This Train" (Banner 32267/Oriole 8098/Romeo 5098, all 1931/Perfect 190, 1932; on RoughWays2)
Lulu Belle & Scotty, "This Train" (OKeh 04910, 1939)
S. E. Mullis Blue Diamond Quartet, "Dis Train" (Champion 16424, 1932)
Southern Plantation Singers, "This Train is Bound for Glory" (Vocalion 1250, 1929; rec. 1928)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "This Train" (Decca 2558, 1939) (Down Beat 104 [as Sister Katty Marie], n.d.)
NOTES: Cohen observes that there are two basic forms of this song, the "This Train" version in the description and a type he calls "Same Train": "Same train carry my mother, same train (x2). Same train carry my mother, Same train be back tomorrow, same train."
There isn't much different in age, but Cohen argues that "Same Train" is older because it is much less interesting. I would say he is almost certainly right.
Cohen also notes the Lomax Special nature of this song. The version in American Ballads and Folk Songs, which probably is the source of most pop folk versions, claims to be based on a field recording by Walter McDonald, but in fact does not agree with that recording, and the later Lomax version in Folk Songs of North America says it's based on American Ballads and Folk Songs, but it again is rewritten. - RBW
File: LoF255

This Train Is Bound for Glory


See This Train (File: LoF255)

This Very Unhappy Man


DESCRIPTION: Bachelor decides to marry; he goes to a girl's house in his Sunday best and proposes. Her parents appear, he panics and runs, the dog chases him, he falls over a hornet's nest, and laments, "I can't begin to tell you the half of this very unhappy man."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1963 (recording, Margaret MacArthur)
KEYWORDS: courting humorous father mother
FOUND IN: US(NE)
RECORDINGS:
Margaret MacArthur, "This Very Unhappy Man" (on MMacArthur01)
NOTES: Not to be confused with "The Very Unfortunate Man." - PJS
File: RcTVUM

This World Is Not My Home


DESCRIPTION: "This world is not my home; I'm just a passing through." "Oh Lord, you know, I have no friend like you. If Heaven's not my home, then, Lord, what will I do? Angels beckon me to Heaven's open door, And I can't feel at home in this world any more."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1924 (recording, Stove Pipe No. 1)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(Ap,SE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Warner 135, "The World Is Not My Home" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 354, "I Can't Feel At Home In This World Any More" (1 text)
DT, CANTHOME*
Roud #7481
RECORDINGS:
Alphabetical Four, "I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore" (Decca 7840, 1941; on AlphabFour01)
Carter Family, "Can't Feel at Home" (Victor 23569, 1931/Bluebird B-6257, 1936)
Pete Cassell, "I Can't Feel At Home in this World" (Decca 6077, 1942; rec. 1941)
Kentucky Thorobreds, "This World Is Not My Home" (Paramount 3014, 1927)
Collins Bros. "I Can't Feel At Home In This World" (Decca 5635, 1939; rec. 1938)
Golden Echo Quartet, "This World Is Not My Home" (Columbia 14572-D, 1931; rec. 1927)
Jessie May Hill, "This World Is Not My Home" (OKeh 8546, 1927)
J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers, "This World Is Not My Home" (Bluebird B-6088/Montgomery Ward M-4714, 1935)
Monroe Brothers, "This World Is Not My Home" (Bluebird B-6309/Montgomery Ward M-4745, 1936)
Prairie Ramblers, "This World Is Not My Home" (Banner 33449/Melotone 13416/Conqueror 8503, 1935)
Claude Sharpe & Old Hickory Singers, "This World Is Not My Home" (Columbia 20450, 1948; rec. 1946)
Southern Sons Quartette, "I Can't Feel At Home Any More" (Trumpet 143, n.d.)
Stove Pipe No. 1, "Lord Don't You Know I Have No Friend Like You" (Columbia 210-D, 1924)
Hank Thompson, "Can't Feel At Home In The World Anymore" (Capitol 1163, 1950)
Frank Welling & John McGhee, "This World Is Not My Home" (Champion 16585, 1933; rec. 1932)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I Ain't Got No Home" (structure, lyrics, tune)
NOTES: This is really a group or cluster of songs with verses that float effortlessly between them. - PJS
File: Wa135

Thomas and Ellen


See Lord Thomas and Fair Annet [Child 73] (File: C073)

Thomas and Nancy [Laws K15]


DESCRIPTION: Thomas's ship is ready for sea, forcing him to leave Nancy. She calls to him to remember his sweetheart and family. His ship is wrecked almost at once. Nancy finds Thomas's body, kisses its lips, and dies of grief
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1839 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 11(3473))
KEYWORDS: separation wreck death
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Laws K15, "Thomas and Nancy"
Greenleaf/Mansfield 54, "Thomas and Nancy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Peacock, pp. 729-732, "Thomas and Nancy" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Lehr/Best 107, "Thomas and Nancy" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 812, TOMNANCY
Roud #3232
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(3473), "Thomas and Nancy," J. Catnach (London), 1813-1838; also Harding B 11(4123), Firth b.27(273), Firth b.25(109), 2806 c.16(120), Firth b.26(156), Harding B 16(287c), Firth c.13(298), Johnson Ballads 2915, "Thomas and Nancy"
Murray, Mu23-y1:119, "Thomas and Nancy," unknown, 19C
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Wreck of the Lady Shearbrooke" (theme)
cf. "The Lady of the Lake (The Banks of Clyde II)" [Laws N41] (theme)
SAME TUNE:
Gallant Hussar (per broadsides Bodleian Firth b.27(273), Bodleian 2806 c.16(120))
NOTES: Although the Bodleian broadsides list the tune as "Gallant Hussar," this doesn't really match "The Gallant Hussar (A Damsel Possessed of Great Beauty)" metrically; you can make it fit, but it's work. I suspect a different "Gallant Hussar" song is meant. - RBW
File: LK15

Thomas Cromwell [Child 171]


DESCRIPTION: (Someone) makes a request of (the King), who offers anything short of his crown. The petitioner asks the head of Thomas Cromwell. The king orders two earls to fetch Cromwell and have him executed.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1750 (Percy folio)
KEYWORDS: trial execution royalty nobility
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
June 10, 1540 - Arrest of Thomas, Lord Cromwell at the order of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
July 28, 1540 - Execution of Cromwell by Henry VIII. (His fifth wife Katherine Howard, the Duke of Norfolk's niece, is said to have put him up to it)
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Child 171, "Thomas Cromwell" (1 text)
Roud #4002
NOTES: This ballad exists only as a fragment in the Percy folio. There is a ballad in Percy's Reliques called "On Thomas Lord Cromwell," but it is not the same piece.
Cromwell (c. 1487-1540) was one of Henry VIII's chief ministers; he held power for many years as a result of his willingness to serve his master's needs. As such, he was one of the main forces behind the Anglican Revolution (though Cromwell probably didn't have strong feelings on the issue either way).
Born in obscurity, he entered Wolsey's service in 1514, and grew steadily in important and influence thereafter, being elected to parliament in 1523, then entering Henry's service in 1530. Among his productions was the 1534 Act of Supremacy (making the King of England head of the English church).
Made Earl of Essex in 1540, he arranged Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves (wife #4); when this marriage proved an instant disaster, Henry sent him to the tower. Catherine Howard (wife #5) and her family probably helped secure his execution.
Ironically, Cromwell's great-great-nephew Oliver Cromwell would later pull down a King (though Charles I, of course, was not a descendent of Henry VIII). - RBW
File: C171

Thomas Hegan and Sally Blair


See Fanny Blair (File: WB2103)

Thomas J Hodder, The


DESCRIPTION: Thomas J Hodder leaves Sydney. Captain Lake runs aground taking a short cut in Placentia Bay on March 8, 1952. People from Placentia Bay come out to offload Hodder. Evette also runs aground. Both are tugged free and Hodder is repaired at Burin.
AUTHOR: Lil Fitzgerald and Rose Pickett
EARLIEST DATE: 1977 (Lehr/Best)
KEYWORDS: sea ship ordeal
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lehr/Best 108, "The Thomas J Hodder" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: Placentia Bay is on the south coast of Newfoundland. The song notes that Hodder is "a splendid boat, about one hundred ton" that ran from Placentia Bay to Boston. - BS
File: LeBe108

Thomas Murphy


DESCRIPTION: Thomas Murphy ships on The Dolphin from Liverpool to Africa. On the way home the ship springs a leak, and the crew escape in long boats. "But when our boat she struck the shore she was burst in by a wave." Of fourteen, twelve, including Murphy, are lost.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1946 (Ranson)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship wreck sailor Africa
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ranson, pp. 98-99, "Thomas Murphy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #7356
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Georgina" (tune)
File: Ran098

Thomas Nicholson


DESCRIPTION: Looking for "as gentle a wife as John o' Badenyon," the singer gets his sweetheart alone and bars the door. Outraged, she leaves him and will not reconsider. Finally he marries a "gentle..." bastard milk maid his friends disdain.
AUTHOR: Rev. John Skinner (source: GreigDuncan4)
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan4)
KEYWORDS: courting marriage rejection humorous bastard
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan4 764, "Thomas Nicholson" (1 text)
Roud #6183
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "John of Badenyon (I)" (theme) and references there
NOTES: GreigDuncan4: "Lines by John Skinner [on Thomas Nicholson, farmer, Smallburn, Longside.-]." This just deepens the puzzle: who is John of Badenyon? - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD4764

Thomas o Yonderdale [Child 253]


DESCRIPTION: Thomas gets Lady Maisry pregnant and, hearing her lamenting, promises to marry her. He goes to sea and courts another woman, but a dream causes him to summon Maisry to be wed. Both prospective brides show up; he sends the other girl away
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: love courting pregnancy separation dream reunion marriage
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Child 253, "Thomas o Yonderdale" (1 text)
Bronson 253, "Thomas o Yonderdale" (2 versions)
Roud #3890
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Young Beichan" [Child 53]
cf. "Fair Annie" [Child 62]
cf. "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" [Child 73]
NOTES: Child comments, "This looks like a recent piece, fabricated, with a certain amount of cheap mortar, from recollections of 'Fair Annie,' No 62, 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' No 73, and 'Young Beichan,' No 53." I'd say that pretty well sums it up. - RBW
File: C253

Thomas Rymer [Child 37]


DESCRIPTION: Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildoune meets the Queen of Elfland. She takes him away from earth for seven years, putting him through various rituals which no doubt instill his prophetic powers.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1800 (collected from Mrs. Brown); printed by Scott in 1802
KEYWORDS: magic prophecy abduction
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland) US(SE)
REFERENCES (17 citations):
Child 37, "Thomas Rymer" (3 texts)
Bronson 37, "Thomas Rymer" (2 versions)
BrownII 10, "Thomas Rhymer" (1 text)
Leach, pp. 131-135, "Thomas Rhymer" (2 texts)
OBB 1, "Thomas the Rhymer" (1 text)
Friedman, p. 39, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
PBB 22, "Thomas Rhymer" (1 text)
Gummere, pp. 290-292+361-362, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
Hodgart, p. 127, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
DBuchan 6, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
TBB 35, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
Ord, pp. 422-425, "Sir John Gordon" (1 text, a truly curious version which retains the plot and lyrics of this song so closely that it cannot be called anything else, but with a different and inexplicable name for the hero)
HarvClass-EP1, pp. 76-78, "Thomas Rymer and the Queen of Elfland" (1 text)
DT 37, TOMRHYM* TOMRHYM2 TRUTOMAS
ADDITIONAL: Lyle: Emily Lyle, _Fairies and Folk: Approaches to the Scottish Ballad Tradition_, Wissenschaflicher Verlag Trier, 2007, pp. 5-11, "Thomas the Rhymer" (1 text plus sundry verses, 1 tune)
Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #136, "Thomas Rymer" (1 text)
Bob Stewart, _Where Is Saint George? Pagan Imagery in English Folksong_, revised edition, Blandford, 1988, pp. 131-132, "Thomas the Rhymour" (1 text)
Roud #219
ALTERNATE TITLES:
True Thomas
NOTES: Very many of Thomas of Ercildoune's (True Thomas's) predictions are in circulation, though only a few are precisely dated or can be tied to specific events. As Kunitz/Haycraft point out (p. 177), "Soon after Thomas's death, prophecies made in his name became so popular that it is impossible to know which were his own."
Perhaps the most famous prophecy dates from 1286, the year Alexander III of Scotland died. The day before Alexander's death, Thomas had forecast that "before the next day at noon, such a tempest shall blow as Scotland has not felt for many years" (Douglas, p. 155) or perhaps that the next day would be "the stormiest day ever witnessed in Scotland" (Cook, p. 65). Kunitz/Haycraft, p. 177, think that it was just a vague oracular saying. When the next day proved clear, Thomas was taunted, but his forecast proved true -- Scotland would not again see peace until after the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
Real and verifiable facts about Thomas are far fewer, but he does appear to have been a real person. "Thomas of Ercildoune" is a witness to a charter of c. 1265 (about the Haigs of Bemerside, also the subject of one of his couplets), and another Thomas, the son of "Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildoune," was an adult transacting in property in 1294.
Kunitz/Haycraft, p. 177, declare "That he lived and wrote at least some of the tales attributed to him is indisputable. Sometimes alling himself Learmont, sometimes The Rhymer, he owned property on a tributary of the Tweed River which to this day is known as Rhymer's Land. The Russian poet Lermontov believed himself a descendant of The Rhymer." They give his dates as fl. 1220?-1297?.
Garnett/Gosse, volume I, pp. 275-278, discusses what is known about Thomas. It credits him at least being the inspiration of Scottish poetry: "Many, perhaps most, ancient literatures claim a patriarchal founder, who from some points of view wears the semblance of a fable and from others that of a fact. Scotland had her Orpheus or Linus in THOMAS of ERCILDOUNE, called also THOMAS the RHYMER, who... [would] fulfil the requisites of a venerable ancestor, could we but be sure he was indeed an author. His actual existence is unquestionable. Ercildoune or Earlston is a village in Berwickshire, and ancient parchments demonstrate that two Thomases, father and son, dwelt there as landowners in the thirteenth century. The tradition of poetry appears to attach to the elder, whose appellation of 'Thomas the Rhymer' might seem decisive on the point if, by a strange coincidence, 'Rhymer' were not also another form of 'Rymour," a surname then common in Berwickshire" (pp. 275-276).
Garnett and Gosse, on p. 276, note that Robert Manning's 1338 metrical chronicle "affirms [Thomas] to have been the author of a poem on Tristrem sufficiently popular to be habitually in the mouths of minstrels and reciters. This is strong testimony. It is thought to be invalidated by the fact that Gottfried of Strasbourg, writing his standard poem on the Tristrem story nearly a century before Thomas of Ercildoune, declares himself indebted for it to another Thomas, Thomas of Brittany, whom chronology forbids us to identify with the Rhymer. But it is by no means clear that Thomas of Brittany was a poet. Internal evidence proves Gottfried's poem to be derived from a French version."
(Garnett and Gosse do say, on p. 278, that the Tristram poem associated with Thomas is of "small" poetic merit; "Its defects are not so much of language, as of insensibility to the beauty and significance of the story; the versification is not inharmonioius, but the poet... follows his original with matter of fact servility, and seems afraid of saying more than is set down for him: hence the strongest situations are slurred over and thrown away.")
Pp. 277-278 add that "A metrical romance composed on [Thomas's] name more that a century after his death represents him as the favored lover of the Queen of Fairy, as residing with her for three years in her enchanted realm, and as at length dismissed to earth lest he should be apprehended by the field, who is about to make his triennial visitation to Elfland, exactly like a bishop. As a parting gift the Fairy Queen endows him with the faculty of prophecy, which he turns to account by predicting a series of events in Scottish history some considerable time after they have taken place.... If, as is supposed, this original poem ended with the return of Thomas to Fairie, it cannot have been written by him, but no doubt embodies a genuine tradition respecting him."
(This description has its peculiar points, because, Tolkien's study "On Fairy Stories," (pp. 7-8), says that the word "Fairy/Fairie" is not attested before Gower, and only once before 1450, which poses problems in describing a tale allegedly of the fourteenth century.)
Thus Thomas's place in legend is very strong. Thomas's prophecies, however, were not "collected" until 1603; it would be difficult to prove the authenticity of most of these. Those wishing for samples can see Lyle, pp. 18-21. Several pages after that are devoted to the idea that Thomas himself will return to somehow set right the problems of the time.
Lyle, pp. 31-33, also compares a text of the ballad of Thomas with the Romance. The parallels are close enough to make dependence an effective certainty. Possibly the parallels would be even closer had not both items been damaged; Lyle thinks the ballad has lost part of its ending, while the romance "is well known to be incoherent." Lyle goes so far (p. 33) as to suggest that the ballad is the source for the romance, although there are genuine difficulties with this hypothesis and I do not believe she presents enough data to allow a real judgment.
Lyle also mentions some possible sources for the idea of standing somewhere and viewing heaven and hell and other places (integral here, and also found in some "House Carpenter" versions); her own suggested source is an item called "St. Patrick's Purgatory"; she also notes "The Adulterous Falmouth Squire" (for a modernized version of the latter, see Stone, pp. 82-88. It is far more of a moralizing piece -- mostly a sermon, in fact -- discussing the sacraments and talking about the sin of David before getting into the story of the squire). Much of the material she refers to could, however, come from Dante or a similar source.
Lyle, pp. 49-54, notes key similarities to the romance of "The Turk and Gawain" (published by Hahn as "The Turke and Sir Gawain"). This is a piece from the Percy Folio, and much damaged, so this is hard to prove. That there are similar motifs is beyond question -- Lyle lists among other similarities the journey with an other-worldly character (see Hahn, p. 341,lines 42-47), denying the hero food, including an order not to eat when plenty is available (Hahn, p. 341, lines 51-54; pp. 342-343, lines 83-94), an underground journey and storm (Hahn, p. 342, lines 66-72, but this section of the romance is damaged), and a castle (Hahn, p. 342, line 77).
Lyle points out that these parallels all occur in one short section of "Thomas" -- but does not point out that they occupy only a small part of "The Turk" -- roufly 60 lines out of the 337 still extant. And the direction the plot takes is completely different. I would be inclined to think that there is a common tale at the root of both.
But it is interesting to note that Whiting/Fox, p. 74, declares that "Gawain's original mistress was a fairy, queen of the other world, and nameless." Whiting rather reduces the effect of this by claiming that fairy wives were common in folklore, but it is certainly of note that the Gawain tale here parallels the tale of Thomas. Although someone really needs to do a detailed examination of date; could "The Turk and Gawain" truly precede the romance of Thomas?
Lyle also suspects a link to what she calls "Sir Landevale" -- the story Marie de France made into the Breton lai of Lanval, which also exists in a fourtheenth century English form as "Sir Landevale," and in the Percy folio text as Sir Lambewell. There are certainly thematic similarities at some points. But to make this contention possible, she has to assume a lost original used by both. I personally think that they merely both picked up the same folklore themes.
Ercildoune itself is now known merely as Earlston, according to Lyle, p. 8. For other place-names found in the versions of the ballad, see Lyle, pp. 12-17. The Eildon Tree of the song is long gone, but there is actually a memorial on its proposed site.
Supposedly this song was the inspiration for Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 2.5
File: C037

Thomas Rymer and the Queen of Elfland


See Thomas Rymer [Child 37] (File: C037)

Thomas the Rhymer


See Thomas Rymer [Child 37] (File: C037)

Thorn Rose


See Sleeping Beauty (Thorn Rose, Briar Rose) (File: HHH599)

Thornaby Woods


See The Nottinghamshire Poacher (File: E053)

Thorneymoor Woods


See The Nottinghamshire Poacher (File: E053)

Thorny Woods


See The Nottinghamshire Poacher (File: E053)

Thornymuir Fields


See The Nottinghamshire Poacher (File: E053)

Thorwaldsen, The


DESCRIPTION: "Twas a noble craft and a gallant crew That leaved the port that day, The sea was calm and the sky was blue As she sped on her course that day," leaving behind women and babies depending on the crew. The ship is wrecked by a winter storm on its way home.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1920 (Greenleaf/Mansfield)
KEYWORDS: death drowning commerce sea ship storm wreck family sailor
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Feb 18, 1873 - Schooner _Thorwaldsen_, en route from Newfoundland to Gloucester reported missing (according to the orthern Shipwrecks Database 2002)
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Greenleaf/Mansfield 143, "The Thorwaldsen" (1 text)
Roud #17755
File: GrMa143

Those Gambler's Blues


See Saint James Infirmary (File: San228)

Those Poor Convicts


DESCRIPTION: Consider the sentencing and departure of Irish convicts bound for "Vandiamonds Land": O'Reilly from Cavan, three Duffys and Bryan Seery in Mullingar. "Unto their prosecutors they never done a wrong." "Think upon those traitors that's swore our lives away"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1846 (Zimmermann)
KEYWORDS: transportation Ireland lament
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Zimmermann 53, "The Sorrowful Lamentation of Those Poor Convicts" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Van Dieman's Land (I)" (tune)
NOTES: Incongruously -- considering that these are supposedly innocent men -- this ballad shares lines with "The Edinburgh Convicts" and "Botany Bay" versions of "The Boston Burglar" [Laws L16]): "A warning take by me,I'd have you quit night walking,And shun bad company." - BS
File: Zimm053

Those Wedding Bells Shall Not Ring Out!


DESCRIPTION: A couple is about to be married. When the sexton asks if there are any objections, a man cries out, "Those bells shall not ring out"; the bride is his wife! He stabs her, then himself, saying "She's mine till death shall set her free."
AUTHOR: Monroe H. Rosenfeld?
EARLIEST DATE: 1896 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: marriage wedding betrayal murder suicide
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Randolph 822, "Those Wedding Bells Shall Not Ring Out!" (1 text)
Spaeth-WeepMore, pp. 231-233, "Those Wedding Bells Shall Not Ring Out!" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #7435
BROADSIDES:
NLScotland, RB.m.143(124), "Those Wedding Bells shall not Ring Out," Poet's Box (Dundee), c. 1880-1900
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Fatal Wedding" (subject)
NOTES: Randolph lists an 1896 London copyright in the name of Charles W. Heid. It seems more likely, however, that the claim by Monroe H. Rosenfeld is correct. Joan Morris writes of him, "Though he was a notorious womanizer and lost most of his money to bookmakers, Rosenfeld never wrote a song without a moral."
For a selection of Rosenfeld's more noteworthy pieces, which eventually start to seem rather like potboilers, see Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep, pp. 181-187.
The original sheet music claims that this is an unamplified portrayal of something that actually happened in "a western city." The exaggerated tone of the song, and the failure to provide details, leave the matter open to question. Spaeth (A History of Popular Music in America, p. 232) calls it a "flagrant imitation" of "The Fatal Wedding." - RBW
File: R822

Thou Hast Been My Ruin


See Stone and Lime (File: GrD61216)

Thou Hast Learned to Love Another


DESCRIPTION: "Thou hast learned to love another, Thou hast broken every vow." The singer recalls how she and her false love "met in scenes of pleasure," notes how he now dotes upon another, wishes they had never met, and bids "Farewell, farewell forever"
AUTHOR: Charles Slade
EARLIEST DATE: 1842 (Journal of the Courier)
KEYWORDS: love betrayal
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Huntington-Whalemen, pp. 249-250, "Thou Hast Learned to Love Another" (1 text, 1 tune)
Belden, p. 211, "Thou Hast Learned to Love Another" (1 text)
Randolph 755, "The Broken Heart" (9 texts, 2 tunes, of which the "F" text is this piece)
Roud #2065
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ella Lea" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Parting Words" (floating lyrics)
File: Beld211A

Thought I Fell in Ten Foot of Water


DESCRIPTION: Hammering song. "Thought I fell in, Uh! ten foot o' water, Uh! (x3), Over my head, Uh! over my head. Uh!" "Jay bird sat on, Uh! a hickory limb, Uh! (x3), Over my head, Uh! over my head. Uh!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Scarborough)
KEYWORDS: worksong bird
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Scarborough-NegroFS, pp. 217-218, "Work-Song" (1 short text, 1 tune)
NOTES: Scarborough says the first part of this tune is "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Not quite, though it's close. - RBW
File: ScaNF217

Thoughts of Long Ago, The


DESCRIPTION: The singer invites "in fancy ... a trip across the sea" in order to think of those left behind. "Can you recall, sweetheart of mine, The place where I met you?" He recalls "when we set sail." "God forbid that we'd e'er forget Our dear little Isle"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1980 (IRHardySons)
KEYWORDS: emigration home parting Ireland nonballad
FOUND IN: Ireland
Roud #2954
File: RcToLAg

Thoughts on the Newfoundland Sailing Voyage


DESCRIPTION: "Heigho, my lads, for the tenth of March, And a gallant ship and crew." The singer declares that the crew will happily go to sea, brave the conditions, fill the holds, and return to Harbor Grace
AUTHOR: George T. Sheppard
EARLIEST DATE: 1978 (Ryan/Small); reportedly written 1926
KEYWORDS: hunting ship
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ryan/Small, p. 117, "Thoughts on the Newfoundland Sailing Voyage" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: The lyrics of this appear to be based on "A Capital Ship" or one of its relatives; the verse form is the same and there are reminiscences in the lyrics (including an excessive fondness for "heigh-ho"). But there is no chorus; the author may not have meant it to be sung. - RBW
File: RySm117

Thousand Miles Away, A


DESCRIPTION: "Hurrah for the Roma railway! Hurrah for Cobb and o., An of! for a good fat horse or two to carry me Westward Ho." The singer enjoys the freedom of Australia, and boasts of the climate and of the meat it produces
AUTHOR: Charles Flower?
EARLIEST DATE: 1894 (The Queenslander)
KEYWORDS: food nonballad horse
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Paterson/Fahey/Seal, pp. 213-214, A Thousand Miles Away"" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ten Thousand Miles Away from Home (A Wild and Reckless Hobo; The Railroad Bum)" [Laws H2] (words, tune)
File: PFS213

Thousands Are Sailing to America


DESCRIPTION: "Your sons and brave daughters are now going away, And thousands are sailing to America." The singer addresses those staying in Ireland and describes sad partings. You raise children, try to support them, "and when they are reared sure they will go away"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (Morton-Maguire)
KEYWORDS: emigration parting America Ireland nonballad family friend
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Morton-Maguire 15, pp. 37-38,107,162-163, "Thousands Are Sailing to America" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #2904
RECORDINGS:
John Maguire, "Thousands Are Sailing to Amerikay" (on IRJMaguire01)
NOTES: Morton-Maguire: "This is a song from the 1880s, by which time the enforced emigration of famine times had become a ritual, almost part of growing up." - BS
We should be a little careful in how we interpret these words. There were famines in Ireland before the potato blights, and all resulted in emigration, and the rate of emigration increased with the great famines of the 1840s.
But the potato blight, which resulted in the death or emigration of almost half the population, largely solved the problem of actual starvation; with the population down to a reasonable level, there were no more Mathusian catastrophes. The real problem was that the landlords owned the land, meaning that the tenants were still working for almost no reward. As another emigration song says, "'Twas not for the want of employment at home That causes the sons of old Ireland to roam. But those tyrannizing landlords, they would not let us stay...." And so the emigrant ships were filled, and stayed full for many years even after Ireland became independent.... - RBW
File: MoMa015

Thousands or More


DESCRIPTION: Singer says time passes more cheerfully since they've found a new way (drink) to drive sorrows away. He has no credit, but you will find him at home with his bottle and friend. Neither rich nor poor, he's "as happy as those that's got thousands or more"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1951 (recorded from Jim Copper)
KEYWORDS: drink nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Kennedy 284, "Thousands or More" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1220
NOTES: Kennedy suggests this may be a version of "Drive the Cold Winter Away". I don't hear it myself.... It's worth noting that... all versions of this song have come from one or another members of the Copper family of Rottingdean. - PJS
File: K284

Thra


DESCRIPTION: "Henry Thra he did invite The boys to go on Halloweve night" and get drunk and make a racket on the roads until morning. "When Thra raised up that dreadful noise He took brave Hughie by surprise." Hughie chases the boys on his horse.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (Dibblee/Dibblee)
KEYWORDS: drink humorous horse
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Dibblee/Dibblee, p. 16, "Thra" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #12482
File: Din016

Thrashing Machine (I), The


DESCRIPTION: Farmer show his servant Nell the works of his thrashing machine. He straps her into the harness, she takes the handle and turns on the steam. Nine months later, when her apron won't pin, she says she'll have him transported for his thrashing machine
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1855 (broadside, Bodleian Firth b.25(339))
LONG DESCRIPTION: Farmer show his servant Nell the works of his thrashing machine; she tells him to come into the barn where they won't be seen. He straps her into the harness, she takes the handle and turns on the steam, and they begin working the thrashing machine. Nine months later, when her apron won't pin and her drawers won't go on, she says she'll have him transported for his thrashing machine
KEYWORDS: sex punishment transportation pregnancy farming technology bawdy servant
FOUND IN: Ireland Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ives-NewBrunswick, pp. 92-94, "The Thrashing Machine" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #1491
RECORDINGS:
Anne [Annie] O'Neill, "The Thrashing Machine" (on FSB2, FSB2CD)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.25(339), "Thrashing Machine," E.M.A. Hodges (London), 1846-1854; also Harding B 15(330a), Firth b.27(87), Harding B 11(3808), Firth b.34(290), "Thrashing Machine"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Threshing Machine (I)" (subject, sort of)
NOTES: This doesn't seem to be a parody of "The Threshing Machine" -- the tune and meter are different, and there's no overlap in the words. You should probably check that one out anyway, though. - PJS
File: RcThraM

Thrashing Machine (II), The


See The Threshing Machine (I) (File: K231)

Three Bells, The


DESCRIPTION: "They worked all day (x2) As brave tars only do. They sought to save from wind and wave A sinking vessel's crew." "'All saved,' they cried, The shout rose high, Rose high o'er wind and wave. 'Twas a starry crew... That manned the good ship Three Bells."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1933 (supplied to Walton by Gerrit Doesburg and A. E. Baker)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck rescue
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Walton/Grimm/Murdock, pp. 103-104, "The Three Bells" (1 fragment)
File: WGM103

Three Black Crows


See The Three Ravens [Child 26] (File: C026)

Three Blind Mice


DESCRIPTION: "Three blind mice (x2), See how they run (x2); They all ran after the farmer's wife. She cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life As three blind mice?"
AUTHOR: Thomas Ravenscroft?
EARLIEST DATE: 1609 (Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia)
KEYWORDS: animal disability
FOUND IN: Britain(England,Scotland(Aber)) US(NE)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
GreigDuncan8 1672, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Linscott, pp. 283-284, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie-Oxford2 348, "Three blind mice, see how they run!" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #253, p. 156, "(Three blind mice, see how they run!)"
Silber-FSWB, p. 413, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text)
Fuld, p. 576, "Three Blind Mice"
DT, (THREEBLN*)
ST FSWB413A (Full)
Roud #3753
SAME TUNE:
The (Blind/Decrepit/Myopic) Rodents (Pankake-PHCFSB, p. 208)
NOTES: Fuld reports this as "the earliest printed secular song which is still extremely well known" (but compare "Greensleeves"). Fuld also prints a plate of the 1609 music -- in a somewhat pre-modern notation, and with words noticeably different from those sung today.
Neither Fuld nor any other source I have seen offers an explanation for why this bit of silliness survives when so many better pieces died out. The Baring-Goulds note that there have been attempts to link it to political events -- e.g. the Farmer's Wife is Mary I Tudor, and the mice are Protestant leaders who opposed her. None of these explanations is very convincing. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: FSWB413A

Three Boocher Lads


See The Three Butchers [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Brave Blacksmiths


DESCRIPTION: Three brave blacksmiths from County Clare refuse to work for a grabber, are thrown in jail, refuse bail, and are treated as heroes when their term is up. "Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, tradesmen everywhere, Fathers, labourers, see your model there"
AUTHOR: T.D. Sullivan (1827-1914) (source: OLochlainn-More)
EARLIEST DATE: 1888 (_Prison Poems or Lays of Tullamore,_ according to OLochlainn-More)
KEYWORDS: prison work Ireland patriotic political
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1888 - Maguire, Maloney and Heaney are jailed in Miltown Malbay for supporting the boycott of a local landlord (source: notes to IRClare01).
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
OLochlainn-More 71, "Three Brave Blacksmiths" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #9768
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Sing a Song of Sixpence" (tune, according to OLochlainn-More)
NOTES: OLochlainn-More: "Another of Sullivan's Land League songs." - BS
Sullivan is the author of a number of Irish patriotic poems, of which "God Save Ireland" is probably the best-known. - RBW
File: OLcM071

Three Brothers from Spain (Knights of Spain, We Are Three Jews)


DESCRIPTION: "We are three (brothers/dukes/knights/jews) come from Spain, Come to court your daughter Jane." "My daughter Jane is yet too young...." "It is for gold she must be sold." The (knight) turns away. The mother calls him back; he chooses the fairest
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1903 (Newell)
KEYWORDS: courting beauty playparty
FOUND IN: US(MW,NE) Britain(England,Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
GreigDuncan8 1569, "We Are Three Lovers Come From Spain" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #633, pp. 250-251, "(We're three Brethren out of Spain)"
(DT, THREDUKE mixes this with "Three Dukes")
ADDITIONAL: Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #353, "Three Knights from Spain" (1 text)
Roud #8251
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Three Dukes" (plot)
NOTES: This has some points of similarity with "Three Dukes," and it appears some scholars have lumped them. But even Roud, who is generally a lumper, splits them, and I do so without hesitation. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: BGMG633

Three Brothers, The


DESCRIPTION: "A ship rides on the cruel wave" in sight of the Tuskar light at Carnsore. Three brothers leave shore and "steer for the vessel's side ... Then sink in the yawning wave."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1948 (Ranson)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship storm wreck sailor rescue
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ranson, p. 115, "The Three Brothers" (1 text)
NOTES: Tuskar Lighthouse and Carnsore Point are on the Wexford coast. - BS
File: Ran115

Three Butchers, The (Dixon and Johnson) [Laws L4]


DESCRIPTION: Three butchers are riding when they hear a woman calling out. They find her naked and bound. They free her; she blows a whistle which summons robbers. Two butchers yield, but Johnson fights and is close to winning when the woman stabs him from behind
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1678
KEYWORDS: outlaw trick death fight
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MA,NE,SE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf) Britain(England(South),Scotland) Ireland
REFERENCES (23 citations):
Laws L4, "The Three Butchers"
Randolph 97, "Dixon and Johnson" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 74-75, "Dixon and Johnson" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 97)
FSCatskills 111, "The Three Jolly Butchers" (1 text, 1 tune)
GreigDuncan2 186, "The Three Jolly Butchers" (11 texts, 6 tunes)
Kennedy 335, "Three Jolly Sportsmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Copper-SoBreeze, pp. 254-255, "Young Butcher Boy" (1 text, 1 tune)
JHCox 86, "Jackison and Dickison" (1 text)
SharpAp 60, "The Three Butchers" (4 texts, 4 tunes)
SHenry H185, pp. 128-129, "The Three Huntsmen/Wilson, Gilmore, and Johnson" (1 text, 1 tune)
MacSeegTrav 24, "The Three Butchers" (1 text, 1 tune)
BrownII 80, "The Three Butchers" (2 texts)
Chappell-FSRA 46, "Good Woman" (1 fragment)
Creighton/Senior, pp. 120-122, "The Three Jovial Huntsmen" (2 texts, 2 tunes, with the first being a peculiar variant in which the huntsmen all resist and Johnson kills the deceitful woman)
Creighton-NovaScotia 97, "The Three Gallant Huntsmen" (1 text, 1 tune; this resembles the Creighton/Senior version in which the huntsmen win the battle)
Greenleaf/Mansfield 37, "Johnson" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Peacock, pp. 817-818, "Jolly Butchermen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Karpeles-Newfoundland 33, "The Three Butchers" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Leach-Labrador 59, "Three Boocher Lads" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 223, "Johnson" (1 text)
BBI, ZN782, "Did you never hear of worthy butchers three"; ZN1365, "I'll tell you a story of lovely butchers three"
DT 325, BUTCHER2 BUTCHER3*
ADDITIONAL: Bob Stewart, _Where Is Saint George? Pagan Imagery in English Folksong_, revised edition, Blandford, 1988, pp. 51-52, "The Three Butchers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #17
RECORDINGS:
Bob Scarce, "Three Jolly Sportsmen" (on FSB8)
Pete Seeger, "The Three Butchers" (on PeteSeeger16)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 28(206), "The Three Butchers," W. Wright (Birmingham), 1820-1827; also 2806 c.16(200), Harding B 11(4230), Firth c.17(1), Harding B 11(876), Firth c.17(2), Harding B 25(1901), Harding B 15(330b), Harding B 16(288a), "[The] Three Butchers"; Harding B 11(1767), Firth c.17(3), "Ips, Gips, and Johnson" or "The Three Butchers[!]"
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Jinkson Johnson
The Three Riders
The Jolly Butchermen
The Butchers Three
Bold Johnston
Brave Johnston
NOTES: Stewart suggests that this began as a tale of ritual murder, and suggests that it might go back to the Osiris myth in Egypt. Many of his suggestions are far-fetched but possible; at this one, I can only shake my head in wonder at the ability of the human race to be wacko. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: LL04

Three C Railroad


DESCRIPTION: Hammer song. "Oh, baby, Uh! what you gwine to do? Uh! Three C railroad, Uh! done run through! Uh!" "My and my partner, him and me!" "Oh, baby, what you gwine to do? Seaboard Air-line (or other train) done run through."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Scarborough)
KEYWORDS: railroading work
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Scarborough-NegroFS, pp. 216-217, "Work-Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: There are hints of this in some of Lead Belly's songs. But that may just be the common stuff of all railroad work songs. - RBW
File: ScNF216C

Three Children Sliding On The Ice


See Three Little Girls A-Skating Went (File: R588)

Three Crows, The


See The Three Ravens [Child 26] (File: C026)

Three Dogs in a Row


DESCRIPTION: "Ho, ho, ho! Three dogs in a row! Three dogs in a row! One dog's white, and so are the others, All three dogs are watching for their mother."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934 (Henry, from Minnie Stokes)
KEYWORDS: dog mother
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
MHenry-Appalachians, p. 241, (no title) (1 short text)
File: MHAp241B

Three Drunken Maidens


See Drunken Maidens (File: Log240)

Three Dukes


DESCRIPTION: "Here comes (three dukes) a-ridin', a-ridin', a-ridin', Here comes a duke a-ridin' The raz-ma-taz-a-ma-tee." The duke comes to be married; the girls ask him to choose one of them. He calls them ugly; they say they're as good as he is. He chooses one.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1898 (Gomme)
KEYWORDS: playparty courting nobility
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) US(Ap,MW,NE,So) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (9 citations):
GreigDuncan8 1567, "Here Are Two Dukes" (1 text)
Randolph 551, "Raz-Ma-Taz-A-Ma-Tee" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 406-407, "Raz-Ma-Taz-A-Ma-Tee" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 551A)
BrownIII 68, "Here Comes Three Lawyers" (1 text)
Ritchie-Southern, p. 51, "Two Dukes A-Roving" (1 text, 1 tune)
Linscott, pp. 13-15, "Here Come Three Dukes A-Riding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior, pp. 260-262, "Here Comes a Duke A-Riding" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
MHenry-Appalachians, p. 242, (no title) (1 short text)
DT, THREDUK1 THREDUK2
Roud #730
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Hog Drovers" (plot, lyrics)
cf. "Three Brothers from Spain (Knights of Spain, We Are Three Jews)" (plot, lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Here Come Three Kings A-Riding
File: R551

Three English Rovers


See Campbell the Rover (File: K269)

Three Flowers of Chivalry, The


DESCRIPTION: The soldiers in the Crimea are depressed, when three Irishmen spring up, recall their homes and sweethearts, and rally the troops. In battle the next day, the British are victorious, but the three heroes die
AUTHOR: Andrew Orr
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Sam Henry collection, from a book said to have been published c. 1865)
KEYWORDS: soldier death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1853-1856 - Crimean War (Britain and France actively at war with Russia 1854-1855)
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
SHenry H99, pp. 89-90, "The Three Flowers of Chivalry" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #8146
File: HHH099

Three Flowers, The


DESCRIPTION: Singer met a girl with three flowers. He asked where she found them. She named each for where she found it: Michael Dwyer from the Wicklow hills, Wolfe Tone on Antrim Hill, and Robert Emmet in Dublin. She will keep them "Though all the world should fall"
AUTHOR: Norman G. Reddin (source: Moylan)
EARLIEST DATE: 2000 (Moylan)
KEYWORDS: flowers patriotic Ireland
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Moylan 162, "The Three Flowers" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: Moylan: "Michael Dwyer was a Wicklow man, a member of the United Irishmen, who fought during the 1798 rebellion, and who waged a guerilla war in the Wicklow mountains for several years afterwards." [For more on his story, see the notes to "Michael Dwyer (I)." - RBW]
Wolfe Tone: see the notes to "The Shan Van Voght."
Robert Emmet: see the notes to "Bold Robert Emmet." - BS
There is a certain asymmetry here; Tone and Emmet were killed, but Dwyer surrendered and was transported, even becoming a civic official in Australia. It would seem more logical to list someone such as Henry Joy McCracken as the third flower. But then, I'm not Irish. - RBW
File: Moyl162

Three Frightened Virgins, The


DESCRIPTION: Three daughters bathing naked in a pool at night are startled by a young man spying on them. Their father hears the commotion and, in the dark, takes his daughters for thieves. Eventually the truth is revealed and everyone takes it as a joke.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1719 (Pills to Purge Melancholy)
LONG DESCRIPTION: One night an old man's three daughters sneaked out bathe naked in his pond. A young man watching from a tree fell into the pond "and scar'd them out of the water" The old man heard the ruckus and ran out "with an old rusty soward" to stop what he thought were thieves. The girls ran over the old man, who was too startled to make out what was going on in the dark, and they went into the house. The old man told neighbors that roughians had run into his house. Barely seeing the girls the neighbors took them for spirits and ran out into the dripping wet young man. He explained what had happened and everyone, including the old man - "they are my daughters whom I ador'd ... why should I be in a passion" -- took it as a joke.
KEYWORDS: virginity hiding humorous father
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (3 citations):
GreigDuncan8 1893, "All Ye Who Delights in a Jolly Old Song" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Wit and Mirth, or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (London, 1719 ("Digitized by Google")), Vol II, pp. 12-14, "The Wanton Virgins Frightened" (tune, p. 8)
Ambrose Phillips?,] A Collection of Old Ballads, (London, 1723 ("Digitized by Google")), Vol II, pp. 130-132, "The Wanton Virgins Frightened"
Roud #12568
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 25(1902) [most words illegible], "The Three Frighted Virgins" ("You that delight in a jocular song"), T. Batchelar (London) , 1807-1810
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Old Man Strangely Surprised
NOTES: re A Collection of Old Ballads Vol II: Ambrose Philips, whose name does not appear in the Google Books copy is, according to Google Books, the editor. The New York Public Library catalog says "Compilation usually attributed to Ambrose Philips" - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81893

Three Gallant Huntsmen


See The Three Butchers [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Girls Drowned [Laws G23]


DESCRIPTION: Three young ladies, all Sunday School teachers, and a man named John Ash are on their way to church when they try to ford Gravel Run. The three girls are swept away and drowned, although Ash manages to survive
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (recording, Vernon Dalhart)
KEYWORDS: river death drowning
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1849 - drowning of the three girls
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,SE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Laws G23, "Three Girls Drowned"
Gardner/Chickering 123, "Three Girls Drowned" (1 text, 1 tune)
BrownII 210, "The Three Drowned Sisters" (1 text plus quotations from Gardner and Chickering)
Roud #3257
RECORDINGS:
Vernon Dalhart, "Three Drowned Sisters" (Brunswick 100, 1927) (Columbia 15126-D [as Al Craver], 1927)
File: LG23

Three Grains of Corn


DESCRIPTION: "Give me three grains of corn, mother, only three grains of corn, 'Twill keep this little life I have Till the coming of the morn." The dying singer asks what Ireland has done to deserve death by famine and neglect, and notes that others are starving too
AUTHOR: Words: Amelia Blandford Edwards?
EARLIEST DATE: 1848 (broadside, LOCSheet sm1848 431920)
KEYWORDS: death Ireland starvation poverty
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1848 - First of several Irish potato blights. Although the blights did not mean that there was no food in Ireland, prices shot up to the point that many could not afford it. Many died in the famines, and others fled to America
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Sandburg, p. 41, "Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hudson 56, pp. 172-173, "Three Grains of Corn" (1 text)
Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 360-363, "Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother" (2 texts; 1 tune on p. 454)
DT, THREEGRN* GRANCORN
Roud #4492
BROADSIDES:
LOCSheet, sm1848 431920, "Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother", Oliver Ditson (Boston), 1848 (tune)
NOTES: Scarborough speculates, "Perhaps the American pioneer's affection for [this] song is the remembrance of the famine among the early settlers in New England, when starvation was held off as long as possible by the rationing of food, the giving of three frains of corn as each person's daily supply."
New England did face famine several times in its early existence. But this sounds strangely symbolic.
The authorship of this is slightly uncertain, due probably more to transcription errors than anything else. Hazel Felleman's The Best Loved Poems of the American People attributes the words to Amelia Blandford Edwards. But broadside LOCSheet sm1848 431920 lists "words by Mrs A.M. Edmond, Music by O.R. Gross." - (RBW, BS)
File: San041

Three Huntsmen, The


See The Three Butchers [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Jews, The


See Once There Were Three Fishermen (File: FSWB240A)

Three Jolly Bums


See The Great American Bum (Three Jolly Bums) (File: FaE192)

Three Jolly Butchers, The


See The Three Butchers [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Jolly Coachmen


See Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl (File: FSWB229A)

Three Jolly Fishermen


See Once There Were Three Fishermen (File: FSWB240A)

Three Jolly Frenchmen


See Three Jolly Huntsmen (File: R077)

Three Jolly Huntsmen


DESCRIPTION: Three jolly (Frenchmen/Welshmen/other) go hunting. Periodically they see things (barn, frog, moon) which they cannot identify. In each case they propound their theories and move on. Finally they see an owl. One says it is the "evil one"; they flee
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1613 (broadside, "Choice of Inventions, Or Seuerall sort of the figure of three"; earliest complete form 1219?)
KEYWORDS: humorous hunting nonsense
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South),Scotland(Aber),Wales) US(Ap,MA,MW,NE,SE,So) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (23 citations):
Belden, pp. 246-248, "Three Jolly Welshmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph 77, "We Hunted and Hollered" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph-Legman I, pp. 306-307, "Three Jolly Huntsmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Eddy 87, "Three Jolly Frenchmen" (1 text)
McNeil-SFB2, pp. 55-57, "Three Jolly Welshmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuson, pp. 183-184, "Three Jolly Welchmen" (1 text)
FSCatskills 152, "The Three Huntsmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
BrownII 190, "Three Jolly Welshmen" (5 text, but only "A" and "B" go here; the rest are "The Bold Ranger")
Scarborough-NegroFS, pp. 57-58, "So We Hunted and We Hollered," "Old Circus Song" (2 texts, the second from a newspaper)
Flanders/Brown, pp. 125-126, "We Hunted and We Hallooed" (1 text)
Linscott, pp. 290-292, "Three Jovial Huntsmen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FSNA 2, "Cape Ann" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy 306, "Three Men Went A-Hunting" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton-NovaScotia 93, "Three Men Went A-Hunting" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen/Seeger/Wood, p. 168, "Three Men Went A-Hunting" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-NEFolklr, pp. 529-530, "Cape Ann" (1 text, 1 tune)
JHCox 165, "The Three Farmers" (1 text, 2 tunes)
Greig #31, p. 2, "The Hedgehog" (1 fragment)
GreigDuncan2 283, "The Hedgehog" (2 fragments, 1 tune)
Opie-Oxford2 524, "There were three jovial Welshmen" (5 texts plus a reproduction facing p. 422 of the 1632 broadside "Choice of Inventions")
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #348, pp. 183-184, "(There were three jovial Welshmen)"
Silber-FSWB, p. 243, "Cape Ann" (1 text)
DT 315, THREWLSH* JOLLWLCH
Roud #283
RECORDINGS:
Jack Elliott, "We Went Along a Bit Further" (on Elliotts01)
George Endicott, "Three Scamping Rogues" (on FieldTrip1)
Byrd Moore & his Hot Shots, "Three Men Went A-Hunting" (Columbia 15496-D, 1929, sung to the tune of "Wish I'd Stayed in the Wagon Yard")
New Lost City Ramblers, "Three Men Went a-Hunting" (on NLCR03)
Hywel Wood, "Three Men Went a-Hunting" (on FSB10)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Bold Ranger" (theme, some lyrics)
cf. "The Wild Cat Back on the Pipe Line" (theme, form)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
We Hunted and We Halloed
Look Ye There, Now
Three Jolly Hunters
The Three Huntsmen
Twas of Three Jolly Welshmen
Three Jovial Welshmen
NOTES: What appears to be a stanza of this piece is quoted in the Shakespeare/Fletcher play "The Two Noble Kinsmen" (c. 1611). In III.v.67-71, immediately after singing a snatch of "The George Aloe and the Sweepstake," the mad jailer's daughter sings,
There was three fools, fell out about an howlet,
The one sed it was an owl, the other he sed nay,
The third he sed it was a hawk,
and her bels were cut away.
A stanza in William Davenant's 1668 play "The Rivals" seems to be on the same theme, though it uses a different metrical pattern:
There were three Fools at Mid-summer run mad
About an Howlet, a quarrel they had.
The one said 't was an Owle, the other he said nay,
The third said it was a Haek but the Bells were cutt away. - RBW
The "Cape Ann" versions of the song should not be confused with Gordon Bok's recent composition of the same name. - PJS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: R077

Three Jolly Sportsmen


See The Three Butchers [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Jolly Welshmen


See Three Jolly Huntsmen (File: R077)

Three Jovial Huntsmen


See Three Jolly Huntsmen (File: R077)

Three Jovial Huntsmen, The


See The Three Butchers (Dixon and Johnson) [Laws L4] (File: LL04)

Three Knights from Spain


See Three Brothers from Spain (Knights of Spain, We Are Three Jews) (File: BGMG633)

Three Leaves of Shamrock


DESCRIPTION: The singer, about to leave Ireland, meets a poor girl who bids him take a message to her brother Ned: "Three leaves of shamrock... 'Take these to my brother, for I have no other. And these are the shamrock from his dear old mother's grave.'"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: death mourning burial mother brother sister emigration separation Ireland
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownII 135, "Three Leaves of Shamrock" (1 text plus mention of 4 more)
ST BrII135 (Full)
Roud #3769
RECORDINGS:
The North Carolina Ramblers and Roy Harvey, "Three Leaves of Shamrock" (Paramount, unissued, 1927)
File: BrII135

Three Little Babes, The


See The Wife of Usher's Well [Child 79] (File: C079)

Three Little Babies


See The Cruel Mother [Child 20] (File: C020)

Three Little Girls A-Skating Went


DESCRIPTION: "Three little girls a-skating went, a-skating went, a-skating went, Three little girls a-skating went All on a summer day." "The ice was thin, they all fell in, they all fell in, they all fell in... Or else they've run away."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1651 (The Loves of Hero and Leander, according to Opie-Oxford2)
KEYWORDS: playparty humorous drowning
FOUND IN: US(MW,NE,So) Britain
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Linscott, pp. 288-289, "Three Children Sliding on the Ice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph 588, "Three Little Girls A-Skating Went" (1 text)
Opie-Oxford2 99, "Three children sliding on the ice" (2 texts; there is also a print of the Mother Goose's Melody text in plate IX facing p. 200)
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #32, p. 46, "(Three children sliding on the ice)"
ST R588 (Full)
Roud #3744
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Lamentations of a Bad Market" (and notes there)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Six Little Girls A-Sliding Went
The Ice Was Thin
NOTES: Although most American editors seem unaware of the connection, this goes back at least to the eighteenth century in Britain, and was common in garlands in that period. It has been ascribed to John Gay and to the editor of Mother Goose's Melody (Oliver Goldsmith?). However, its appearance in Tommy Thumb's storybook pretty well precludes Goldsmith's authorship, and I know of no reason to believe in Gay's.
The original air is said to have been "Chevy Chase," but this does not appear to have been the tune used in the U. S. - RBW
Opie-Oxford2, p. 19: "In The Lamentations of a Bad Market ... it is the twelfth, eighteenth, and nineteenth stanzas which are known to the world; thet tell of 'Three children sliding on the ice' [Opie-Oxford2 99, "Three children sliding on the ice"]."
See James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (London, 1843 ("Digitized by Google")),#41 pp. 28-31, ("Come Christian people, all give ear"), "From 'Ovid de Arte Amandi,&c. Englished, together with Choice Poems, and rare Pieces of Drollery.' 1662." This is the original tragedy of "the death of three children dear" during a fire at London bridge [Opie speculates, February 1633]. Following Opie-Oxford2, see verses 12 ("Three children sliding thereabouts"), 18 ("Ye parents all that children have") and 19 ("For had they at a sermon been"). - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: R588

Three Little Kittens


DESCRIPTION: Mother cat says the kittens can't have pie because they have lost their mittens. When they find the mittens they put them on to eat pie and soil them. They wash the mittens and hang them out to dry. They smell a rat close by.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1853 (New Nursery Songs, according to Opie-Oxford2)
KEYWORDS: food animal humorous clothes
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Opie-Oxford2 289, "Three little kittens they lost their mittens" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #815, pp. 303-304, "(Three little kittens they lost their mittens)"
Roud #16150
NOTES: Opie-Oxford2: "The tune is a variant of "The Seven Joys of Mary." - BS
The Opies and the Baring-Goulds note that these lines are sometimes attributed to Eliza Follen, author of New Nursery Songs for All Good Children, but her notes call the piece traditional. The book (which the Opies date c. 1843) does however seem to be the earliest printing. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: OO2289

Three Little Sand Maidens


See Little Sally Walker (File: CNFM157)

Three Lost Babes of Americay, The


DESCRIPTION: "Come uncle, come tell me that wonderful tale ..." Three children are lost. Their father, mother and neighbors search in vain. They ask an Indian chief for help. The father, Indian chief and "two youths of [the] tribe" find the children
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1958 (Peacock)
KEYWORDS: help rescue America children father mother Indians(Am.)
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Peacock, pp. 30-32, "The Three Lost Babes of Americay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Leach-Labrador 50, "Babes in the Wood" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #9944
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Children in the Wood (The Babes in the Woods)" [Laws Q34] (theme)
cf. "The Lost Babe" (theme)
NOTES: The similarity to "Babes in the Woods" will be evident; it appears that some scholars lump some of them. - RBW
File: Peac030

Three Lovers


See Lord Thomas and Fair Annet [Child 73] (File: C073)

Three Maidens to Milking Did Go


DESCRIPTION: "The maidens to milking did go (x2), And the wind it did blow high and the wind it did blow low And it tossed the milking pails to and fro." The singer asks a friend to help him hunt "birds." The singer wishes luck to blackbird and thrush
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1856 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 11(3968)); tune listed from 1828)
KEYWORDS: bird hunting courting seduction
FOUND IN: Britain(England(All),Wales)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Kennedy 191, "Three Maidens to Milking Did Go" (1 text, 1 tune)
Copper-SoBreeze, pp. 280-281, "Three Maidens" (1 text, 1 tune)
MacSeegTrav 50, "The Bird in the Bush" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 160, "Two Maids Went A-Milking One Day" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 150, "Three Maids A-Milking Would Go" (reproduction of a broadside page with "Three Maidens to Milking Did Go" and "The Butcher and the Tailor's Wife")
Roud #290
RECORDINGS:
Frankie Armstrong, "The Bird in the Bush" (on BirdBush1, BirdBush2)
Fred Hewett, "Three Maidens To Milking Did Go" (on Voice10)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(3968), "Three Maids A Milking Would Go", W. Jackson and Son (Birmingham), 1842-1855; also Harding B 11(3815), "Three Maids A-milking Would Go"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Spotted Cow" (theme)
cf. "Kitty of Coleraine" (theme)
cf. "Blackberry Grove" (theme)
cf. "Three Maidens to Milking Did Go" (theme)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Blackbird in the Bush
The Bird in the Lily-Bush
NOTES: Most printed versions of this are "clean," but clearly there is much going on beneath the surface.... - RBW
Indeed, there is. In fact, this is one of the few descriptions of group sex in traditional music -- unless, of course, you count "The Ball at Kerriemuir," and I'd be more inclined to describe that with the word "mob." - PJS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: K191

Three McFarlands, The [Laws C18]


DESCRIPTION: A gang of teamsters "that knew not who was boss" sign up to work under the three McFarlands. The bosses drive them hard and treat them badly; the men look forward to leaving the camp and seeing the girls
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (Rickaby)
KEYWORDS: work abuse boss
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Laws C18, "The Three MacFarlands"
Rickaby 15, "The Three McFarlands" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 826, MCFARL3*
Roud #2225
File: LC18

Three Men Drowned (The Grand River)


DESCRIPTION: Four men go boating on the Grand River. In rough water, they are flung from the boat; Benjamin Moore and two others drown. A boy brings word to Benjamin's parents. The singer talks about God's planning (and placing rocks in the river)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (Rickaby)
KEYWORDS: river ship death drowning
FOUND IN: US(MW) Canada(Ont)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Rickaby 34-I, (first of three "Fragments of Shanty Songs") (1 text)
Fowke-Lumbering #38, "The Grand River" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST Rick129 (Partial)
Roud #3680
NOTES: This is item dC35 in Laws's Appendix II. - RBW
File: Rick129

Three Men Went A-Hunting


See Three Jolly Huntsmen (File: R077)

Three Moore Brothers


DESCRIPTION: "This is why we love the Moore brothers so well, They feed us on the farm like they do in the Rice Hotel." The Moore family hires Texas prisoners to work, and gives them extravagantly good or bad treatment
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1964 (recorded from "Chinaman" Johnson by Jackson)
KEYWORDS: work food prison
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Jackson-DeadMan, pp. 53-61, "Three Moore Brothers" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
NOTES: Jackson's notes describe a large farm, almost a feudal fiefdom, run first by Tom Moore Sr. and then by his sons Steve, Tom, and Henry. Often they rented out convicts from the Texas prison system. Folklore about the family was abundant.
Jackson calls the song a cante-fable, and the two versions found by Jackson are very distinct; "Chinaman's" version is full of whistles and recitations, while Johnny Jackson's is more a straight song. But Judy McCulloh calls "Chinaman's" one of the "peskiest" things she has ever had to transcribe. Clearly the piece is very fluid. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: JDM053

Three O'Donnells, The


DESCRIPTION: Singer dreams of a meeting in Innishowen "when we heard of liberty," of a barge with 24 Irish boys saying "Gainne's sons are free." A health to the O'Donnells. Father William fought at Waterloo; "He once was a bold lieutenant But he's now our clergyman"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1979 (Tunney-StoneFiddle)
KEYWORDS: dream nonballad political clergy
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tunney-StoneFiddle, p. 145, "The Three O'Donnells" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Battle of Carrickshock" (subject: The Tithe War) and references there
NOTES: Tunney-StoneFiddle: "In fact it is an anti-tithe song from Innishowen. The hero whose praises it sings was none other than Father William O'Donnell, the Waterloo Priest, as he is still affectionately referred to in his native Innishowen." Tunney gives the biography of William O'Donnell (1779-1856), including his 1839 arrest for being in arrears of tithe on his property.
I cannot explain the references to "that meeting boys That was held at Innishowen" or "the loaded barge Going floating down the main With four and twenty Irish boys To guide her on the stream." - BS
For background on the Tithe War (the successful attempt by the Catholic Irish to stop paying a tithe to support the Protestant Church of England), see especially the notes to "The Battle of Carrickshock." - RBW
File: TSF145

Three Old Jews, The


See Once There Were Three Fishermen (File: FSWB240A)

Three Old Whores (From Winnipeg/Baltimore)


See Four Old Whores (File: EM006)

Three Perished in the Snow [Laws G32]


DESCRIPTION: A woman and her three young children are struggling through a snowstorm. The children ask their mother to make them warm, but she cannot help. The next morning the three are found clasped in each others' arms, dead
AUTHOR: Eddie Fox
EARLIEST DATE: 1878 (as "She Perished in the Snow")
KEYWORDS: family children death mother
FOUND IN: US(MA,SE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Laws G32, "Three Perished in the Snow"
McNeil-SFB2, pp. 101-102, "Three Perished in the Snow" (1 text, 1 tune)
FSCatskills 69, "She Perished in the Snow" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 715, PRSHSNOW*
Roud #1931
RECORDINGS:
Lester McFarland & Robert Gardner, "Perished in the Snow" (Brunswick 561, c. 1930)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Hush-oh-bye Baby" (plot)
File: LG32

Three Pigs


DESCRIPTION: "There was an old sow, she lived in a sty, And three little piggies had she." The grown pig said "Oink," the little ones "Wee! Wee!" The little pigs resolve to try to say "Oink" like grown-up pigs -- but can't do it, sicken, and die
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934
KEYWORDS: animal youth humorous death
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lomax-ABFS, pp. 307-308, "Three Pigs" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #4575
File: LxA307

Three Quarters of the Year


See The False Young Man (The Rose in the Garden, As I Walked Out) (File: FJ166)

Three Ravens, The [Child 26]


DESCRIPTION: (Three) ravens decide that a new-slain knight would make a nice lunch. He is guarded by hawk, hounds, and leman, who either guard the body from the birds or abandon it to its fate
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1611 (Ravenscroft)
KEYWORDS: death bird food
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland,England) US(MW,NE,SE,So,SW) Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (41 citations):
Child 26, "The Three Ravens" (2 texts)
Bronson 26, The Three Ravens" (21 versions)
BarryEckstormSmyth pp. 435-437, "The Three Ravens" (notes plus a partial reprint of Ravenscroft)
Belden, pp. 31-33, "The Three Ravens" (2 texts, plus 2 tunes not derived from Missouri)
Randolph 9, "The Three Crows" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #18}
Davis-Ballads 10, "The Three Ravens" (17 texts, some very short; the "Q" fragment may be another song; the additional songs in the appendix are "Johnny Fill Up the Bowl"; 4 tunes entitled "The Three Ravens," "[The] Three Crows"; 10 more versions mentioned in Appendix A) {I=Bronson's #16 J=K=#17, P is not printed by Bronson}
Davis-More 13, pp. 84-88, "The Three Ravens" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
BrownII 9, "The Three Ravens" (1 very short text)
Chappell-FSRA 5, "Three Black Crows" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #4}
Hudson 6, pp. 72-73, "The Three Ravens" (1 fragment)
Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 193-195, "The Three Ravens/The Twa Corbies" (1 short text, entitled "Three Old Crows" and typical of that type, plus the text from Ravenscroft for comparison)
Scarborough-NegroFS, p. 149, (no title) (1 fragment, mentioning three crows on a tree with an ending about a sick old horse; the whole might well be a dead horse song with a few "Three Ravens" lines, but without more text we cannot tell)
Brewster 8, "The Three Ravens" (1 text plus a fragment)
Creighton/Senior, p. 21, "The Three Ravens" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #11}
Creighton-SNewBrunswick 1, "The Three Crows" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Brown, p. 129, "Three Black Crows" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders-Ancient1, pp. 243-256, "The Twa Corbies" (10 texts, many of them quite short, 3 tunes; the last two items, "I" and "J," appear to be somewhat rewritten)
Linscott, p. 289, "Three Crows" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Leach, pp. 111-113, "The Three Ravens/The Twa Corbies" (2 texts)
Leach-Labrador 1, "The Three Ravens" (1 text, 1 tune)
OBB 67, "The Twa Corbies"; 68, "The Three Ravens" (2 texts)
Friedman, p. 23, "The Three Ravens (The Twa Corbies)" (3 texts)
PBB 28, "The Three Ravens" (1 text)
Doerflinger, p. 21, "Blow the Man Down (IV)" (this text combines the words of "The Three Crows" with the tune and metre of "Blow the Man Down")
Hugill, p. 212, "The Three Ravens" (1 text sung to the tune of "Blow the Man Down," taken from Doerflinger)
Niles 17, "The Three Ravens" (3 texts, 3 tunes, although the first piece, "Lovers' Farewell," is at best distantly related to this ballad)
Gummere, pp. 167+336, "The Three Ravens" (1 text)
SharpAp 11 "The Three Ravens" (1 short text plus 2 fragments, 3 tunes){Bronson's #16, #15, #14}
Sharp/Karpeles-80E 5, "The Two Crows (The Three Ravens)" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #15}
Chase, pp. 114-115, "The Two Ravens" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hodgart, p. 37, "The Three Ravens"; p. 38, "The Twa Corbies" (2 texts)
JHCox 31, "The Three Ravens" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #10}
JHCoxIIA, #5, pp. 19-20, "The Crow Song" (1 short text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #5}
TBB 36, "The Three Ravens" (1 text)
Chappell/Wooldridge I, pp. 75-76, "There Were Three Ravens" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #1}
HarvClass-EP1, pp. 73-74, "The Three Ravens"; p. 74, "The Twa Corbies" (2 texts)
Abrahams/Foss, pp. 173-176, "The Three Ravens"; "The Twa Corbies"; "The Three Crows" (3 texts, 3 tunes) {Bronson's #1, #8; the third tune was not known to Bronson}
Darling-NAS, pp. 26-28, "The Three Ravens (or, 'Rauens')"; "The Twa Corbies"; "The Three Crows" (3 texts)
Silber-FSWB, p. 405, "Billy Magee Magaw"; p. 215, "The Three Ravens" (2 texts)
DT 26, THRERAVN* THRERAV2* THRERAV3* THRERAV4 THRERAV5* THRERAV6
ADDITIONAL: Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #117, "The Twa Corbies" (1 text)
Roud #5
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Blow the Man Down" (lyrics)
cf. "Lover's Farewell (I)" (lyrics)
cf. "The Crow Song (I)" (lyrics, theme)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Billie Magee Magaw
Willie McGee McGaw
Two Old Crows
Three Black Crows
NOTES: The degree of degeneration suffered by the American versions of this song is phenomenal (They are often quite silly, and if they retain the theme of the birds eating carrion, it is usually an animal, such as a horse). Brewster's longer version is, in fact, a trick upon listeners: "You may think there is another verse -- but there isn't."
If it weren't for the intermediate versions, we could hardly recognize them as one piece. But that's oral tradition -- though Belden says the song was part of the minstrel tradition in the 1860s, and Flanders-Ancient notes the inclusion of a "rewritten form in books like Cleveland's Compendium of 1859." In many of these versions it is a horse, not a man, which supplies the birds' meal.
The by-blow "The Twa Corbies" is one of the handful of traditional songs in Palgrave's Golden Treasury (item CXXXVI). Not sure what that says about either Palgrave or the song. Properly, "The Twa Corbies" should probably be split off, since it is recensionally different from "The Three Ravens." But this is impossible in practice, because the degenerate forms often could come from either, or indeed recombine the two. - RBW
File: C026

Three Rogues, The


See In Good Old Colony Times (File: R112)

Three Sailor Boys


See The Mermaid [Child 289] (File: C289)

Three Sailors (Three Kings; Three Beggars; Thee Soldiers; Three Sweeps)


DESCRIPTION: Three sailors/tinkers/sweeps/... come courting and seeking lodging. Mother has daughter stay in bed and sends the suitors away. She wakes her daughter and accepts three kings. The daughter is found "not fit to walk with a king"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: courting ring rejection mother royalty sailor soldier tinker
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1568, "Here's Three Beggars" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #12965
File: GrD81568

Three Sailors of Bristol City


See Little Boy Billee (Le Petite Navire, The Little Corvette) (File: K114)

Three Scamping Rogues


See In Good Old Colony Times (File: R112)

Three Scotch Robbers, The


See Henry Martyn [Child 250] AND Sir Andrew Barton [Child 167] (File: C250)

Three Ships Came Sailing In


See I Saw Three Ships (File: OBB104)

Three Sons, The


See In Good Old Colony Times (File: R112)

Three Times Round


DESCRIPTION: "Three times round went our gallant ship, Till she sank to the bottom of the sea" "Haul her up, cried the little sailor lass, Ere she sinks ...." "Then I will, cried the little sailor boy, Ere she sinks ...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: sea ship ordeal nonballad sailor
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1593, "Three Times Round" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Roud #12973
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Mermaid" [Child 289] (verse form and some lines)
NOTES: The last verse of "The Mermaid" Child 289B,C,D becomes a game. In 289D Child notes that a Such broadside adds the verse not found in a Birt broadside. - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81593

Three Weeks Before Easter


See The False Bride (The Week Before Easter; I Once Loved a Lass) (File: K152)

Three Wise Old Women


DESCRIPTION: Three wise old women go walking in winter. One carries a ladder; another, a basket; "the wisest one, she carried a fan to keep off the sun." (At least) one climbs the ladder and is blown to sea. (They use the basket to bail, the fan as a sail)
AUTHOR: Mrs. E. T. Corbett, according to Felleman _The Best Loved Poems of the American People_
EARLIEST DATE: 1942 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: humorous animal talltale
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph 130, "Three Wise Old Women" (1 text)
ST R130 (Partial)
Roud #3271
NOTES: Although hardly known in tradition, Randolph's text differs enough from the presumed original in Felleman that I have to think there was folk processing along the way. E.g., in the original, they climb the tree for fear of a bear; it seems as if the informant would remember that. - RBW
File: R130

Three Young Ladies


See Babylon, or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie [Child 14] (File: C014)

Thresherman (and the Squire), The


See Jolly Thresher, The (Poor Man, Poor Man) (File: R127)

Thresherman, The


See Jolly Thresher, The (Poor Man, Poor Man) (File: R127)

Threshing Machine (I), The


DESCRIPTION: "It's all very well to have a machine To thresh your wheat and your barley clean, To thresh it and win(now) it, all fit for sale, Then go off to market so brisk and well." Singer tells of the wonders of the new threshing machine and the people who tend it
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Gardiner manuscript)
KEYWORDS: farming technology work moniker nonballad worker
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Kennedy 231, "The Machiner's Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, THRSHSNG*
Roud #874
RECORDINGS:
Jim Copper, "The Thrashing Machine" (on Lomax41, LomaxCD1741)
NOTES: While this is a non-ballad, I've included it -- mostly so that we may reference it when we get to "The Thrashing Machine", a bawdy song. - PJS
In any case, some of the stanzas have plots. - RBW
File: K231

Threshing Machine (II), The


See The Thrashing Machine (I) (File: RcThraM)

Through All the World Below


DESCRIPTION: "Through all the world below God is seen all around, Search hills and valleys through, There he's found. The growing of the corn, the lily and the thorn...." The song describes God's part in the entire universe, and how the creation praises the deity
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1825 (Columbian Harmony)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Lomax-FSNA 34, "Captain Kidd-II" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 38, #4 (1994), pp, 60-61, "Captain Kidd" (1 text, 1 tune, with three-part Sacred Harp-style harmony)
Roud #6667
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Wayfaring Stranger" (tune) and references there
File: LoF034

Through Bushes and Briars


See Bushes and Briars (File: FSOE026)

Through the City Where He Rode


DESCRIPTION: "Through the city where he rode Was spotless white. He will lead me where No tears don't never fall. Oh yes, he is leading me, For I feel his hands on mine." "I shall know him by the prints Of the nails in his hands." All verses are variants on the first
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 642, "Through the City Where He Rode" (1 text)
Roud #11937
NOTES: It was Thomas (John 20:24-29) who demanded to see the marks of the nails on Jesus's hands.
The rest of the song doesn't make much sense. If the description of the city and the rider is a reference to Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, well, nowhere is there any mention of white in any of the gospel narratives. That leaves only references in the Apocalypse -- e.g. the white horse of Rev. 6:2 or the white robes of Rev. (3:4), 4:4, 6:11, 7:9, 13. Perhaps the likeliest reference is to Rev. 19:11, 14, where the King of Kings rides a white horse. No white *city*, though. - RBW
File: Br3642

Through the Moss and Through the Muir


DESCRIPTION: Through moss and moor, corn and barley, "aye the foalie shook its tailie Through the woods o' Fyvie"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: nonballad horse
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1771, "Through the Moss and Through the Muir" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #13018
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Whistle Owre the Lave O't" (tune, per GreigDuncan8)
File: GrD1771

Through the Wood as the Lady Ran


DESCRIPTION: "And thro' the wood as the lady ran, She pu'd a bram'le at the hin'er end."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1909 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS:
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1793, "Through the Wood as the Lady Ran" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #13021
NOTES: The current description is all of the GreigDuncan8 fragment.
The notes to GreigDuncan8 would have us compare this fragment to "The Stripling." While the fragment lines are not in the GreigDuncan5 texts of that song the fragment here could conceivable be a missing piece to that song. - BS
People attempting to disguise their tracks would sometimes tie some sort of plant to their horses' feet or their own backs; I'm guessing that is what is happening here. But, obviously, we have no clue as to why. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81793

Thurso Fishing Boat Disaster, The


DESCRIPTION: "A boat from Thurso Bay did go, out to the fishing ground... All wrapped in oilskins were the crew... In one fatal wave they drew their last breath Their bodies now roll in the wide Pentland Firth In a watery grave instead of on earth"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan1)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship storm wreck
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Jan 18, 1874 - The herring fishing boat is lost in a gale in Pentland Firth (source: GreigDuncan1)
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan1 34, "The Thurso Fishing Boat Disaster" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #3804
NOTES: The GreigDuncan1 fragment has the date as June 18, 1889. - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD1034

Thyme, It Is a Precious Thing


DESCRIPTION: The singer laments her precious thyme, which she had and lost. A sailor gave her a rose "that never would decay" to remind her of "the night he stole my bonny thyme away." She warns others against the same mistake
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973
KEYWORDS: loneliness sailor seduction virginity
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (1 citation):
DT, THYMEPRE*
Roud #3
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "In My Garden Grew Plenty of Thyme"
cf. "The Gowans are Gay"
cf. "Garners Gay (Rue; The Sprig of Thyme)"
NOTES: In flower symbolism, thyme stood for virginity. For a catalog of some of the sundry flower symbols, see the notes to "The Broken-Hearted Gardener."
Thyme songs are almost impossible to tell apart, because of course the plot (someone seduces the girl) and the burden (let no man steal your thym) are always identical. For the same reasons, verses float freely between them. So fragmentary versions are almost impossible to classify.
The Digital Tradition has a version, "Rue and Thyme," which seems to have almost all the common elements. Whether it is the ancestor of the various thyme songs, or a gathering together of separate pieces, is not clear to me.
The chorus, "Thyme, it is a precious thing; Thyme brings all things to your mind. Thyme with all its labours Along with all its joys, And it's thyme brings all things to an end," is quite characteristic in its lyric strength. The plot is less diagnostic. - RBW
File: DTthymep

Tibbie Fowler


DESCRIPTION: "Tibbie Fowler [or Robie Stobie] in the glen" stole her mother's hen and got the blame. Whether roasted or raw, Tibbie ate her all.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: theft food parody chickens
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Greig #159, p. 2, ("Robie Stobie doon the glen") (1 text)
GreigDuncan8 1691, "Tibbie Fowler" (2 texts)
Roud #5504
NOTES: The current song seems a parody of another song with at least two major versions. See
David Herd, editor, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. (Edinburgh, 1870 (reprint of 1776)), Vol II, pp. 104-105, "Tibby Fowler of the Glen"
Hans Hecht, editor, Songs From David Herd's Manuscripts (Edinburgh, 1904), #554 pp. 174-175,304-305, "Tibbie Fowler" [Not the same song as in Herd, above.]
Robert Chambers, The Scottish Songs (Edinburgh, 1829), Vol II, pp. 378-379, "Tibbie Fowler" is close to Herd.
James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #569, p. 673, "Tibbie Fowler" (1 text, 1 tune) is close to Hecht-Herd.
And with the usual reservations about this book, R. H. Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, (Paisley, 1880 reissue of 1810 edition ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 83-87, "Variations of 'Tibbie Fowler'." Of this set, Hecht-Herd says, on p. 304: "worthless stuff."
In any case, none of these has a verse that is a clear base for what I assume is a parody, though the first line of the Herd version and the form of Hecht-Herd is suggestive. On the other hand, none have a good word for the subject. The chorus of Hecht-Herd: "Wooing at her, pu'in at her, Courtin at her, cannae get her: Filthy elf, it's for her pelf That a' the lads are wooin at her"
Whitelaw, writing about the Herd/Chambers text: "In the Tea Table Miscellany, Ramsay has a song 'to the tune of Tibble fowler in the Glen,' which proves that the air, at least is old.... The authorship has been ascribed to a 'Rev. Dr. Strachan late minister of Carnwath; but David Laing says that there has been no minister of Carnevath of that name for at least the last three hundred years" (source: Alexander Whitelaw, A Book of Scottish Song (Glasgow, 1845), pp. 61-62, "Tibbie Fowler") - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81691

Tibo (Thibault) [Laws C6]


DESCRIPTION: Tibo is one of a crew trying to clear a logjam. The logs he is on give way; Tibo is washed away and his comrade cannot keep hold of him. He leaves a widow and young children; the lumbermen make contributions for their support
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: logger death drowning
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Laws C6, "Tibo (Thibault)"
DT 808, TEBO
Roud #2221
File: LC06

Tickle Cove Pond


DESCRIPTION: A man hauling wood with his mare "Kitty" takes a short cut across a frozen pond. The horse hesitates to cross the weak ice. The man ignores the horse and they fall in. The man shouts for help and neighbors come to haul the mare out with a chanty song.
AUTHOR: Mark Walker ?
EARLIEST DATE: 1940 (Doyle)
KEYWORDS: horse work rescue
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Blondahl, pp. 16-17, "Tickle Cove Pond" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle2, pp. 18-19, "Tickle Cove Pond" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle3, pp. 75-76, "Tickle Cove Pond" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TCKLCOVE*
Roud #7313
RECORDINGS:
Omar Blondahl, "Tickle Cove Pond" (on NFOBlondahl01,NFOBlondahl05)
NOTES: A "tickle" is a narrow inlet of water. Tickle Cove is on the north-east coast of Newfoundland. Also, the song has a chanty included in it that is contextualized for the narrative of the song. For a colorful explanation of Newfoundland usage, see Harold Horwood, "Newfoundland" (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1969) 83-84. - SH
The author is named by GEST Songs of Newfoundland and Labrador site.
If you are interested in the Newfoundland song tradition in general and the history of this song in particular be sure to read Taking Apart "Tickle Cove Pond" in Canadian Journal for Traditional Music, vol. 29, 2002 by Philip Hiscock, pp. 32-68, also available in PDF format at //cjtm.icaap.org/content/29/05-Hiscock.pdf. Hiscock does not just discuss the origins of the song. From his abstract: "Nowadays, the song has certain meanings for listeners. This paper suggests they reflect contemporary beliefs and 'imaginings' about Newfoundland's past."
"The tune is derived from the Irish tune 'Tatter [i.e., Father] Jack Walsh,' which also goes by several other names in Ireland." Hiscock, p. 40.
The words of some of the songs Hiscock attributes to Mark Waller may be found at the Bonavista Bay Songs section of the Newfoundland's Grand Banks sites - BS
File: Doy18

Tickle My Toe


DESCRIPTION: In successive verses of this bawdy cumulative song, the singer lays his finger or touches his lady friend on the toe, knee, thigh, "funny thing," etc. With each he asks what it is and she gives a nonsensical reply.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: bawdy cumulative
FOUND IN: US(So) Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph-Legman I, pp. 545-551, "Tickle My Toe" (5 texts, 1 tune)
RECORDINGS:
Pat MacNamara, "I Left My Hand" (on IRClare01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Gently Johnny My Jingalo"
cf. "A-Roving" (plot, such as it is)
cf. "Baltimore (Up She Goes)" (theme)
cf. "Yo Ho, Yo Ho" (plot)
NOTES: Legman offers substantial notes on the history of this song in Randolph-Legman I. - EC
It can, obviously, be difficult to tell this from "A-Roving" and, especially, "Yo Ho." The reader is strongly advised to check that song as well as this. - RBW
File: RL545

Tiddliewink Old Man


DESCRIPTION: "Tiddliwink, old man, get a woman if you can. If you can't get a woman, get an old tin can. If it wasn't for your name and it wasn't for your shame, I'd let you have a go in a minute, young man"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1974 (recording, Jasper Smith)
KEYWORDS: humorous nonballad nonsense
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond))
RECORDINGS:
Jasper Smith, "Tiddliewink Old Man" (on Voice14)
NOTES: The current description is all of the Voice14 text. - BS
File: RcTidOMa

Tiddy High O!


DESCRIPTION: "An' now we are bound for ol' Bristol Town, Tiddy high O! high hay! Good-bye to them black gals, the yellars an' the browns, Tiddy high O! hay, high hay!" Verses give references to rum and sugar trading/loading.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (Sharp-EFC)
KEYWORDS: shanty worksong clothes food drink
FOUND IN: West Indies Britain
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Hugill, p. 453, "Tiddy High O!" (1 text, 1 tune) [AbEd, p. 339]
Sharp-EFC, XLI, p. 46, "Tiddy I O" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #8288
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Haul 'Er Away (Little Sally Racket)" (character of Sally Rackett)
File: Hugi453

Tiddy I O


See Tiddy High O! (File: Hugi453)

Tiddy, the Tailor


See The Trooper and the Tailor (File: FSC139)

Tideo


See Jingle at the Window (Tideo) (File: R525)

Tidy Irish Lad


DESCRIPTION: "IÕm a tidy bit of an Irish lad, as you can plainly see, And I like a drop of the creature when I go out upon a spree." The singer boasts of Irish drink, and notes how the English need the Irish, who won the battles of Waterloo, Inkerman, and Sebastopol
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1922 (Dean)
KEYWORDS: Ireland drink soldier
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
June 18, 1815 - Battle of Waterloo
Nov 5, 1854 - Battle of Inkerman clears the way for the siege of Sevastopol (the city fell in the fall of 1855)
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Dean, pp. 64-65, "Tidy Irish Lad" (1 text)
Roud #9561
File: Dean064

Tie Pile Song (Duke See the Tie Pile)


DESCRIPTION: "Oh, (Duke) see the tie pile and Duke git mad, Oh, Duke see the money pile and Duke git glad, Oh Daddy, git one." "Oh, tain't no use in foolin' around, Oh, all of them ties got to go to town, Oh Daddy, git one."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1944 (Wheeler)
KEYWORDS: work nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
MWheeler, pp. 23-24, "Duke See the Tie Pile" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #10000
NOTES: Wheeler explains that the call, "Oh Daddy, git one" was the call used by rousters to tell the next person in line to pick up his tie. For this reason, I have conjectured that this is not a composition by "Duke" Sims (Wheeler's informant), but a tie-carrying call. I have named it accordingly.
Wheeler's version is more or less a standard blues form, using only four tones of the scale, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are "true" ballad versions in existence. - RBW
File: MWhee023A

Tie-Hackin's Too Tiresome


See Rye Whisky (File: R405)

Tie-Shuffling Chant


See Can'cha Line 'Em (File: LxU078)

Tie-Tamping Chant


DESCRIPTION: "Oh, tamp 'em up solid, So dey won't come down... Oh, you can do it." Any suitable verse may be used. Last line of chorus is repeated until the task is finished.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934
KEYWORDS: work worksong nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lomax-ABFS, pp. 17-19, "Tie-Tamping Chant" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #15522
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Pay Me My Money Down" (floating lyrics)
NOTES: The Lomaxes quote all sorts of verses for this song. One suspects that not all actually came from their informant. - RBW
File: LxA017

Tifty's Annie


See Andrew Lammie [Child 233] (File: C233)

Tiger and the Lion, The


See Bold Dighton [Laws A21] (File: LA21)

Tigery Orum


See Marrowbones [Laws Q2] (File: LQ02)

Till Cock Gets Higher


DESCRIPTION: A cante-fable, this tale with interpolated song tells of the encounter of a country boy with a prostitute, and their bargaining for price.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: bawdy whore bargaining
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph-Legman II, p. 603, "Till Cock Gets Higher" (1 text)
File: RL603

Tilly Illy Rey Dum Dee


DESCRIPTION: "Tilly illy rey dum daddie, Tilly illy rey dum dee" (2x)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS:
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan8 1785, "Tilly Illy Rey Dum Dee" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #13527
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Drunken Sailor" (tune, per GreigDuncan8)
NOTES: The current description is all of the GreigDuncan8 fragment. - BS.
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD81785

Tim Finnegan's Wake


See Finnegan's Wake [Laws Q17] (File: LQ17)

Timber (I)


DESCRIPTION: "We are trying to carry this timber to the building, Hallelujah, I don't know." "We will make doors and windows in that building, Hallelujah, I don't know." "We will build it to the glory of the Lord, Hallelujah, I don't know."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg)
KEYWORDS: religious
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Sandburg, p. 386, "Timber" (1 short text, 1 tune)
File: San386

Timber (Jerry the Mule)


DESCRIPTION: The singer encourages his mule, "Hollerin', Tmber, Lord, this timber's gotta roll." He complains about his miserable boss. Jerry the mule can't pull more, so the boss beats him. Jerry kills the boss. The singer wonders why he didn't kill the boss himself
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973
KEYWORDS: work animal death boss
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Silber-FSWB, p. 130, "Timber/Jerry the Mule" (1 text)
DT, JERRYMUL
File: FSWB130B

Timbrook


DESCRIPTION: "Timbrook has done gone and thrown the rider (x2), If you'd been there when the horses come around, You'd a swore to your maker they never touched ground." "Oh mister, oh mister, I'm risking my life To win money for you and your wife...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: racing horse gambling
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 4, 1878 - race between Ten Broeck and Miss Mollie McCarthy (won by Ten Broeck)
FOUND IN: US(S0)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Randolph 881, "Timbrook" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 391-392, "Timbrook" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 881)
Roud #2190
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Molly and Tenbrooks" [Laws H27] (subject)
cf. "Old Timbrook Blue" (subject)
NOTES: Although Randoph's informant, almost certainly correctly, believe this to refer to the race that also spawned "Molly and Tenbrooks," the songs appear to be distinct (though Roud lumps them, and Cohen's notes to Randolph also seem to equate them). - RBW
File: R881

Time


See No Hiding Place (File: FSWB370C)

Time Draws Near


See My Dearest Dear (File: SKE40)

Time Enough Yet


DESCRIPTION: The young man begs the girl to marry; she replied that there is "time enough yet." After hearing enough of this he says he will never return. She soon asks him to come back. He replies there is "time enough yet." Girls are warned not to delay marraige
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Belden)
KEYWORDS: love courting rejection
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Belden, pp. 197-198, "Time Enough Yet" (1 text plus an excerpt from 1 more)
Randolph 369, "Time Enough Yet" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Roud #4264
File: R369

Time for Us to Leave Her


See Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her (File: Doe089)

Time Has Come, My Dearest Dear, The


See My Dearest Dear (File: SKE40)

Time Has Made a Change In Me


DESCRIPTION: "Time has made a change since my childhood days, Many of my friends have gone away." "Time has made a change in the old home place... Time has made a change in me." The singer notes how he has aged, and looks forward to the next world when pain will end
AUTHOR: Harkins Freye
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Lomax recording, from Helena Buggs & Alfred Hamilton); probably written in the 1920w
KEYWORDS: nonballad age
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
DT, TIMEHAS
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 35, #1 (1990), pp, 42-43, "Time Has Made a Change In Me" (1 text, 1 tune, with notes implying it was collected from tradition)
Roud #16072
File: DTtimeha

Time Is On the Wing


DESCRIPTION: Strew with roses life's rough path, and let's be gay, Thoughtless youth proposes, And trifle time away." "Love's sweet voice will oft betray ... Ev'ry flow'r must fade away And time is on the wing"
AUTHOR: Words: Charles Diblin (1745-1815)/Music: William Reeve (source: GreigDuncan5)
EARLIEST DATE: before 1820 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 12(109))
KEYWORDS: courting love flowers nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan5 931, "Strew, Strew with Roses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6747
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 12(109), "Time Is On the Wing" ("Strew, strew with roses"), J. Pitts (London), 1802-1819; also Johnson Ballads 1026, Harding B 17(313b), Johnson Ballads fol. 400 View 2 of 2 [some illegible words], Firth b.26(157), Harding B 11(2590), "Time Is On the Wing"
File: GrD5391

Time to be Made a Wife


See The Old Maid's Song (II) (File: FJ162)

Time to Leave Her


See Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her (File: Doe089)

Time's Drawing On, Love


See My Dearest Dear (File: SKE40)

Times Gettin' Hard


DESCRIPTION: "Times gettin' hard, boys, Money's gettin' scarce. If times don't get much better, boys, I'm bound to leave this place." "Take my true love by the hand, lead her through the town...." The singer prepares to depart for (California?) where times are better
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg; recording by Jaybird Coleman)
KEYWORDS: hardtimes poverty exile
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Sandburg, p. 242, "Times Gettin Hard, Boys" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 117, "Times Are Getting Hard" (1 text)
Roud #15620
RECORDINGS:
Jaybird Coleman, "Times Gettin' Hard -- Work's Been Gettin' Scarce" (Gennett, unissued; rec. 1927)
Pete Seeger, "Time's A-getting Hard" (on PeteSeeger06, PeteSeegerCD01) (on PeteSeeger26)
File: San242

Times Gettin' Hard, Boys


See Times Gettin Hard (File: San242)

Ting, Ting the Bell Rang


See Lingle Lingle Lang Tang (Our Cat's Dead) (File: MSNR041)

Ting, Ting the Bell Rang, Fa's Noo Deid?


DESCRIPTION:
AUTHOR:
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS:
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lingle Lingle Lang Tang (Our Cat's Dead)
File: MSNR041

Tinker Behind the Door, The


See The Beverly Maid and the Tinker (The Tinker Behind the Door) (File: Pea318)

Tinker Loon, The


See Davy Faa (Remember the Barley Straw) (File: K188)

Tinker, The


DESCRIPTION: The lady of the manor sends for the jolly tinker, who services her, her staff (including the butler) and then rides off, "little drops of semen pitter-patting at his feet."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE:
KEYWORDS: adultery bawdy Gypsy lover sex tinker
FOUND IN: Australia Britain(England,Scotland) US(MA,MW,So,SW)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Cray, pp. 29-36, "The Tinker" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Randolph-Legman I, pp. 113-117, "The Jolly Tinker" (3 texts, 1 tune)
DT, JOLITINK JOLLTNK3
Roud #863
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Jolly Beggar" [Child 279]
cf. "Clout the Cauldron"
cf. "The Jolly Tinker (I)"
cf. "The Jolly Tinker (III)"
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Highland Tinker
The Jolly Tinker
NOTES: Randolph-Legman provides a detailed history of this ballad. - EC
This song can be told from "The Jolly Tinker" by its description of the tinker's, um, improbable physical attributes. - RBW
File: EM029

Tinker's Wedding, The


See The Tinkler's Waddin (The Tinker's Wedding) (File: RcTTWttw)

Tinkler's Waddin, The (The Tinker's Wedding)


DESCRIPTION: Amid drink and celebration, bridegroom Norman Scott is wed for the fourth time (no mention of divorce or widowerhood), to fortune-teller Meg McNeil; a cheerful brawl ensues
AUTHOR: William Watt
EARLIEST DATE: 1904 (Ford); reportedly published 1835
KEYWORDS: marriage wedding fight drink party humorous tinker Gypsy
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Ford-Vagabond, pp. 1-4, "The Tinkler's Waddin'" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greig #102, pp. 1-2, "The Tinkler's Waddin'" (1 text)
GreigDuncan3 609, "The Tinkers' Weddin'" (1 text fragment, 2 tunes)
Roud #5408
RECORDINGS:
Willie Kemp and Curly MacKay, "The Tinklers' Wedding" (on Voice13)
Jimmy Scott, "The Tinker's Weddin'" (on Borders1)
John Strachan, "The Tinkler's Waddin" (on Lomax43, LomaxCD1743)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.27(397/398), "The Tinkler's Wedding" ("In June when broom in bloom was seen"), unknown, n.d.
NLScotland, L.C.Fol.70(141b), "The Tinker's Wedding," unknown, c. 1840-1860; also L.C.Fol.70(141)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rothesay-O" (tune)
NOTES: The work "tinker" in Britain is applied both to workers in tin (i.e., menders of pots and kettles) and "travellers," or Gypsies. In many songs, including this, it's ambiguous which is meant -- but since many or most of the travelling tinkers *were* Gypsies, it barely matters. - PJS
According to Kennedy, William Watt was born in 1792, and also wrote "Kate Dalrymple," as well as a version of "The Peddlar." The tune used is reportedly identical to "Rothesay-O," though it is not entirely clear which came first. - RBW
GreigDuncan3: "Greig gives the text [which GreigDuncan3 does not include] in Ob. [i.e., Greig] as it appears in Ford." Greig #102 commentary does not say that and there are minor spelling and punctuation differences between Greig #102 and Ford (at least in Ford's 1899 series). - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: RcTTWttw

Tinna Clinnama Clinchama Clingo


See The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin [Child 277] (File: C277)

Tinnaberna Fishermen (I), The


DESCRIPTION: Tinnaberna fishermen out at nightfall November 14, 1815 are overtaken by a squall blowing them northwest. They can see "Poulder fading fastly from our view," the lighthouse at Tuskar, and the warning "bonfire on the hill" but cannot return to shore.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1942 (Ranson)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship storm wreck fishing
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Nov 1815 - Six of seven fishing boats were lost with their crews when they were blown across the channel to the Welsh coast (source: Ranson)
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ranson, pp. 42-43, "The Tinnaberna Fishermen" (1 text, 1 tune)
File: Ran042

Tinnaberna Fishermen (II), The


DESCRIPTION: "On the dark rocks of Wales our poor neighbors were lost ... Those tender-hearted Welshmen, we for them will ever pray That God may grant them pardon against their dying day"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1946 (Ranson)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship storm wreck fishing
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Nov 1815 - Six of seven fishing boats were lost with their crews when they were blown across the channel to the Welsh coast (source: Ranson)
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ranson, pp. 43-44, "The Tinnaberna Fishermen" (1 text)
File: Ran043

Tip for Gold and Tip for Silver


See Salmon Fishers (File: MSNR078)

Tippecanoe


DESCRIPTION: "A bumper around now, my hearties, I'll sing you a song that is new; I'll please to the buttons all parties And sing of Old Tippecanoe." The singer details the history of Tippecanoe, and declares, "Bid Martin Van Buren adieu."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1840 (Tippecanoe Song-Book)
KEYWORDS: political nonballad derivative
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 2, 1840 - William Henry Harrison defeats Martin Van Buren
Mar 4, 1841 - Harrison (the first Whig to be elected President) is inaugurated. He gives a rambling inaugural address in a rainstorm and catches cold
April 4, 1841 - Harrison dies of pneumonia, making him the first president to fail to complete his term. After some hesitation, Vice President John Tyler is allowed to succeed as President
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownIII 397, "Tippecanoe" (1 text)
Roud #6950
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rosin the Beau" (tune) and references there
cf. "Old Tippecanoe" (subject)
cf. "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" (subject)
cf. "Harrison Campaign Song" (subject)
NOTES: For details on the (thoroughly dirty) 1840 Presidential campaign, and the purely false picture it drew of William Henry Harrison, see the notes to "Old Tippecanoe." - RBW
File: Be3397

Tipperary


DESCRIPTION: "Way out in old South Dakota... Once roamed the greatest of outlaws... His name was old Tipperary, Tipperary of rodeo fame, The greatest of all the bronc riders Will never forget that great name." The horse's methods of throwing riders are recounted
AUTHOR: Tex Fletcher
EARLIEST DATE: 1954 ("Hoofs and Horns")
KEYWORDS: horse cowboy
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ohrlin-HBT 68, "Tipperary" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: According to Ohrlin, Tipperary was a great rodeo horse of the period following the First World War. Only one rider is recorded as having stayed on his back, and even that feat has been questioned. - RBW
File: Ohr068

Tipperary Christening, The


DESCRIPTION: Dennis is christened in Tipperary. Everyone is there. "After dancing, they went in to lunching ... They had all kinds of tea ... and everything that would please." After dinner there was speaking, match making... "they wished the next would be twins"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1901 (O'Conor)
KEYWORDS: childbirth dancing food party moniker twins
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
O'Conor, p. 15, "The Tipperary Christening" (1 text)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(3840), "The Tipperary Christening", unknown, n.d.
File: OCon015

Tipperary Far Away


DESCRIPTION: A rebel, Sean Treacy, is dying by moonlight on Talbot Street in Dublin. He asks a passing comrade to take a lock of his hair and take it to his mother in his "native home In Tipperary far away." His comrades bury him.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1959 (IRClancyMakem03)
KEYWORDS: battle rebellion death Ireland IRA hair
FOUND IN: Ireland
RECORDINGS:
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Tipperary Far Away" (on IRClancyMakem03)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Sean Treacy" (subject: the death of Treacy)
cf. "The Station of Knocklong" (for other activities of Treacy)
NOTES: According to Phoenix Publishing Short History of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade on the eircom site, this song refers to Sean Treacy, shot October 14, 1920 in Talbot Street, Dublin. Treacy's body was returned to Tipperary for burial at Kilfeacle. Treacy was a member of the Third Tipperary Brigade. - BS
Perhaps the most popular of at least two and possibly three Sean Treacy songs. Robert Kee, in Ourselves Alone, being volume III of The Green Flag, p. 116, quotes another, "Our lovely Sean is dead and gone, Shot down in Talbot Street." This is said to have been adapted from an "ancient Irish lament." He does not cite a source for this statement.
For more on Treacy's short, tumultuous career, see the notes to "Sean Treacy." - RBW
File: RcTipFaA

Tipperary Recruiting Song, The


DESCRIPTION: "'Tis now we'd want to be wary, boys, The recruiters are out in Tipperary, boys...." The Irish youths are advised to avoid the British sergeants and the free drinks they offer. They are reminded of all the harm John Bull has done in the past
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1962 (Galvin)
KEYWORDS: Ireland recruiting drink soldier
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (2 citations):
PGalvin, p. 88, "Tipperary Recruiting Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 299-300, "Tipperary Recruiting Song" (1 text)
NOTES: It is not immediately evident what time period this song refers to. The British desperation for soldiers might seem to imply World War I -- but in 1916 Britain instituted the draft (in England; it took a little longer in Ireland); the recruiting sergeant was a thing of the past. So an earlier period is indicated. - RBW
File: PGa088

Tipperty's Jean


DESCRIPTION: "In a wee thacket hoosie, far doon i' the glen, There lived a young lassie, the plague o' the men." Tipperty Jean's beauty has ensnared many, but she rejects them all -- even the Laird as too old. She has enough money to live, and so marries Puir Johnnie
AUTHOR: Peter Buchan ?
EARLIEST DATE: 1930 (Ord); Buchan died 1881
KEYWORDS: love courting money rejection marriage
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ord, p. 283-284, "Tipperty's Jean" (1 text)
Roud #5602
File: Ord283

Tiranti, My Love


See Lord Randal [Child 12] (File: C012)

Tired o' Workin' Lyauvie's Braes


DESCRIPTION: "Tired o' workin Lyauvie's braes, An' tired o' gaun to Imphm's toon, I'll gang back to Peterhead, An' there I'll get my penny fun'"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: work hardtimes farming worker
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 350, "Tired o' Workin' Lyauvie's Braes" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #5900
NOTES: The current description is all of the GreigDuncan3 fragment. - BS
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3350

Tiree Tragedy, A


See Mo Nighean donn a Cornaig (File: K019)

'Tis Not Always the Bullet that Kills


DESCRIPTION: "Please, dear Uncle, now tell me why you're sighing." The boy wonders why, if he survived the war, he is always sad. The boy's mother says that she loved the uncle, but married her sweetheart's brother when she thought the uncle dead. Both regret this
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1920 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: love soldier betrayal war family
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph 815, "'Tis Not Always the Bullet that Kills" (1 text)
Roud #7431
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Two Little Girls in Blue" (plot)
File: R815

Tis Now, Young Man, Give Me Attention


DESCRIPTION: The singer complains of his sad life. He courts and marries a girl. After seven years, he finds her untrue, but cannot gain a divorce because he can't prove her infidelity. He wishes to sail away, but hates to live his little girl (?). He dies at sea
AUTHOR: Napoleon Stetson?
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: marriage betrayal sailor death ring
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
BrownII 312, "'Tis Now, Young Man, Give Me Attention" (1 text)
Roud #6648
File: BrII312

Tis the Gift To Be Simple


See Simple Gifts (File: DarN259A)

Titanic (I), The ("It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down") [Laws D24] (Titanic #1)


DESCRIPTION: (Though the builders called her unsinkable), "On Monday morning... the great Titanic began to reel and rock." Rich and poor will not mix, so the poor on the lower decks drown first. The band plays "Nearer My God to Thee" and sixteen hundred people die
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1924 (recording, Ernest V. Stoneman)
KEYWORDS: sea wreck family disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(Ap,SE,So)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Laws D24, "The Titanic I"
Randolph 693, "The Great Titanic" ("B" fragment only; Randolph's "A" text is "The Titanic (IV)" ("Lost on the Great Titanic") (Titanic #4))
BrownII 287, "The Titanic" (5 texts plus an excerpt and mention of 2 more. The Laws data for this book is badly confused, but it appears the "C" and "D" texts are this song, and apparently the "E" fragment also; "A" and "B" are broadsides Laws does not classify (The first clearly based on "The Golden Vanity"; the second seems to be an adaption of this song to "There Will Be a Hot Time"), and "H" is "God Moves on the Water")
MHenry-Appalachians, pp. 88-89, "The Great Titanic" (1 text)
Friedman, p. 323, "The Titanic" (1 text+2 fragments)
Asch/Dunson/Raim, p. 60 "When That Great Ship Went Down" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-SoFolklr, p. 723, "The Ship Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
Courlander-NFM, p. 77, "(The Titanic)" (1 text)
Pankake-PHCFSB, pp. 280-281, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NAS, pp. 184-185, "The Coast of Peru" (1 text)
Silber-FSWB, p. 55, "The Titanic" (1 text)
DT 616, TITANIC5*
Roud #774
RECORDINGS:
Pink Anderson, "The Titanic" (on PinkAnd1)
Vernon Dalhart, "The Great Titanic" (Champion 15121, 1926) (Radiex 4131=Grey Gull 4131 [as Jeff Calhoun], 1927)
George Reneau, "The Sinking of the Titanic" (Vocalion 5077, 1926)
Ernest V. Stoneman, "The Titanic" (OKeh 40288, 1925; rec. 1924); "Sinking of the Titanic" (Edison 51823, 1926) (CYL: Edison [BA] 5200, 1926); "Sinking of the Titanic" (on Stonemans02)
William & Versey Smith, "When That Great Ship Went Down" (Paramount 12505B, 1927; on AAFM1)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
cf. "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" (tune)
NOTES: Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
The reference to rich and poor not mixing is accurate enough, though hardly unique to the Titanic. As with most liners of the time, the Titanic carried three classes of passengers: First class, second class, and steerage, for the poorest people (mostly emigrants, and mostly jammed in their cabins as tight as sardines)
Steerage passengers, of course, were stuck far down in the ship. Dr. Robert D. Ballard's The Discovery of the Titanic has a side view of the ship's plans on page 168, showing that many of the steerage passengers were four floors below the main deck, near the waterline, whereas the first class passengers were mostly above the main deck, with easy access to the lifeboats.
It showed in the casualties. According to Lincoln P. Paine's Ships of the World, 60% of the first class passengers survived (Ballard, p. 149, reports that every child in first class, save one, survived, and she died only because she wouldn't leave her mother, who wouldn't leave her husband). 42% of second class passengers survived, but only 25% of steerage (comparable to the 24% of the crew who survived).
Some versions of this, including Friedman's, have a reference to Paul's promise that "not a man should drown"; this is a reference to Acts 27:34, when Paul is on his way to Rome and the ship in which he is being held prisoner is driven by a storm. Friedman wonders if there might not be an earlier song about Paul's wreck which gave rise to a Titanic text. It seems likely enough, and the verse about Paul is a likely survival, since it is almost irrelevant in its current place in the text.
In fact, we might even make a guess as to the source of the verse. Most recordings of this song use an approximation of Ernest Stoneman's tune. But Wade Mainer eventually recorded a version (not cited here because I don't know the album number) which uses a tune effectively identical to the one he uses for "Home in the Rock." So that could be a source for scripture references.
To tell this from the other Titanic songs, consider the chorus:
It was sad when that great ship went down,
It was sad when that great ship went down.
There were husbands and wives,
Little children lost their lives,
It was sad when that great ship went down.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: LD24

Titanic (II), The ("The Titanic, Out on that Ocean") (Titanic #2)


DESCRIPTION: "The rich folks 'cided to take a trip On the finest ship was ever built. The cap'n persuaded these people to think This Titanic too safe to sink. Cho: Out on that ocean, The great wide ocean, The Titanic, out on that ocean, sinking down!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck family disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Sandburg, pp. 254-255, "De Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #4172
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
This song is item dI26 in Laws's Appendix II.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: San254

Titanic (III), The ("God Moves on the Water") (Titanic #3)


DESCRIPTION: The story of the Titanic. The women have to watch their husbands drown. Captain Smith awakens to gunshots. Millionaire Jacob Nash cannot pay his fare (to survive). Chorus: "God moves on the water (x3) And the people had to run and pray.
AUTHOR: Blind Willie Johnson?
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (recording, Blind Willie Johnson)
KEYWORDS: death ship wreck disaster religious
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Courlander-NFM, pp. 76-77, "(God Moves on the Water)" (1 text)
BrownII 287, "The Titanic" (5 texts plus an excerpt and mention of 2 more. The Laws data for this book is badly confused, but the "H" text is this song; "C" and "D" are "The Titanic (I)," and apparently the "E" fragment also; "A" and "B" are broadsides Laws does not classify (The first clearly based on "The Golden Vanity"; the second seems to be an adaption of this song to "There Will Be a Hot Time"))
DT, TITANIC4*
Roud #4173
RECORDINGS:
Blind Willie Johnson, "God Moves on the Water" (Columbia 14520-D, 1930; rec. 1929; on BWJ02, CGospel1)
Bessie Jones et al, "The Titanic" (on LomaxCD1700)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: This song is item dI27 in Laws's Appendix II. It should probably be given a proper entry, though; it seems to be the most popular of the Titanic songs except for "The Titanic (I) ('It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down')" [Laws D24].
The statement 'God moves on the water" is probably an allusion to Genesis 1:2, where "the spirit of God moved on the face of the water" ("ocean" or "abyss" might be a better translation here, but of course what matters is what the King James Bible says).
Lyle Lofgren makes the interesting observation that the oldest known version, Blind Willie Johnson's, does not actually use the phrase "God moves on the water." He lets the guitar play the phrase "on the water." Lyle speculates that that there may have been an older gospel song which would have let listeners know the missing phrase. This seems not impossible (perhaps "Wade in the Water" -- there are some similarities in the tunes I have heard). But the other possibility he suggests is that the song was already well known in 1929, so Johnson didn't need to sing the words. And, indeed, the Lomaxes report collecting it in 1933.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: CNFM076

Titanic (IV), The ("Lost on the Great Titanic") (Titanic #4)


DESCRIPTION: The Titanic is only a few hours' sailing from shore when it strikes an iceberg and sinks. Both rich and poor are lost with the ship. Husbands gallantly stand aside to let their wives be saved. The band plays "Nearer my God to Thee" as she goes down
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1928 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck family disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Randolph 693, "The Great Titanic" ("A" text only; Randolph's "B" text is "The Titanic I")
McNeil-SFB2, p. 104, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TITANIC2*
Roud #3526
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
cf. "Lost on the Lady Elgin" (tune)
NOTES: This song is dD40 in Laws's Appendix I.
Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
To tell this from the other Titanic songs, consider these stanzas:
The great Titanic went sailing
Ninety-eight miles from shore,
It suddenly struck an iceberg
And sank forevermore.
Lost, lost on the great Titanic,
Sinking to rise no more,
A number of sixteen hundred
Had failed to reach the shore.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: R693A

Titanic (IX), The (Sinking of the Titanic)


See Sinking of the Titanic (Titanic #9) (File: RcTitaIX)

Titanic (V), The (Many Hearts Surrendered to the Shipwreck) (Titanic #5)


DESCRIPTION: "The Titanic left Southhampton With all its sports and gang, When they struck the iceberg, I know their mind was changed." The story of the wreck is briefly told, with a mention of John Jacob Astor, who is credited with trying to save the women
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1931 (Gardner/Chickering)
KEYWORDS: sea wreck family disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Gardner/Chickering 120, "The Titanic" (1 text)
ST GC120 (Partial)
Roud #3525
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: Perhaps best recognized by the chorus:
Many hearts surrendered to the shipwreck;
On the sea many hearts surrendered,
Crying "Nearer My God to Thee."
This even though, as we've said in the notes to all the other Titanic songs, the band did not play "Nearer My God to Thee"; it played light music to prevent panic.
John Jacob Astor (1864-1912) did indeed die on the Titanic, though I don't know of any evidence that he was the prime mover in saving women and children. In fact, the only report I know of about his behavior while aboard was that, when the lifeboats were being loaded with women and children, he tried to make his way aboard the lifeboat holding his (trophy) wife. He had to be ordered back by the crew.
This is item dD41 in Laws's Appendix II. Roud lumps this with The Titanic (VI), but I don't see any common elements except the boat.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: GC120

Titanic (VI), The ("Cold and Icy Sea") (Titanic #6)


DESCRIPTION: The Titanic sets out from Liverpool and sinks in the cold waters off Newfoundland. The ballad notes how both rich and poor, upper and lower classes, were lost in the disaster
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1951
KEYWORDS: ship wreck disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
McNeil-SFB2, p. 103, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TITANIC1*
Roud #3525
RECORDINGS:
Almeda Riddle, "The Titanic" (on LomaxCD1707)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
Roud lumps this with The Titanic (V), but I don't see any common elements except the boat.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: MN2103

Titanic (VII), The ("As the Moon Rose in Glory/Gone to Rest/The Watchman") (Titanic #7)


DESCRIPTION: "As the moon rose in glory... She told her sad, sad story / Sixteen hundred had gone to rest." A watchman dreams of the Titanic's fate, but cannot get anyone to save the ship or even their families. The widows and orphans are left mourning
AUTHOR: Seth Newton Mize
EARLIEST DATE: 1930 (recording, Darby & Tarlton)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck family disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(Ap,So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
McNeil-SFB2, p. 105, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TITANIC3*
Roud #4779
RECORDINGS:
Carter Family, "The Titanic" (Acme 1000-B, mid-1950s)
New Lost City Ramblers, "The Titanic" (on NLCR14, NLCRCD2)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: MN2105

Titanic (VIII), The ("Fare Thee Well, Titanic, Fare Thee Well") (Titanic #8)


DESCRIPTION: "It was midnight on the sea, The band was playing 'Nearer, My God, to Thee"; Fare thee well, Titanic, fare thee well." The Titanic hits an iceberg; women and children survive; men die. Jack Johnson survives because he is refused passage
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1949
KEYWORDS: death ship wreck disaster religious Black(s)
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Courlander-NFM, pp. 77-78, (no title) (1 text)
Roud #11693
RECORDINGS:
Art Thieme, "Faretheewell Titanic" (on Thieme01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: Despite this song (and other folklore), the band on the Titanic did NOT play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sank. Instead, they played light music to prevent panic.
This particular version, known and sung by Lead Belly, is based on the story of Black boxer Jack Johnson, who was refused passage on the Titanic due to his color.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: CNFM077

Titanic (X), The ("Down With the Old Canoe") (Titanic #10)


DESCRIPTION: The Titanic sets sail, but sinks. The singers then draw morals, including that the hand of Man is no match for God Chorus: "Sailing out to win her fame, the Titanic was her name... Many passengers and her crew went down with that old canoe"
AUTHOR: Dorsey Dixon
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (recording, Dixon Brothers)
LONG DESCRIPTION: The Titanic sets sail amid gaiety and laughter, but sinks. The singers then draw morals, including that the hand of Man is no match for God, and that one should obey the commands of Jesus. Chorus: "Sailing out to winter pain, the Titanic was her name/When she had sailed 500 miles from shore/Many passengers and her crew went down with that old canoe/They all went down to never ride no more"
KEYWORDS: pride death ship party disaster wreck religious Jesus
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: Steven Biel, _A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster_, 1996, pp. 98-99 (in the Norton edition), "Down with the Old Canoe" (1 text)
ST RcTDWtOC (Full)
RECORDINGS:
Dixon Brothers, "Down With the Old Canoe" (Bluebird B-7449, 1938; on Dixons01, Dixons04)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: This can be distinguished from the other Titanic songs by the presence of the phrase, "Down with the old canoe," and by the proportion of narrative (1 verse) to moralizing (3 verses). - PJS
In light of the song's ludicrously un-Christian attempt at theology, it should probably be noted that, at the time the Titanic sank, the Germans already had an even bigger liner under construction. The Imperator had a number of design flaws, but she never hit any icebergs, and was retired, quite un-sunk, in 1938 (by which time she had become the British Berengeria).
Lyle Lofgren thinks this is a rewrite of the Cofer Brothers song "The Titanic Was Her Name." There is some similarity in the chorus, but the rewriting is substantial; I'd be inclined to regard that as just an instance of a floating verse. But there seems no doubt that Dorsey Dixon wrote the song, because it is dated 25 years after the Titanic sank, i.e. around 1937. Which is right about the time the Dixon Brothers recorded the song.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: RcTDWtOC

Titanic (XI), The ("The Titanic Nobly Bore Along") (Titanic #11)


DESCRIPTION: Titanic stops at Queenstown for Irish girls and boys. An iceberg floats by but "Titanic proudly bore along unmindful of her foe." Wireless operators send an SOS but help is too late. The Carpathia saves those in lifeboats and took them to New York.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1947 (Ranson)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Titanic, the pride of Belfast, leaves Southampton with millionaires and poor. She stops at Queenstown for Irish girls and boys. At night an iceberg floats by but "Titanic proudly bore along unmindful of her foe." When struck, Captain Smith has wireless operators send an SOS but help arrivesd too late. "Women and children" first saved seven hundred. The Carpathia saves those in lifeboats and takes them to New York.
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship wreck rescue
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
McBride 67, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ranson, p. 128, "The Titanic" (1 text)
Hammond-Belfast, pp. 30-31, "The Titanic" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. all the other Titanic songs (plot)
NOTES: McBride: "In the Irish Tradition there are at least eight distinct ballads on the subject.... [This] version is the one most favoured by Irish traditional singers." - BS
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
File: Ran128

Titanic (XII), The (You Landsmen All, on You I Call) (Titanic #12)


DESCRIPTION: "The Titanic called at Queenstown ... And eight hundred emigrants From Ireland sailed away." After four days "our ship struck an iceberg." The crew tries to save the women and children. Millionaires died but we mourn for our Irish lads that drowned.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1976 (IRClare01)
KEYWORDS: drowning sea ship wreck
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: Ireland
Roud #18475
RECORDINGS:
Jamesie McCarthy, "The Titanic" (on IRClare01)
NOTES: The Irish grief over the passengers on the Titanic is easily understood. As with most liners of the time, the Titanic carried three classes of passengers: First class, second class, and steerage. And steerage was mostly emigrants, and many of the emigrants Irish.
Steerage passengers, of course, were stuck far down in the ship. Ballard has a side view of the ship's plans on page 168, showing that many of the steerage passengers were four floors below the main deck, near the waterline, whereas the first class passengers were mostly above the main deck, with easy access to the lifeboats.
The steerage passengers, by contrast, were actually barricaded into their below-decks area -- a quarantine measure to prevent the spread of disease (Wade, p. 22). But it meant that the third class passengers had to break down, or at least have the knowledge and nerve to talk their way past, the barriers to get off the ship!
It showed in the casualties. According to Paine, 60% of the first class passengers survived (Ballard, p. 149, reports that every child in first class, save one, survived, and she died only because she wouldn't leave her mother, who wouldn't leave her husband). 42% of second class passengers survived, but only 25% of steerage (comparable to the 24% of the crew who survived).
Lord's famous A Night to Remember gives a passenger list. Pages 207-209 catalogs the third class passengers who embarked at Queenstown (Cobh). There were 114 of them, mostly with typical Irish names. Only 40 (35%) survived.
Other sources differ slightly, Barczewski, p. 9, says that 123 passengers boared at Queenstown, of whom 113 paid the six pound ten shilling third class fare. Obviously the presence or absence of one passenger doesn't change the casualty rate much.
For an extensive history of the Titanic, with detailed examination of the truth (or lack thereof) of quotes in the Titanic songs, see the notes to "The Titanic (XV)" ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15) - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 2.5
File: RcTita12

Titanic (XV), The ("On the tenth day of April 1912") (Titanic #15)


DESCRIPTION: "On the tenth day of April 1912 her whistles they did sound, Her power of motion was released, her twin screws turned around." The ship gives little attention to the dangers of the sea. The ship sinks 400 miles from cape race
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 2004 (Leach collection web site)
KEYWORDS: sea ship wreck technology
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 14/15, 1912 - Shortly before midnight, ship's time, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Only 711 survivors are found of 2224 people believed to have been aboard.
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
Roud #774
RECORDINGS:
Mrs. John Powers, "The Titanic" (MacEdward Leach Collection, Songs of Atlantic Canada, Accession # 78-054 NFLD 1 Tape 2 Track 5)
NOTES: Roud, following the Leach web site, includes this with "The Titanic (I)" ("It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down") [Laws D24] (Titanic #1). Clearly, though, it is a separate song; it lacks the chorus of Laws D24, has no lyrics in common that I can see, and includes a lot of details I haven't seen elsewhere, most though not all of them accurate.
Because this is one of the less inaccurate Titanic ballads, I'm going to use it as my basis for historical notes on the wreck.
I hesitated long before deciding to include a note on the Titanic disaster; after all, even though this is a very long note, there are many much fuller accounts elsewhere, which are the basis for this note. I've included this relatively short history to document some of the features mentioned in the Titanic songs.
In what follows, I have included references to the various Titanic songs, in curly brackets for lack of a better notation. For example, the Titanic was, according to "The Loss of the Titanic (Titanic #13)," "The beauty of the White Star Line." The goal in building the Titanic was indeed to make a very ornate ship, so where I say White Star "would make their name on comfort," this is followed by the citation {#13}, meaning that this accords with "The Loss of the Titanic." Where the songs are wrong (as, e.g., in the claim that the band played "Nearer, My God to Thee"), the citation will be {contra #1, #2...}.
It might be noted that, although there seem to be more folk songs about the Titanic disaster than any twentieth century event except the Irish 1916 rebellion and its aftermath, they represent a relatively small fraction of total compositions on the subject. Ritchie, p. 205, estimates that there were "some 300 works about, or somehow associated with," the loss of the Titanic.
The story of the Titanic, in a way, begins in 1870, when the Oceanic created the transatlantic passenger liner (Wade, p. 13) and made the White Star Line's reputation for luxury crossings (Brinnin, p. 241). You could argue for an even earlier date -- e.g. Brinnin, p. 4, begins his account with the James Madison of 1818, which was the first packet to keep a regular schedule. But the Madison was a sailing ship, and not very comfortable. Samuel Cunard had replaced the sailing ships with steamers in the following decades, but though Cunard ships were very safe in an era when wrecks were common on other lines (Brinnin, p. 245 notes that they never lost a passenger in the entire nineteenth century!), They weren't particularly enjoyable to be aboard; the idea was simply to get across the Atlantic.
The Oceanic converted the trip "across the pond" from a burden to something to be enjoyed. Brinnin, p. 242, calls her "the eponymous instance of the modern ocean liner." Very long and narrow, she did not confine her passengers to the stern areas as so many earlier ships had done. Staterooms were made larger. There was steam heat. She was far from perfect; many changes had to be made after her first voyage (Brinnin, p. 243). But she had changed the whole nature of transatlantic travel.
It didn't take long for competition to become intense. Three British lines -- White Star, Inman (which was rapidly failing and would soon be taken over by American interests), and the more-established Cunard -- were joined by several German competitors and a few small fry from other countries. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was becoming almost impossible to make passenger traffic pay due to the cuthroat competition (Ramsay, p. 11). The various companies all formed alliances. The Germans had some government support. Cunard eventually turned to the government as well, offering to produce fast liners that the Royal Navy could take over as auxiliary cruisers as needed. Thus were born the Lusitania and her sister the Mauretania (Brinnin, p. 328fff., Ramsay, pp. 15-17; Paine, p. 330).
White Star had to respond, but its answer was different. Rather than turn their independence over to the British government (a deal with the devil that would in fact eventually pose great difficulties for Cunard during World War I), they were in effect taken over by J. P. Morgan (Wade, pp. 14-15; Butler-Unsink, p. 9), which already owned Inman and some smaller American lines and had a deal with the Germans (Brinnin, p. 325).
For all his deep pockets and his cartel-like control over several shipping firms, even Morgan had to field a competitive steamer line. The Lusitania was a fine, fast ship (capable, in ideal conditions, of sustained speeds of 26 knots), but her design was radical in many ways -- long, narrow (which made the idea of using her as a warship rather silly; she would have been a lousy gun platform), and driven by the newfangled turbines.
White Star, a more conservative company, preferred not to be so daring in designing their answer. They didn't even rely on turbine-driven screws (Wade, pp. 270-271) {contra #15}. (Ironic, given that the Ismays, managers of White Star, had taken a ride on the world's first turbine-powered ship, Turbinia, on the day of her unveiling at Victoria's Diamond Jubilee; Turbinia at the time was the world's fastest ship, by a large margin; Brinnin, pp. 307-308.) The center screw used a turbine, but the port and starboard screws used the old, less efficient reciprocating engines (Butler-Unsink, p. 16).
Rather than compete on crossing time {contra #2, #15}, White Star's ships would make their name on comfort {#13; cf. #16, which describes her one voyage as a "pleasure trip"}. White Star's new liners -- to become the Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic -- would be about three or four knots slower than Cunard's. That speed difference allowed a huge savings in engine weight; to get that three knot advantage, Lusitania needed 68,000 horsepower engines (Ramsay, p. 21) despite a gross tonnage of only 32,000 tons; Titanic, at 46,300 tons, had according to the advertisement reprinted in Ballard, p. 169, engines developing a mere 50,000 horsepower (a figure also quoted by Paine, p. 520; Ballard, p. 220, lists her as 46,000 horsepower; Barczewski, p. 3, as 55,000. Lord-Night, p. 174, says she was registered as 50,000 hp, but could reach 55,000. It is probable that the exact figure was never known; Titanic never once went up to full speed). Unlike the Lusitania and Mauretania, which had four propellers, she had only three screws {contra #15, which lists her as having two}.
The weight saved on the engines would all go into more ship -- and more comforts for the passengers. Olympic and Titanic were, for instance, the first liners to include swimming pools (Barczewski, p. 7); they also had Turkish baths (Brinnin, p. 362). So large were the designs that builders Harland and Wolff of Belfast {#15} had to build new slips to hold the ships -- replacing three of their old slips with just two, one for Olympic and one for Titanic (Wade, p. 16).
First class was so fancy that it was simply expected that its occupants would bring their servants; there were separate facilities for first class passengers and the servants of those passengers (Butler-Unsink, p. 54).
Over 3000 workers were involved in the construction of each ship (Barczewski, p. 214, who notes that the Belfast shipyard employed mostly Protestants, making Olympic and Titanic toys in the battle over Home Rule and the contest over relations between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. Little wonder that it was called "The Pride of Belfast" {#11}).
The potential degree of luxury available seems almost obscene today. Butler-Unsink, pp. 36-37, lists the standard load of food and kitches equipment. This included, among other things, 1000 pounds of hothouse grapes (from England, in April 1912, remember; there were no hybrid fruits that could last long enough to be shipped from a southern climate) and 100 pairs of grape scissors.
The cost of the two ships was on the order of a million and a half pounds each (see that advertisement in Ballard, p. 169). And that's 1908 pounds (I somewhere saw an estimate that it would take a half a billion 1990s dollars to build a replica). Titanic was 882 feet long, her beam was 92 feet, and it was 60.5 feet from the waterline to the boat deck (she was eight decks tall), with the funnels rising another 115 feet (cf. Paine, p. 520, and the deck plans in Wade, pp. 174-183). Lord-Night, p. 174, puts this in down-to-earth terms: "11 stories high and four city blocks long." Ballard, p. 219, reveals that Olympic and Titanic each were roughly two years on the slips before launching, and needed another year after that to complete.
Perhaps never in history has a class of ships been so ill-fated. Olympic was the lucky one; she stayed afloat until she was taken out of service in 1935 (though she had to be heavily rebuilt after the Titanic wreck, so that she became much harder to sink; Wade, p. 328). But in her two dozen years of service she had had *four* collisions with other ships: with the tug O. L. Hallenbeck and with the H.M.S. Hawke in 1911 (Lord-Lives, pp. 29-31; Ritchie, p. 97, notes that she was being manuevered by a harbor pilot at the time, but that doesn't change the fact that Olympic literally sucked the smaller ship into a crash), with the Fort St. George in 1924 (Paine, p. 376), and with the Nantucket Lightship in 1934 (Paine, p. 349). When Cunard and White Star merged in 1934, Cunard promptly got rid of Olympic (Paine, p. 376; Wade, p. 329).
The Britannic never sailed as a liner; she was not finished at the start of World War I, and was converted to a hospital ship. In that capacity, she hit a mine in 1916 and sank in less than an hour (Paine, p. 81) -- another example of the inadequate internal subdivisions of the design.
As for the Titanic -- well, we're getting to that.
The Olympic was finished first, starting her maiden voyage to New York on May 31, 1911 (Wade, p. 17). The ship seemed to work well, but the designers learned a few things (mostly cosmetic) which caused the Titanic to be slightly modified, primarily to add more passenger accommodations (Wade, pp. 18-19); in the process, her displacement increased by about a thousand tons. Titanic could still be considered Olympic's sister, but she was heavier -- the largest ship in the world at the time {#15} -- and somewhat more luxurious.
The Titanic would set out on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912 {#9, #15}. At noon, she left Southampton {#5, #9, #11, #15, contra #6, which says she sailed from Liverpool}, reached Cherbourg that evening, left France just a couple of hours later, arrived at Queenstown {#11, #12} around noon the next day, and set out for New York {#6} around 2:00 p.m. on April 11 (Lord-Night, p. 175).
It was not an auspicious start, really; there had been coal strike (Wade, p. 23; Barczewski, p. 263, notes that the strike ended April 6, but of course coal was only just starting to go back "into the pipeline"; it hadn't reached Southampton yet), causing White Star to requisition coal from other vessels, cancel their voyages, and transfer the passengers to Titanic. In the process, they started a small coal fire that never was entirely put out; the coal smoked the entire time of the voyage (Butler-Unsink, p. 37). Meaning that, unknown to the passengers, there was always a slight danger of a coal dust explosion (which, we note, is the most likely explanation for why the Lusitania sank three years later).
Borrowing coal and shifting passengers was not unreasonable. Sailing the largest ship in the world with a raw crew was more of a problem. Titanic would be going on her maiden voyage with a crew that did not know the ship; at this time, crews were mostly hired on a by-the-voyage basis (Barczewski, p. 264; cf. Wade, p. 24) -- and, on a vessel her size, they wouldn't be able to learn their way around in a day or two! Even second officer Lightoller, a veteran seaman with much experience on White Star ships, said it took him two weeks to learn his way around (Barczewski, p. 5; Butler-Unsink, p. 46). Many of the crew didn't have that much time, and though a lot of them had done at least one voyage on the Olympic (Barczewski, p. 266), most didn't have his background to help them learn their way.
Even if you ignore their unfamiliarity with the ship, it turns out that only 83 of the crew were actual sailors, used to dealing with a ship at sea (Wade, p. 210). The rest were stewards and other specialists -- important for the passengers, but they couldn't really run the ship.
Nor had Titanic completed anything like proper sea trials -- for instance, she had never once worked up to full speed, and done very little emergency maneuvering (Wade, p. 184). In a great irony, it is reported that, it was only as she arrived in the vicinity of the ice that she worked her way up to the fastest speed she had ever attained (Wade, p. 28). Apparently she never tested her turning radius at full speed (Lord-Lives, p. 56), and she only did one "emergency stop"; it took her three and a quarter minutes, and 3000 feet, to halt from a speed of 18 knots (Lord-Lives, p. 33) -- a speed she would exceed on her voyage across the Atlantic.
And there had never been a true boat drill conducted. There had been one partial demonstration, inadequate in every regard (Wade, p. 211). Normally drills were conducted on Sunday, but on Titanic's maiden voyage, Captain Smith cancelled it to hold a religious service (Barczewski, p. 10). The passengers didn't know what to do should they need to get to the boats; worse, few of the crew knew how to lower them! (Lord-Lives, pp. 88). So, when the crisis came, the same few crewmen had to do all the work, meaning that the boats could not all be lowered at once (Lord-Lives, pp. 95-96; cf. {#9}, which says they lowered the lifeboats "one by one." It was actually one by one on each side, but close enough).
The handful of officers doing the lowering had to work so hard that, even on that cold night, they ended up sweating heavily; Officer Lightoller would take off his coat before the last boats were lowered, leaving him in dripping-wet pajamas (Lord-Night, p. 79).
Finally, the captain was not someone you'd be likely to pick to deal with an emergency situation. E. J. Smith had much experience, starting as a boy on a sailing passenger ship and quickly working his way up to mate and then captain (Barczewski, p. 162). Not satisfied with that, he transferred to the passenger liners and working his way up to command those as well. He had commanded over a dozen different liners (Lord-Lives, p. 28) when he was promoted to the pinnacle of the White Star line, the Olympic (Barczewski, p. 163). He was so well-liked that White Star made it a policy for him to command new vessels (Barczewski, p. 165). On paper, he was the perfect captain for Titanic {#15}; his time on Olympic meant that he was one of the handful who had some real idea how her new sister ship worked.
But Smith's resume sounded better than it was. He was a good manager and diplomat -- but he had never had to deal with real problems. In an interview, he once declared, "When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fogs and the like, but in all my experience I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about" (quoted in Barczewski, p. 185; Butler-Unsink, p. 48; Lord-Lives, p. 29; Wade, p. 38. Eaton/Haas, however, note on p. 77 that his command the Germanic had capsized in New York harbor in 1899. Plus there was the Hawke collision. It's arguably not a bad safety record, but it isn't perfect, either).
And he didn't have a mind set suited to surprises. In 1906, aboard the Adriatic -- a ship no one ever claimed was unsinkable -- he said, "I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder" (Lord-Lives, p. 18; Tibballs, p. 227, gives a Boston Post story with the quote). It is ironic to note that his second officer on the Titanic, Charles Lightoller, had already been through two shipwrecks! (Butler-Other, p. 58). Maybe Smith knew better, and was trying to encourage passengers -- but such statements surely encourage complacency.
Even before the Titanic set sail, it was known that there were icebergs in the North Atlantic -- though {contra #11} she had not seen any herself. A warm year had caused many to break loose from the polar cap; another liner, the Niagara, in fact collided with one at about the time Titanic set out (Wade, p. 31).
No one in authority aboard Titanic seemed worried. Though several ships had been damaged by icebergs in recent years, all had survived (Wade, p. 32). And Titanic was much stronger than most of those ships. She was divided into 16 sections, designed to be watertight, with a central control on the bridge that could, in theory, instantly isolate the sections. She was designed to stay afloat if any two of the sections flooded, or if the front four (which were of course narrower) were breached (Ballard, p. 22).
This was not really such good protection as was claimed. Lord-Lives, pp. 20-22, discusses how early liners (notably the Great Eastern of 1858) had been designed to be unsinkable. Great Eastern had a true double hull (Titanic had a double bottom but not a full double hull; Barczewski, p. 4), a true set of partitions (15 bulkheads from front to back, as on Titanic, but with subdivisions within each cell, as on a battleship, so she was a true honeycomb), and her divisions reached all the way up to the upper deck. Water in one section simply could not work its way into another. But this had proved very inconvenient -- a steward or passenger in one section had to go all the way to the upper deck to move to another. Gradually, the partitions dividing port and starboard sides went out of ship designs, the bulkheads were lowered so that the upper decks were not partitioned, and doors were built into the bulkheads on the lower levels.
The diagram in Ballard (p. 22) purports to shows the bulkheads on Titanic. The six toward the stern reach two or three decks above the waterline -- an adequate distance, though higher would have been better. But those amidships and at the bow -- the ones most likely to suffer damage! -- are much lower; most reach only one deck above the waterline, and #6 and #7 are barely higher than the water (Lord-Lives, p. 22, says they rose only 10 feet above the waterline, though his description doesn't seem to match the diagram in Ballard). Eaton/Haas, p. 18, says that the #1 bulkhead reached "C" deck, but the #2 and #11-#15 reached only to the "D" deck, and #3-#10 reached only to the "E" deck, not much above the waterline. If the ship went down by the nose -- as Titanic did -- the water could overtop the barriers, flooding at least eight to ten compartments. And the ship of course could not (and did not) survive *that*.
Finally, the Titanic's watertight doors were theoretically controlled from the bridge, and also had floats so they could automatically close if they detected water. In fact, some had to be closed manually, so making the ship watertight was *not* an instantaneous process.
Lord-Lives, p. 23, comments acidly that Titanic was treated as unsinkable {#1, #2} not because she was properly built but because she looked too big to sink. "The appearance of safety was mistaken for safety itself."
Lynch/Marschall, p. 194, makes the interesting point that Titanic's near-sister Britannic sank when she hit a mine. That means that the damage was confined to a small area of the hull -- yet she sank anyway, and much faster than the Titanic. There really does seem to have been a problem with the partitioning in the Olympic class ships.
One personal observation, based on looking at very many photos of the Titanic in the process of writing this article: It really doesn't appear to have been all it was cracked up to be. It was opulent, yes, in a heavy-handed Edwardian sort of way. But it didn't really appear all that well-built. There is a look to good construction, and it doesn't have it. Titanic had neither the hand-crafted strength of pre-nineteenth century construction, nor the technological veneer of the second half of the twentieth century. In that context, an illustration in Lynch/Marschall (p. 21) is perhaps relevant. It shows one of the anchors of the most advanced ship in the world, forged by modern metallurgy -- being hauled to the ship by horses.
(My opinion about the construction of these ships seems to be borne out by the stories of the leading liners of the time. Very many of the new ships had design problems. The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse of 1897 had "lubberly propensities," according to Brinnin, p. 317, which caused her to be nicknamed "Rolling Billy." Cunard's flagship of the period, Lusitania, had had to be refitted due to excessive vibrations; see "The Lusitania." Titanic's record as the largest ship in the world would not last long; 14 months later, Germany's Hamburg-Amerika line would bring out the Imperator; Barczewski, p. 65. She was roughly 6000 tons heavier than Titanic, but top-heavy enough that she needed her funnels shortened and some of her fixtures replaced, plus they had to add 2000 tons of extra ballast; she also lost her figurehead due to her extreme rolling on just her third voyage; Brinnin, p. 388. After the war, Cunard took her over as Berengaria, but overhauled her again in 1921, and she suffered a series of fires in the late Thirties; Paine, p. 60. Luxurious the monster liners were, but they were perhaps too big for the designers of a pre-computer age.)
Interestingly, Titanic was nowhere near full on her maiden voyage. (Tibballs, p. xi, thinks this is because of the coal strike, which caused many people to postpone plans since they weren't sure the ship would sail, but most sources seem to think the real reason was that people didn't want to risk taking a new ship which han't had a shakedown voyage.)
According to Wade, pp. 25-26, Titanic left Southampton on April 10, 1912 with only 46% of first class berth occupied, 40% of second class, and 70% of steerage space booked. (That's 337 first class passengers, 271 second class, and 712 in third class; cf. the table in Barczewski, p. 51, which gives capacity, number carried, and number lost. Considering that Titanic was taking passengers from several liners, the totals are amazingly low.) She stopped at Queenstown the next day to take on a few more.
One song {#12} refers to 800 emigrants sailing from Ireland. This presumably refers to the total third class passengers; in all, only about 125 passengers boarded at Queenstown (now Cobh, or the Cove of Cork), of which number 113 (Barczewski, pp. 9, 281) or 114 (Lord-Night, pp. 207-209) were third class, and hence presumably emigrants. (It will tell you something about the size of Titanic that she could not even dock at Queenstown's pier; she had to anchor offshore and have passengers and cargo ferried aboard; Barczewski, p. 281).
The Titanic did have a near-disaster at the very beginning of her life; as the Olympic had sucked the Hawke into a collision, Titanic produced so much pull that she snapped the ropes of the New York. But, in this case, a collision was averted -- just barely (Lord-Lives, p. 26; Barczewski, p. 4; Tibballs, pp, 31-38).
For the first four days of the voyage, everything of course went well; the ship maintained a good speed, sailed smoothly, and everyone apparently had a fine time. Then came the "Night to Remember."
Complete details of what happened on the night of April 14-15 probably cannot be known, because most of the key figures were lost. Captain Smith went down with his ship, as did his chief officer (second in command) Henry Wilde, who was almost invisible in the saga (except that Lightoller, who had reason to resent him, accused him of slowing the evacuation; Lynch/Marschall, p. 109). Ironically, Captain Smith had requested Wilde be transferred from the Olympic so he could have a second who knew the ship; Butler-Unsink, p. 44; Lynch/Marschall, p. 76. Fat lot of good it did; as Butler-Unsink, p. 90, comments, Wilde "demonstrat[ed] very little initiative of his own, seemingly content to pass on Captain Smith's [incomplete] instructions, but never expanding them or clarifying them... and rarely issuing any orders of his own".
Also lost was first officer William M. Murdoch, who was the officer in command on the bridge when the ship hit the iceberg and who also had charge of lowering the boats on one side (like Smith, he an officer brought over from the Olympic; Barczewski, p. 189. Sort of makes you wonder who was running the Olympic after they took all her officers). Chief Engineer Joseph Bell and almost all of the engineering crew, who kept several boilers running to maintain electricity for the lights and pumps (Ballard, p. 25; Butler-Unsink, p. 109), were lost as well.
Many witnesses pay well-deserved testimony to the bravery of the crew in the emergency which followed. (There were four officers senior enough to stand watches, Smith, Wilde, Murdoch, and second officer Charles H. Lightoller; Butler-Unsink, p. 53. Of these, only Lightoller survived, and he did not go off in a boat; he was washed away from the wreck as she went down and was able to make his way to an overturned "collapsible" lifeboat); as {#13} says, the crew stayed with the ship and sent the passengers off. Their problem lay not in courage but in intelligence.
Instead of information from her senior officers about what went wrong, what we have is the testimony of several more junior officers (including second officer Lightoller, who however was in his cabin at the time of the collision, and fourth officer Joseph G. Boxhall, responsible for plotting of icebergs as the warnings came in and for fixing the ship's position when she hit the iceberg). We also have accounts from the junior wireless operator, of some of the lookouts, and of course numerous passengers, none of whom, however, had any part in the ship's decision-making. Plus we have the information derived from Ballard's exploration of the sunken hull (which was not very helpful, however, since the part of the starboard bow which was damaged seems to be almost entirely buried in the mud; Ballard, p. 196).
One thing is certain: the Titanic did not go to its fate unwarned. One crucial safety feature she did have was a wireless, and two wireless operators, allowing one to be on duty at all times. (This wasn't just for safety; many of the first class passengers were sending messages all over the place. Barczewski, p. 11, notes that this was how the Marconi company earned its money; they didn't get paid for talk between ships.) Just on April 14, many ice warnings had come through -- one at 9:00 a.m. from the Caronia, one at 11:40 from the Noordam, two almost simultaneously around 1:45 from Amerika and from White Star's own Baltic, one from the Californian at 7:30, and one at 9:40 from Mesaba -- this one for the very region in which the Titanic was already sailing (Ballard, pp. 13-20; Lord-Lives, pp. 48-49). And, finally, one more from the Californian, which was almost next door and had been stopped by ice.
How many of these warnings were actually read by the senior officers is not clear. Ballard claims that some never reached the senior officers. It is worth remembering that wireless operators were not a proper part of the ship's crew. The shipping lines hired them from the Marconi company or one of its competitors. (This was common; many of the "staff" on the Titanic were in fact employees of other companies. The restaurant staff, for example, worked for organizations such as Gatti which had bought concessions on the Titanic -- Lord-Night, p. 68.)
When one of Titanic's radiomen received an ice warning, he could do little except hand it to an officer, who might pay attention or might just slip it in his pocket. To add to the problems, the apparatus had broken down on April 14 -- it was unusually powerful for the time (1500 watts -- Butler-Unsink, p. 62), but probably cantankerous as a result. Senior operator Jack Phillips had repaired it (radiomen at the time had intense training in electronics and such, and Phillips, though only 25, was one of the best; Butler-Unsink, p. 61), but was far behind on commercial traffic and had at times brushed off messages from other ships in order to get it out (Wade, pp. 143-144, 254) -- the more so since that final and most important ice warning, from the Californian, had not been sent as a priority message (Wade, p. 255). Plus, as Lord-Lives, pp. 51-52, points out, the radiomen were not navigators; they really had no idea which messages were most important.
So we don't know how much the crew knew about ice conditions. What is clear is that Captain Smith did not adjust her course significantly in response to the warnings, and the ship did not slow down.
Based on the reports from the Californian on the day of April 14, and from the Carpathia and the Mount Temple the following day, it appears that there was an almost-solid ice barrier across the Titanic's path. There would have been almost no way through without encountering ice (cf. Lord-Lives, p. 130; Lord-Night, p. 147, and the diagrams in Ballard, pp. 198-200). Under the circumstances, the decision to proceed full speed ahead was very dangerous.
Although the ship had no hope of setting a record {contra #7}, it is possible that Captain Smith was pressured to try to make the first crossing faster than the Olympic had made hers the year before (Butler-Unsink, p. 249; on p. 59, he speculates that Smith did this under pressure from White Star boss J. Bruce Ismay, who was aboard. Eaton/Haas, p. 9, however, argue that this is unlikely; if they arrived that early, they couldn't enter the harbor! And the coal supply was limited.).
If there is a fault, it's Captain Smith's for treating the ice messages utterly cavalierly. (According to Barczewski, p. 190, junior officers did not even have authority to reduce the ship's speed, though she cites no authority for this statement.) The warnings needed to be studied; it was only when the messages were combined that they showed a wide band of ice all across the ship's path (Lord-Lives, p. 53). The officers did worry about the cooling of the air and sea -- but, apparently, their chief concern was that it might freeze the fresh water supply! (Ballard, p. 19; Butler-Unsink, p. 63; Lynch/Marschall, p. 77).
Captain Smith, in fact, was asleep at the time of the collision {#3}; he was content to let junior officers take him through the ice zone, though he did tell them to call him in the event of doubtful conditions (Ballard, p. 19). He was, after all, a fairly old man by the standards of the time -- 59, and planning to retire after Titanic made her maiden voyage (Lord-Lives, p. 32; Lord-Night, p. 27, says that he might not even have made this trip, except that he made a habit of captaining ships on their maiden voyages. It says something about how much the company respected him -- and about how fortunate he had been in avoiding accidents.).
The claim of {X} that "Captain Smith... must have been a-drinking" is, however, quite certainly wrong. White Star regulations forbid it (Lynch/Marschall, p. 77), and even if he were fool enough to risk his pension on his very last voyage (which he was not), he was with a party that would have spotted it had he touched liquor.
Conditions for spotting icebergs were horrible. (Lynch/Marschall, p. 79, has the interesting note that a lookout on an earlier shift had *smelled* ice -- not as strange as it sounds, since most icebergs calved off glaciers carrying soils and sometimes lichens; the wet earth would not smell like salt water. But though that lookout smelled ice, he never saw any.) It was, of course, dark, and there was no moon (Lord-Lives, p. 47) {#16}. And observers agree that the sea was very calm, with hardly any waves at all -- and one of the best ways to spot an iceberg was to see the waves lapping at it. Easton/Haas, p. 19. state as a fact (though this cannot be known) that the iceberg had recently flipped over, making the upper surface dark and harder to see. To top it all off, the lookouts in the crow's nest did not have any binoculars (Wade, pp. 169-170; Butler-Unsink, p. 44, explains how they came to be missing).
The British inquiry would conclude that binoculars are no help in spotting icebergs (Lord-Lives, pp. 59-60) -- which is sort of true, but only sort of. Yes, as any birdwatcher can tell you, it's almost always easier to spot things with bare eyes. But shifting between eyes and binoculars keeps you alert, and using the binoculars sometimes causes you to see things you wouldn't otherwise see.
It is now thought the solution to the Binoculars Problem is known: The key to the locker containing the optics was in the hands of an officer who was on the Titanic from Belfast to Southampton, but was bumped in the latter city to make room for the completely ineffectual Chief Officer Wilde.(I assume this was David Blair, who was second officer until Wilde came aboard; he lost his post and Lightoller was demoted to second officer; Eaton/Haas, p. 72.) The bumped officer accidentally took the key to the locker with him, so the binoculars were left locked up. The key was auctioned off in 2007.
(Lord-Lives, p. 129, makes the interesting note that, when the Carpathia was steaming toward the Titanic, she dodged half a dozen bergs -- and all of them were spotted from the bridge, not the crow's nest. Apparently, on that dark and calm night, the lookouts aloft were at a severe handicap. It's not clear whether this is due to their angle or, perhaps, just the weather -- on a ship making 20+ knots, or even 17 as the Carpathia was doing, looking straight ahead into the wind of the ship's passage would have been very painful on that cold night.)
Very little is known about the actual iceberg. No other ship saw it with certainty (Butler-Unsink, in an illustration facing page 149, and Lynch/Marschall, pp. 92-93, have a photo of a berg taken by the Prinz Adelbert that may have been it, but the only evidence was some red that might have been paint, which is hardly proof), and Titanic saw it for only minutes. But the statement {#13} that it was a growler (small berg) seems to have been false, since it was big enough for chunks of ice to fall onto Titanic's boat deck, more than sixty feet above the water. According to Ballard, p. 21, most witnesses stated that the berg reached only to about boat deck level. That's still pretty big.
The testimony of Frederick Fleet, who had been on lookout that night, was perhaps not as helpful as it might have been; when called before an investigating committee, he was nervous, his Cockney talk almost unintelligible, and at one point he actually said, "I ain't got no judgment" in response to a question about distances. (He would eventually commit suicide in 1965, though probably not over the Titanic; Tibballs, p. 516.) But he did say that he spotted the iceberg around 11:40 on the night of April 14 (Wade, pp. 166-167) {#5; contra #6, which gives the date as April 17, and Lomax's #3, which says April 13; #15 has the right date, but gives the time as an hour before the dawn}.
(Incidentally, Fleet wasn't the only person aboard to eventually kill himself; so did surviving passenger Jack Thayer, in 1945; Butler-Unsink, p. 231. And wireless operator Harold Bride retired from his job in 1913 and literally vanished; Butler-Unsink, p. 234, says that he assumed a new identity and no one knew where he went until decades after his death in 1956.)
Fleet called the bridge the moment he spotted the berg off the starboard bow. There was little time to react. What we know of the events comes mostly from helmsman Robert Hitchens -- not, perhaps, the most reliable witness; he ended up in command of Molly Brown's lifeboat, and his record in that job was of petty tyranny, lies, and panic; Lynch/Marschall, pp. 152-154, 161-163; in the end, White Star found him a job in South Africa, allegedly to silence him; Lynch/Marschall, p. 223)
According to Hitchens, First Officer Murdoch ordered the engines stopped and the ship turned to port. It was too late; moments later (Lord-Lives, p. 59, says 37 seconds later), the iceberg hit the Titanic on the starboard side (Wade, pp. 171-172; Ballard, pp. 20-21). A post-mortem found that Murdoch's actions, while they seemed the natural thing to do, in fact were very unwise -- better a head-on collision, which would have destroyed the first few compartments but left the rest intact, than a glancing blow which opened many (Wade, pp. 182-183).
But many ships have hit icebergs and survived. Indeed, there hadn't been a major disaster on a passenger ship since the Atlanic wreck of 1873 (Butler-Unsink, p. 73; for background on that, see "The Loss of the Atlantic (I)"). Why did Titanic go down?
It is widely stated that the iceberg opened her front five (or even six) compartments. This has not, to my knowledge, ever been proved; all took on water, but it's not clear that anyone saw the leaks in all the compartments. What is certain is that it opened the fourth and fifth compartment, and at least two compartments before that. As the water rose, it went over those low bulkheads, and finally overcame the ship's buoyancy (Lord-Lives, p. 64).
In a way, it was lucky the ship lasted as long as it did. The fifth compartment contained some of the boilers, which were of course running when water started coming in. Stokers had to work like mad in the rising waters to shut down the boilers and keep them from exploding (Lord-Night, pp. 19-21; Barczewski, p. 18).
Ballard's findings do much to confirm the theory that the ship sank because the bulkheads between the allegedly-watertight sections were overtopped. The most notable finding was that Titanic snapped in two on her way down (see diagrams in Ballard, pp. 204-205). The stern, obviously, still had enough buoyancy to float when the bow wanted to sink, and the strain was too much for the ship's structure. The conclusion at the time, based on what testimony was available from belowdecks and the rate the ship filled, was that the iceberg had opened a gash about 250 feet long and less than an inch high on average (Lord-Lives, p. 64).
A modern guess is that the gash itself was not so big as was thought at the time, but that the impact caused the cold steel (which would be brittle) to pop rivets and start to weep water. This is supported by the fact that recovered hull samples have a high sulfur content, which would make the steel brittle and fracture-prone (Eaton/Haas, pp. 156-157, though they try to argue away the scientific finding -- unsuccessfully, it seems to me). It wasn't a hole; it was a slow leak -- but a very large slow leak, or rather, a very large number of them (Ballard, pp. 196-197). It is also possible that the collision damaged the watertight bulkheads, so that compartments which were still watertight with respect to the ocean were not tight relative to the interior of the ship and could take in water from the compartments next to them; there was evidence of this in boiler room four (Lord-Lives, p. 65).
She picked a bad place to get hit, too. {#6} says she was off Newfoundland, {#4} claims the ship was only 90 (so McNeil's version) or 98 miles from shore (Randolph's version), but the 500 mile estimate in {#10, #16} is much closer; Titanic's broadcast distress call stated her position as 41 degrees 46 minutes north, 50 degrees 14 minutes west (Ballard, p. 22). This was Boxhall's dead reckoning fix (Lynch/Marschall, p. 108), but this may have involved as many as three errors: Boxhall may have assumed a higher speed than the ship actually managed (Butler-Other, p. 62, notes that her screws used a different pitch from Olympic's, on which Boxhall probably based his speed estimate); ignoring the local current (Eaton/Haas, p. 20); and a failure to correct the chronometer for distance covered (Butler-Unsink, p. 242). Ballard, p. 199, moves the ship some 13.5 miles east southeast of her reported position.
But the error in the estimate hardly matters in reckoning her distance from land; in round numbers, she was 400 miles from the closest land at Cape Race {#13; #15 accurately puts her 400 miles from Cape Race but gives the wrong distance to Boston}, 450 miles from St. John's (the nearest significant port), 800 miles from Halifax (the closest port truly suitable for large ships), and 1200 from her destination in New York. She was beyond the continental shelf, even though the shelf (the Grand Banks) extends unusually far out to sea in this area.
It would be some time before it was determined that the ship was in danger. The impact felt slight. Frederick Fleet, the man who spotted the berg, initially thought the ship had merely had a "narrow shave" (Wade, p. 173). (Hence, perhaps, the report in some versions of {#1} that the ship "began to reel and rock" at 1:00 on Monday, which would have been April 15. The impact was on Sunday, April 14, but evacuation began the next day. The April 15 date is also found in {#2}.)
There was no single source which reported the damage {contra #2, which credits "Bill" with reporting the problem}; Fourth Officer Boxhall was sent on an inspection tour (Butler-Unsink, p. 70), which revealed some water coming in, and the carpenter Jim Hutchinson then reported significant water below (Barczewski, p. 16, though there is some uncertainty here, since Tibballs, p. 496, lists Hutchinson as a joiner, and Tibballs, p. 51, says that the carpenter, unnamed, who was sent to sound the ship never reported. Butler-Unsink, p. 70, and Lynch/Marschall, pp. 91-92, say that Hutchinson was sent to sound the ship, and came back reporting water below, with a postal clerk reporting the same at about the same time).
By this time, the instruments showed a significant list. Butler-Unsink, p. 71, cites the testimony of Officer Boxhall, who reports that the commutator listed the ship as listing five degrees to the right and down two degrees at the head. This appears to have been what convinced Captain Smith that the ship was in trouble; Boxhall claims he muttered "Oh, my God" upon seeing that value.
The casualties might have been greater had not Thomas Andrews (1873-1912), the managing director of the shipyard that built Titanic, been aboard (he wanted to inspect her performance; Barczewski, p. 147). Captain Smith called on him to inspect the damage and estimate the situation (Butler-Unsink, p. 71). Andrews -- who seems to have been both a good people person and a highly competent engineer -- quickly realized the ship was doomed (Barczewski, p. 148; Butler-Unsink, pp. 71-72; Lord-Night, pp. 22-23, 26).
Smith, to his credit, accepted Andrews's estimate and started evacuation procedures, himself going to give instructions to the wireless crews (Lord-Night, p. 27). Andrews helped with the evacuation as best he could (Lynch/Marschall, p. 99), then was said to have gone to the first class smoking room; he reportedly was not wearing a lifebelt, and apparently had no intention of trying to save himself; his body was never found (Barczewski, p. 149).
But it is clear that there had been absolutely no planning for an evacuation. Passengers apparently weren't even told to get their lifejackets and go on deck; many of them went to the purser to reclaim their valuables, as if they were threatened with a stock market drop rather than a sinking ship (Lynch/Marschall, p. 99).
According to Wade, p. 144, the first wireless distress call went out 35 minutes after the collision -- just a few minutes too late; the wireless operator on the Californian had gone to bed. (This may perhaps be the origin of the comment in some versions of {#1} that the wireless or wireless lines were on fire: Titanic was unable to communicate with the Californian. Or perhaps the reference is to Titanic's brush-off of Californian's ice warning. I suspect, though, that the reference to the wireless being on fire is just an error.) No one thought to send up rockets until a quartermaster at the stern of the ship noticed lifeboats leaving (he had not been told the ship was in danger!) and called the bridge. That aroused someone enough to order him to bring up the rockets (Lord-Night,p. 47). But, obviously, it took him some time to get them and bring them to the bridge of the great ship.
(We might incidentally note that the wireless distress call is said to have been the first "SOS" call at sea {#9, #11}; at first, the operators send "CQD" messages, which were the original distress code. But "SOS" had been sent recently adopted as the emergency call -- it's much easier to transmit in Morse -- and eventually the operators decided to send that; Lord-Night, p. 52. The distress call went out not long after midnight {contra #9, which says it was "about the break of day," probably confusing the beginning of the day with daybreak}.)
The statement in {#9} that the ship would "hold on to the last" does not appear to me based on an actual message from the Titanic; it sounds more like a message send three years earlier when the Republic was sinking: "Ship's sinking, but will stick to the end" (Ritchie, p. 177). On the other hand, many crew did stay on duty very late -- e.g. the engineers kept the lights on until just seconds before the final plunge, and senior wireless operator Jack Phillips stayed at his key even after Captain Smith told him that it was "every man for himself." The Virginian recorded a last faint "CQD" message at 2:17 (I'm not sure by whose clock; Butler-Other, p. 81, says that the Carpathia last heard a signal at 1:50, and it by then was the closest ship other than the Californian by a wide margin); that last signal was interrupted in mid-transmission (Butler-Other, p. 77). The ship is considered to have gone down at 2:20 (Butler-Other, p. 122).
Adding to the controversy is the fact that survival rates for the different groups on board were very different. Because women and children were given priority {#3, #9, #11}, they of course had a higher survival rate than men -- but the first class men did almost as well as the third class women and children. Some initial news reports apparently claimed that no one in third class survived (Tibballs, p. 237).
In fact, there were even two dogs rescued from first class (Lynch/Marschall, pp. 100-101). This being the era of the Filthy Rich, it was -- even more than today -- the era of the Completely Useless (and frequently disagreeable) Pet Dog. The Titanic had kennels, and even had crew members whose task was to walk the animals. In the early stages of the evacuation, when the boats were going down half-empty, the two First Class Pooches were given spaces that could have gone to human beings.
Much of the difference in casualty rates was due to the layout of the ship. The passengers in first class were around the level of the boat deck, and were the first to reach the boats (the boats, absurdly, were at the very top of the ship, well above the main deck, which meant that there was less room for boats and that they were far above nearly every passenger on the ship).
As a result, 94% of first class women and children were saved (there is a table of casualty rates in Wade, p. 67, and a graph in Lord-Lives, p. 82). Ballard, p. 149, says that only one first-class child went down with the ship, and that because she would not leave her mother, who in turn would not leave her husband; cf. Lord-Lives, p. 83. (And, indeed, there was eventually a woman who turned up claiming to he a grown-up Loraine Allison, the little girl who was lost, but she was pretty clearly trying to get her hands on the money the two-year-old would have inherited had she lived; Lynch/Marshall, p. 214). Lord-Night, p. 105, notes that only four first class women died, and three of them decided to stay with their husbands. 31% of first class men were saved. In all, 60% of first class passengers survived. Of second class passengers, 44% lived. In steerage, the figure was only 25% -- 47% of the women and 14% of the men. The survival rate for the crew was comparable to that for third class -- 24% (212 out of 890 crew members, according to Lord-Lives; note that {#15} says with fair accuracy there were 900 crew).
It should be remembered that the third class passengers were physically blocked off from the upper decks due to quarantine regulations (steerage passengers were subjected to a physical examination before they could even board; Butler-Unsink, pp. 39-40), and in any case were many decks below the boats. (Hence the statement in {#1} that they "left the poor below.") And they had previously been strictly told to stay in their areas. There were, in fact, only seven doors connecting third class to areas with access to boats (Butler-Unsink, p. 106), and of course the steerage passengers didn't know how to find those doors or get to anywhere useful if they did find them.
Based on testimony from the survivors, they were not blocked from going to the boat deck (with some exceptions -- and of course there could have been major exceptions which simply weren't reported; see Wade, pp. 276-277, Lord-Lives, pp. 84-88). But the crew -- which obviously had to tell them what to do and guide them to the boats -- were mostly concentrated on the upper decks. By the time the third class passengers knew of the disaster and could reach the boat decks, the boats were mostly away (one witness told of a great flood of third class passengers swarming the boat deck at the very end).
Butler-Unsink, p. 105, has perhaps the best summary: "[Steward John] Hart's efforts [which helped many female passengers escape the lower decks] underscored the fact that... there really was no deliberate policy of discrimination against Third Class. What there was, and what may have been all the more insidious by being purely unintentional, was that simply no policy or procedure for looking after the Third Class passengers existed.... Somewhere in the chain of command communications had broken down, and... when Captain Smith had given no specific instructions, Chief Officer Wilde seemed incapable of initiating any action himself. The other officers [who were lowering the boats] were already thoroughly occupied and had little time to spare for wondering about what or who the captain and chief officer might have overlooked."
This had an interesting side effect: although the rule was "women and children first," or where Second Officer Lightoller was in charge, "women and children only," because of the way passengers made their way to the boats -- or, rather, didn't -- the *number* of men to survive actually was larger than the number of women: 338 adult men, compared to 316 adult women, according to Lord-Lives, p. 82. The reason a higher percentage of women survived was because there were a lot more men than women aboard -- 1667 men, 425 women.
The male survivors even included J. Bruce Ismay, the man in charge of running White Star; he had crowded into a boat at the last minute. Widely blamed for causing the disaster -- after all, he had allowed the ship to go to sea without enough lifeboats or a trained crew -- he lived another 25 years, mostly as a recluse; Lord-Lives, pp. 180-181.
(Reading the histories, I don't think Ismay should be blamed for the disaster as such -- he didn't run the ship; Captain Smith did. Ismay did bear significant blame for the lack of boats, though, which at the very least demonstrates that he hadn't properly researched the ship's capabilities. Plus he was a busybody who did nothing but get in the way during the evacuation -- one of the officers had to force him away from the boats. And, on a more individual note, when the ship's musicians were subjected to a pay cut and harsher working conditions, he pretty well blew them off; Barczewski, p. 129. So my verdict is: Criminal, not guilty; Jerk, guilty.)
The Titanic myth of men standing aside to let the women live did create some problems for adult male survivors, many of whom felt pressure to justify their continued existence. Biel, pp. 28-29, notes how Lawrence Beesley, a second class male survivor, later tried to get a part in a Titanic movie so he could be seen going down with the ship this time. (He was denied the role of an extra because he wasn't a member of Actor's Equity.)
One final observation on casualties: All numbers are slightly imprecise, because the lists of those aboard are slightly imperfect. (At least one man who was lost cannot ever be identified, because he went aboard using another man's stolen identification; Eaton/Haas, p. 72.) In round numbers, 1500 were lost {#9}. Lord-Night, p. 176, notes that the American inquiry put the figure at 1517, the British Board of Trade came up with 1503, and the British Enquiry 1490. Lord-Night inclines toward the middle figure. The figure of 1600 in {#1, #4, #5, #7, #16} is certainly too high, though not by much. One suspects the songs citing this figure were composed very soon after the wreck, before the enquiries had sorted things out. The other possibility is that it refers to the number of people actually on the ship when the last boats pulled away, estimated by Lord-Lives (p. 2) to be 1600. But a few of these survived, being hauled out of the water by the boats.
For the most part, the evacuation was orderly. Women and children were put in the boats, and men generally accepted it. Still, it appears that a few shots were fired. (The shots did not {contra #3} wake Captain Smith, who of course was awake to order the evacuation.) The officers had pistols, and fifth officer Lowe at one point fired a few rounds to prevent a rush on the boat (Lord-Night, p. 75; Lord-Lives, p. 99). This ended the rush, and no one was hurt in the incident. First officer Murdoch may also have used his pistol (Lord-Lives, p. 100; cf. Lord-Night, p. 76), but again, he fired in the air. So at most one passenger was killed by an officer to prevent chaos, and even this is relatively ill-documented (Lord-Lives, pp. 101-102).
The real tragedy of the Titanic, of course, is that everyone could have been saved had there been enough lifeboats. British Board of Trade regulations said merely that any ship over 15,000 tons had to have at least sixteen lifeboats. And the regulations were carefully enforced; Butler-Unsink, p. 38, tells of the officers getting very upset with the Board of Trade inspector because he was so thorough. Titanic in fact had twenty (counting the four collapsible lifeboats that were not on davits and so were much harder to lower; two in fact were on a roof near one of the funnels and almost inaccessible; Lord-Lives, p. 97) -- but she was 46,000 tons, or three times the size envisioned when the regulation was written.
Adding more lifeboats would not have been a great hardship. More boats would have added some weight, of course, but they did not need more space; her davits were designed to carry multiple boats. Had she been fitted with a suitable number of lifecraft, and had crew competent to lower them, there was time to get everyone off. But there were boats for only 1178 people (Lord-Lives, p. 72). It was fortunate, in a way, that the ship was only half full; had she carried her full complement of 3547, there would have been boat space for only a third of them.
Making the matter worse, the lifeboats that did go out weren't full. This was not callousness or over-excitement; the lifeboat officers were not certain that fully-loaded boats could survive the drop after being lowered the long distance from the Titanic's decks (Wade, pp. 132-133), or that the crew were competent to lower full boats. Plus, with the ship going down, they were trying to get every boat down before she was swamped -- meaning they didn't wait to bring in as many people as possible.
(The farce of the lifeboats may not have ended there. The boats were supposed to be equipped with oars, sails, and survival supplies. An eyewitness testified that most of these were lacking; Eaton/Haas, p. 36. It was fortunate that the sea was calm; if anyone had been thrown out of a boat, it might have been hard to rescue the lost person.)
So most of the boats that were sent off in the first hour or so were lowered half-empty -- and apparently no one ever considered using one or another boat as an elevator to send down more passengers. Toward the end, the officers were willing to put more people aboard, but with most of the passengers at the stern, there was no one around near the bow when the last boats at that end were lowered (Lord-Lives, pp. 94-95). As a result, about 400 seats in the boats that could have been filled instead were left empty.
That was not the end of the mishandling. Though the Titanic did not have enough boats, she did have enough lifebelts to keep everyone afloat -- if they were rescued quickly enough from the chill waters. In fact, a few people who did not make it off the sinking ship were rescued by the boats, though many of the boats rowed away from the wreck as fast as they were able (Wade, pp. 233-235; Lynch/Marschall, p. 129, claims that Captain Smith tried to call some of the half-full boats back, but I have not seen this claim elsewhere, and in any case, none of them obeyed).
We note that many bodies would eventually be discovered, still afloat in their lifebelts {#4}, carried northward by the current; most seem to have died of the cold (Wade, pp. 273-274; according to Lynch/Marschall, p. 176, one of the rescue ships found 17 bodies in the sea, an only one had water in the lungs, i.e. had drowned. The rest all died of hypothermia). Had more of the boats come to their rescue, it is probable that at least a few hundred more people would have survived.
When the song calls it a "cold and icy sea" {#6}, it was only the truth; the waters were at 28 degrees F, and Second Officer Lightoller, who spent time in the water before reaching an overturned lifeboat (one of a number of men who survived by swimming to Collapsible A or Collapsible B, the lifeboats that the officers were still trying to get down when the ship sank), said that it felt like being stabbed with "a thousand knives" when he went into the sea (Barczewski, p. 29; Lord-Night, p. 114). In several cases, it took only a few minutes to kill; Barczewski, on the same page, relates the testimony of several people who pulled passengers into the lifeboats only to find them already dead, or to watch them die even after they were pulled from the water. Even some people who were never in the water suffered severely from the cold (Eaton/Haas, p. 41).
A recovery ship called the MacKay-Bennett (chartered by White Star in one of their few recorded instances of voluntary compassion; Butler-Unsink, p. 199) brought in over 306 bodies (Barczewski, p. 41), mostly unhurt except for sea and cold, and many more were seen by other ships (Wade, p. 274); 22 more bodies were brought in by other vessels (Barczewski, p. 42), some also charted by White Star (Eaton/Haas, pp. 99-100); the last body was picked in mid-May (Eaton/Haas, p. 105). Many recovered bodies went unidentified (Eaton/Haas, p. 105, says that 128 were buried without their names being known; Barczewski, p. 45, notes the case of a baby whose identity was not firmly established until DNA testing was used in 2002). Eaton/Haas, p. 105, calculates that 1314 bodies were never brought back to land.
What would have spared most of the grief was another ship to arrive quickly. And there was another ship in the vicinity, the freighter Californian. The Californian had been one of the ships sending ice warnings, and in fact she had halted for the night in the face of the ice barrier; her commander Stanley Lord was still fairly new to command , and had not faced ice before. (He was only 34 years old, according to Eaton/Haas, p. 128. Butler-Other, p. 50, says that he had commanded his first ship in 1906, but he had not moved to the Californian until early 1912)
Since the Californian was carrying freight only (there was some passenger space on the ship, but it was not occupied; the ship had been designed as a pure freighter, with the passenger space added as an afterthought late in her construction, according to Butler-Other, pp. 42-43), there was no real urgency about arriving at his destination (as witness the fact that the ship had sailed April 5, according to Eaton/Haas, p. 39. This was not a boat trying for a fast crossing -- though Butler-Other, p. 51, says that she had had a rough voyage the trip before and had to be hurried through the preparations for her current voyage). So he decided to sit tight (Butler-Unsink, p. 159).
The Californian's behavior inspired much controversy. Californian's crew certainly saw a second ship not far from them -- though most of the observers thought it too small to be the Titanic. (Butler-Other, p. 55, thinks this was because they saw it only under poor viewing conditions or after it had turned.) They saw a series of rockets fired, at times roughly corresponding to when the Titanic was sending off distress signals. They saw the ship to the south seemingly turn off most of its lights, and then disappear. These things happened soon after midnight. It was not until 4:00 a.m. that an officer really attempted to learn what was happening (Ritchie, pp. 32-33). The key questions are, Was this ship the Titanic, should the Californian have done something, and could it have done something had it tried?
According to Ballard's calculations, Californian was not more than 21 miles from where Titanic went down, and probably closer due to drift (Ballard, pp. 200-201, following the work of Jack Grimm; cf. Butler-Unsink, p. 243). Captain Lord would later give the distance as 17-19 miles (Ritchie, p. 33). Some estimates -- including Lord Mersey's official British inquiry (Ritchie, p. 33) -- have placed the two ships within five to ten miles of each other (Eaton/Haas, p. 151, though on p. 150 they argue for the 20 mile figure).
There is also suspicion that Californian's log was "cleaned up"; the official log has no record of seeing any rockets (when it is universally agreed that she did) -- and the "scrap log," which usually contains information to be cross-checked before being entered into the official log, is missing for that time period, even though it is usually preserved (Butler-Unsink, pp. 243-244). Butler-Unsink, p. 244, argues that the course she was on would have left her south of her official position when stopped -- i.e. closer to the Titanic.
Butler-Other, p. 136, also notes the curious fact that Captain Lord had his officers swear out statements about the disaster even before they reached port, which he then locked in his safe. What's more, Lord would refer to his navigation data, which most captains made public, as "state secrets" (Butler-Other, p. 137).
At the heart of the problem was the fact that the Californian had only one wireless operator, who went off duty before the Titanic started sending distress signals. But the officers of the Californian certainly saw Titanic's emergency rockets -- and ignored them until too late (Paine, p. 87). She didn't even have the excuse that she had to protect her passengers; since she was carrying only cargo (Lord-Lives, p. 134). Her inaction was at the instigation of her captain, Stanley Lord, who was trying to sleep and whose only response to the rockets was to tell his officers to try to contact the other ship by searchlight.
It's not clear why there was no response to the lights -- Lord's defenders often claim there was a third ship between the two of them and the Californian never saw the Titanic (Eaton/Haas, p. 127) -- but the ghost ship has never been identified (proposals have been made; none are convincing). From what I can tell, it sounds as if any ghost ship that had been where Lord's advocates say it was would have crashed straight into the ice barrier, so it is most unlikely that there was such a ship. The likely explanation for the lack of response to the Morse lamp is that the officers of the Titanic had other things on their minds than sending lamp signals. Titanic's wireless operators could stay at their posts; they had no other duties -- but the ship's officers were busy evacuating. (Fourth officer Boxhall had tried signalling the mystery ship; according to Lynch/Marschall, p. 109, Captain Smith's words were "Tell him to come at once. We are sinking" -- the exact words quoted in {#9}, though they are there credited to the wireless officers.)
Captain Smith did order the boats to head for the ship on the horizon, which by every reckoning but Captain Lord's was the Californian (Barczewski, p. 168), but she was too far away for the disorganized rowers to reach in any reasonable time. (Apparently none of the Titanic's boats were powered. They did have sails -- or at least they were supposed to, though they may have been among the emergency stores not packed -- but only a couple of sailors on the Titanic knew how to sail a boat, so that was no help.)
Butler, p. 156, notes an interesting argument made by a hydrographer at the time, which said that the maximum distance at which Titanic could see a ship on the horizon at night was 16 miles, and the maximum distance her boats could see one was seven miles. Since the Californian, based on stated positions, was certainly more than seven miles away, and probably more than 16, and since Titanic and Californian both unquestionably saw a ship, then either the two were closer together than Captain Lord claimed or there was a ship between the two. This, of course, was the heart of the argument.
Stanley Lord claimed that the Titanic was too far away to reach in time (Eaton/Haas, p. 129). But Californian had a top speed of 13.5 knots (Paine, p. 87; Eaton/Haas, p. 44). If he had reacted as strongly as the Carpathia, he would certainly have arrived at least half an hour before the Titanic went down (that based on the ships' official positions; it would have been sooner if, as suspected, the two ships were closer together than the Californian's official position indicated), allowing for much more complete rescue efforts. Condemnation of Californian's skipper Stanley Lord has not quite been universal -- Butler-Unsink, p. 241, notes that some maritime unions have a strong interest in not having them condemned -- but it is widespread; if the Californian was the mystery ship, there can be little doubt that Lord's behavior caused hundreds of avoidable deaths.
It is ironic to note that the Californian was owned by the Leyland Line, which was owned by International Merchant Marine, which also owned White Star and the Titanic (Butler-Other, p. 44). It was IMM, in fact, which had put the passenger space on Californian.
Of the books I have read, only Lynch/Marschall and Eaton/Haas can be considered Lordite; on pp. 190-191, the former argues, first, that the Californian's reported position and the Titanic's actual position were too far apart to allow easy visual contact; second, that it took the Californian two hours to reach the Titanic's death site (so also Eaton/Haas, p. 44, but they note that she initially steamed at a mere six knots), so she couldn't have gotten there quickly even had she responded to the pleas; third, that there may have been a third ship (this would be an alternate explanation for why witnesses on the Titanic thought that there was a moving ship within five or six miles of them -- Eaton/Haas, p. 37); fourth, that many on the Californian did not think the ship was big enough to be the Titanic, fifth, that the witnesses on both ships thought the other ship was moving even though both were stopped.
The first objection is meaningless, since it is based on one actual and one estimated position; the second is also meaningless, because the Californian headed for the reported position, not the actual position (when the Carpathia and the Californian actually rendezvoused, it was at 41 degrees 33' N, 50 degrees 01' W, or about 15 nautical miles from where the Titanic broadcast as the site of the disaster); the third is vitiated by the fact that, if there had been a third ship, the Carpathia or the Mount Temple should have seeen it (Butler-Other, p. 158), and never did, and no ship is logged as being in the area; the fourth may have been an illusion of distance; and the fifth may also have been an illusion, or it may have been caused by the drift of the two vessels, which would have responded to ocean currents differently.
Butler-Other, pp. 171-176, describes Lord's testimony before the British investigatory tribunal; it is confusing and sounds like the account of a man trying to cover his guilt. On the other hand, he was being badgered by several questioners about events which happened in the middle of the night. I would allow the possibility that he simply didn't remember that well.
But not one of these objections in any way overcomes the basic flaw in the Lordite position: That Captain Lord saw distress rockets and ignored them. We don't know if Lord could have helped the Titanic. We *do* know that he ignored an obvious cry for help.
Ritchie, p. 33, notes that the bad publicity forced Captain Lord to quit the Leyland Line. He found another job, but it was with the Nitrate Producers Steamship Company, which cannot have been as prestigious. His record there is said to be unblemished.
We should stress: Stanley Lord was not guilty of murder. He did not know what was happening. Even if he had responded immediately to the first distress rocket, he might not have been able to reach Titanic in time to save everyone (Butler-Other, pp. 191-194, attempts to calculate what Californian could have done had she responded at once, and estimates that he might have saved 300 more lives. I would consider this number somewhat low, because the evacuation of Titanic might have been more orderly had there been word that a ship would arrive soon. But Butler is likely right that some would still have died). And if he had known with certainty that a ship was sinking near him, he would have surely done more than he did.
To repeat: All authorities agree Lord is innocent of deliberate murder. What he is guilty of is negligence and indifference. And, to be fair, his junior officers must bear part of the blame. To give Lord his due, he had gone to bed before the distress calls started. The junior officers made very little effort to wake him (Eaton/Haas, p. 151). There is certainly plenty of blame to spread among the Californian's officers.
Still, Butler-Unsink, pp. 191-194, 241-245, accuses Stanley Lord of terrorizing his officers until they couldn't act without his permision. Butler-Other, p. 199, offers as his verdict that "circumstances unconciously conspired to reveal that Stanley Lord was a man without conscience: Stanley Lord was a sociopath." I do not think Butler proves this (he says he consulted experts, but gives no details of their analysis, and I'm not sure a diagnosis at this distance is even meaningful) -- but it would explain a lot.
The Lordite controversy is covered in detail in almost every book on the Titanic; see e.g. Barczewski, p. 35 and after; Lord-Lives, p. 135 and following; Eaton/Haas, pp. 150-152; Ritchie, pp. 31-34; it is the primary subject of Butler-Other. Nonetheless, it seems not to have been mentioned much in the songs, perhaps because the Californian did not show up in the news stories until some time after the disaster.
Not every ship and captain was so inert. Captain Arthur Roston of the Carpathia heard the distress call, and at once turned ship {#9, #11}. His was by far the most decisive and effective action of the night. Unfortunately, his ship was roughly 60 miles from the Titanic, and the Carpathia, though only nine years old, had a normal top speed of just 14 knots (Paine, p. 96 Butler-Other, pp. 22-23, notes that she was not really intended to be a liner in the usual sense -- as built, she had large cargo holds and no first-class accomodations at all, just second class and steerage. In 1905, according to Butler-Other, p. 26, she was rebuilt to take first class passengers, and her third class space was expanded at the expense of the cargo space, but of course she was stuck with her old engines.)
Captain Roston and crew gave it everything they had, and supposedly got Carpathia going at 17 knots (Lord-Night, p. 141, though others have argued that she could not possibly have gotten above 16 knots; Butler-Other, p. 70. Since the ship never went that speed at any other time, we really cannot know). It still took her some three and a half hours to reach the site of the Titanic, meaning that the larger liner had gone down about an hour before. Carpathia rescued such survivors as she could find, taking the first survivors aboartd at 4:10 (Butler-Other, p. 105) and reaching the last boat at 8:30 (or about six hours after Titanic sank); by then of course the only survivors were those who had been in the boats. Indeed, some even of those pulled from the water by the boats had died; the cold and the shock (and, in a few cases, the effort of keeping a half-flooded boat afloat) proved too much.
After picking up every survivor, Captain Roston turned his ship about. She was supposed to be heading east for Europe, but he knew he had to get the survivors to land quickly. The only question was whether to head for New York (the passengers' intended destination) or Halifax (the nearest major port). After some consideration, he headed for New York {#11} (Lord-Night, pp. 160-161). It was to prove a difficult trip, both because of the crowding and because storms made some passengers fear that the Carpathia too was in danger (Lynch/Marschall, p. 163).
Lord-Night, pp. 189-209, gives the official passenger list, with those lost and saved, though he notes in Lord-Lives (pp. 36-38) that there were some errors in the list. Tibballs, pp. 483-506, gives a list which includes the crew, though some are miscategorized. Most other sources content themselves with naming a handful of the "celebrity" passengers -- e.g. the very wealthy Isidor and Ida Strauss (just two of several millionaires {#6}), and American President Taft's advisor Archie Butt. (Several others big names booked passage but did not actually sail. J. P. Morgan, who ultimately owned the ship, was too ill to sail. Alfred W. Vanderbilt changed his mind so late that there wasn't even time to get his luggage off the ship; Ballard, p. 14; according to Eaton/Haas, p. 73, a servant stayed with the baggage and was lost with the ship.)
The Strausses are mentioned in the Cowboy Loye version of {#16}; they were an "elderly philanthropist" and his wife (Lord-Lives, p. 35) who owned the Macy's department store (Ballard, p. 14). They reached the deck early on, but Isador Strauss, being a man, was denied a place in the lifeboats (Butler-Unsink, p. 109, and Eaton/Haas, p. 26, in fact say that he refused to enter a boat when given a chance). His wife could have left, but she declared that she would share his fate ("We have been living together for many years; where you go, I go"), went back aboard the ship, and of course died in the wreck (Wade, p. 61).
But if Ida Strauss gets the award for Most Romantic Gesture, no passenger was given more publicity than John Jacob Astor (1864-1912) {#5; probably the "Jacob Nash" of Lomax's #3}. He was probably the richest man aboard, though he had inherited rather than earned most of the money. He kept 18 automobiles, and had raised a regiment for the Spanish-American War, allowing him to take the title of Colonel (Barczewski, p. 58), even though he had no military training (and probably less aptitude, except for the mercilessness that came from his financial background).
As the boats went off, Astor apparently asked if he could go aboard with his (much younger trophy) wife, who was pregnant. (No, they didn't have the phrase "trophy wife" in 1912, but they had the idea, and Astor was largely cast out of society; Barczewski, p. 58. Barczewski adds that the girl was visibly pregnant even though they had been married only four months. It is perhaps revealing that Madeleine Force Astor would remarry in 1918 even though it meant giving up about seven million dollars in money from a prenuptual agreement. The flip side is, at least Astor married her; other rich men pretended to be faithful and took mistresses. Benjamin Guggenheim, another of the ultra-rich passengers, had left his wife in New York to travel with his girlfriend; Butler-Unsink, p. 28.)
Second officer Lightoller, who (as noted above) survived but only by swimming to a boat, flatly refused Astor's request to join her in the boat (Barczewski, p. 25).
Astor allowed her to go in the boat without him, but said that he would meet her in the morning (Barczewski, p. 60); either he expected the ship to survive (unlikely by then) or he expected to find another boat.
Quite a few legends arose about Astor immediately after the wreck, generally very positive {#5 says "all the women he tried to save"}; Biel, p. 41, reports an account in which he is credited with saying "Not a man until every woman and child is safe in the boats." Not one of these accounts is from from an actual beneficiary of his kindness, or even a reliable witness; all were reports of people who claimed they saw something he did (Barczewski, p. 63); we cannot in any instance prove that Astor was actually the man involved.
(This "men stepped aside" legend is found, e.g., in {#4};Biel, pp. 23-25, documents that this arose in the first hours after the sinking, before any of the survivors had told their tale; the stories weren't exactly false, but it was the ship's officers, not the passengers, who controlled access to the boats, and in the end, many men did survive.)
Astor's body was one of those found by the MacKay-Bennett; it was in very bad shape, but he could be identified by the monograms on his clothing (Barczewski, p. 40). Lord-Lives, p. 172, observes that the Astor family did not even file any claims for damages over his death -- something that obviously would not have happened in today's litigious society.
There were, to be sure, lawsuits filed -- a lot of them, totalling about $16 million. This led to interesting problems in dealing with British and American law (after all, it was a British ship owned by an American conglomerate.) In the end, White Star paid out $664,000 (Lord-Lives, pp. 172-177).
The fate of Captain Smith, mentioned in folklore, is in fact uncertain, except that he definitely did not survive. Wade, p. 58, and Barczewski, pp. 169-171 list several reports, from suicide to rescuing other passengers at the expense of his life. (Barczewski suggests that most of the more heroic stories stemmed from some deep British urge to make him look good, and reports on p. 172 that those responsible for building his memorial were mostly passengers who had enjoyed sailing with him on other vessels.)
Butler-Unsink, pp. 251-252, examines his decisions in the ship's last hours, and (with the concurrence of a psychologist) suggests that the mental blow was so strong that he largely lost the power of decision -- we might informally say that he was in shock. (Lynch/Marschall, p. 137, says he "seemed almost in a daze, a strangely passive figure.") If so, he probably didn't do anything especially noteworthy in the last moments of the ship's life.
(Incidentally I can't help but note that Smith doesn't seem to have been the only one. There was little panic on the Titanic -- but very little ingenuity once Andrews gave the bad news. Did the engineers try to rig more pumps to lengthen the ship's life? Seemingly not. Did the carpenter use the wood furnishings to try to make coracles or something to keep a few more people afloat? There is no evidence of it, though we do hear of a baker throwing deck chairs overboard in hopes people could cling to them; Lynch/Marschall, p. 134. Did anyone counterflood, to try to keep the water from overtopping the forward bulkheads? Certainly not. The sinking ship saw much heroism and very little intelligence.)
The likeliest scenario is that Smith went into the water with so many other passengers (so, e.g., explicitly Lynch/Marschall, p. 137), and -- like them -- died of exposure. It was probably an easier death than that suffered by the engineers and stokers in the lower parts of the ship, who stayed down there to keep the electricity going; they would have asphyxiated or drowned or both.
Smith somehow became a hero -- legend had it that one of his last orders was, "Be British!" In other words "Keep a stiff upper lip (even though you're about to die an agonizing death)"; it became a legendary command and inspired various poems and non-folk songs.
There is some irony in noting that the memorial to Smith cites his "great heart," "brave life," and "heroic death" (the last of which, as noted, cannot be proved) -- but does not include the name of the Titanic (Barczewski, p. 180).
First officer Murdoch, the officer on watch when the ship hit the berg, also had various ends ascribed to him, including suicide (Barczewski, p. 193). Apparently Hollywood threw in some even worse charges (Barczewski, p. 199). But the best evidence is that he simply ended up in the water like everyone else, and the citizens of his home town eventually won an apology, including some cash, from the studio (Barczewski, p. 198, 202).
Surviving officers such as Lightoller, however, found their careers blighted. Wade seems to think that Lightoller was evasive before the investigating committees, but Lord considers him a decisive and capable officer, noting that he served in the Royal Navy in World War I and, as an old man, took his private boat to assist in the evacuation of Dunkirk. But he was never given a ship to command (Lord-Lives, pp. 192-193). The junior officers did no better, even though they surely could not be blamed for the outcome.
The survivor who earned the most publicity (other than Ismay) was probably "Unsinkable" Molly Brown: Margaret Tobin Brown, 1867-1932. Born poor, her husband, a mining supervisor, discovered gold in the Little Johnny Mine (Barczewski, p. 85). Molly, suddenly rich, then became active in a variety of social causes -- and became a world traveller after she and her husband drifted apart. She was in Europe when her grandson became ill, so she hurried back to the United States on the Titanic (Barczewski, p. 86). When the ship hit the iceberg, she gathered some of her things (fortunately not all; no spartan, she abandoned 25 gowns, 14 hats, and 13 pairs of shoes purchased in Paris; Barczewski, p. 87).
Hustled into a lifeboat, she distributed some of the seven pairs of socks she was wearing to those who had come aboard less well-supplied (Barczewski, p. 89), and also tried to convince the quartermaster in charge of the boat to rescue those left behind. If the account in Barczewski, pp. 88-89, is even vaguely correct, his was one of the most despicable stories on that night; he refused to go back, and refused even to hand over the tiller, instead leaving it to the middle-aged Brown and one other woman to row.
Aboard the Carpathia, Brown tried to send out messages on behalf of poorer passengers who could not pay for wireless messages (Barczewski, p. 90). She also tried to comfort some of the grieving survivors (her skill in several languages helped), and set up a subscription to make up for their losses. It all added up to a legend -- which was confirmed in 1925, when she survived a hotel fire and helped others escape the building (Barczewski, p. 92). But Barczewski notes that the popular accounts which made her legendary were largely fictionalized.
Brown was active in relief causes in World War I, but after that fell into quarrels with her children and grandchildren, and her money dried up after her husband died in 1922 (Barczewski, p. 91)
There was one small consolation out of the Titanic wreck: The British and Americans toughened regulations for liners. They had to have enough lifeboats, the crew had to know how to deal with them, they had to have full-time wireless officers, etc. (Wade, pp. 302-303). These would not prevent future disasters, as the Lusitania would demonstrate just over three years later, but they made them less inherently deadly -- the loss of life on the Lusitania was mostly because she sank in twenty minutes. Had she stayed afloat for more than two hours, as the Titanic did, nearly everyone aboard would have survived.
Wade, p. 318, notes the additional irony that this disaster did not strike one much-oppressed community: There were apparently no Blacks aboard the ship as she sank (Biel, p. 112). Of course, this eliminates the whole plot of "Shine and the Titanic" {contra #14}.
That's just as well for Shine, given the report in the song that Captain Smith's daughter offered him her body if he would rescue her. Smith had only one child, a daughter, Helen Melville Smith -- and she was still just a girl, born in 1902 (Barczewski, p. 163); imagine what would have happened had he so much as touched a child that age! In any case, her name isn't in the passenger list in Lord-Night, and she was alive to dedicate a memorial to Smith in 1914 (Barczewski, p. 179).
"Shine and the Titanic" is also ruled out by the fact that Shine could not have swum to safety; the water, as noted, was just too cold.
Racism also tinged the stories about the people who tried to rush the boats; they were usually labelled Asian or Italian or otherwise less than Anglo-Saxon. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and much reason to think it false (Barczewski, pp. 55-56). There is one documented instance of a crewman trying to steal another crewman's life vest; since there were no Blacks aboard, he cannot have been Black, and in fact the surviving witness never said he was -- but one press report calls him a Negro (Biel, pp. 50-51).
The story of boxer Jack Johnson is more complicated; it appears that Leadbelly's song on the topic ({#8}: "Jack Johnson want to get on board, Captain said, "I ain't haulin' no coal") conflates two incidents. Lyle Lofgren tells me that Johnson was in Chicago at the time Titanic sank, but according to Barczewski, p. 64, Johnson was refused passage on a liner due to his skin color on another occasion.
According to Lord-Lives, p. 8, no books on the Titanic were published between 1913 to 1955. In the publishing business, A Night to Remember started a Titanic boom (Biel, p. 149, calls the 1955 publication of A Night to Remember the biggest date in Titanic history other than 1912 itself.). But the songs on the subject hardly stopped -- indeed, some time around 1970, they taught us a comic parody of {#1} ("Oh, they built another ship Called the S.S. 92... And they christened it with beer, and it sank right off the pier, Wasn't it sad when that great ship went down") in elementary school.
Ironically for the parody, the Titanic was never formally christened (Lord-Lives, p. 11).
In the late twentieth century, of course, the movie "Titanic" was released. I have not seen it, but the reports I've read (e.g. in Barczewski) say that it contains many historical inaccuracies. Perhaps it will be starting a new round of Titanic folklore.
Another irony is the effort which White Star went to to suppress the memory of the ship -- which obviously failed. After Carpathia dropped off the lifeboats at White Star's dock in New York, White Star stripped off all identifying markings; we don't even know what became of the boats (Lynch/Marschall, pp. 166-168; Easton/Haas, p. 49, thinks they were stripped by souvenir hunters and then rotted away at the dock; Butler-Other, in the photographs section thinks they were used on other White Star ships, but of course without anyone knowing where they came from). They would probably be worth millions today.
Which brings us to one of the most vexed of all questions about the Titanic: What the band played on that last night.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the performance that night. For starters, the musicians were not a band as properly so understood -- they did not have a brass section. Their instruments were strings and piano.
In fact, the eight performers weren't even a group in the usual sense. They rarely if ever played together as an eight-piece ensemble (Lord-Lives, pp. 96-97). The musicians consisted of a string quartet with piano (the primary group, led by newly-engaged violinist Wallace Hartley, which played the main evening concerts and Sunday religious services), and a violin/'cello/piano trio which played mostly at receptions and in the cafes (Barczewski, pp. 130-131). They can't have been very loud (especially away from a piano), and in an emergency situation, with the ship listing and sheet music not usable, they would have to rely on things everyone knew -- and even for that, they might not have parts properly assigned. (Eaton/Haas, p. 94, claims they had all 352 pieces in the White Star music collection memorized. This is patently absurd, though presumably they could play them all.)
I can't help but note the irony that two of them had been lured away from the Carpathia to serve on the Titanic (Lord-Night, p. 44). Though Butler-Unsink, p. 122, reports that Hartley was once asked what he would do on a sinking ship, and he ha answered, "I would gather the band together and begin playing."
We don't even know how long they played (Lord-Lives, pp. 107-108). Going down with the ship was not really part of their job. Although musicians on German ships actually doubled as ship's stewards (Brinnin, p. 312; this had the ironic effect that German ships, unlike English, *did* play "Nearer My God to Thee" on Sundays), English ships employed specialist musicians who were not formally employees of White Star. (In fact, White Star's passenger list shows them as second class passengers.) Shortly before the Titanic voyage, White Star had started contracting with an agent to supply musicians. The hiring agents booked most of the same musicians the liner companies had always employed -- but inflicted a large pay cut on them and used the difference to make their profits (Lord-Lives, pp. 114-116). White Star refused even to pay death benefits to the musicians (Lord-Lives, p. 117). However long they played, it was above and beyond the call of duty. In the end, all eight of them went down with the ship (Ballard, p. 24 -- a page which also shows a poster for the band).
Whether the musicians made attempts to save themselves cannot be known; some passengers stated that they quit playing about half an hour before the ship sank (Barczewski, p. 132) -- perhaps when the last boats left? But it is touching to quote the remark of Steward Edward Brown, who, when asked when they ceased playing, said "I do not remember hearing them stop" (Lord-Lives, p. 108). Hence, perhaps, the statement that the music "played as they went down" {#9}.
In a minor folkloric touch, Hartley's body was recovered; the face was almost beyond recognition, but he still was wearing his uniform, and his violin case was on his back, allowing identification (Barczewski , p. 139); he was buried in his home town of Colne (which he had left 17 years before) in a rosewood casket (Lord-Lives, p. 118).
Interestingly, though most reports say the musicians played either hymns or ragtime on that last night, neither was the Hartley quintet's specialty; their primary clientele was the first class passengers (worth, according to Barczewski, over $500 million in 1912 dollars!), who apparently preferred classical music -- on the night the boat went down, the evening concert included Wagner, Dvorak, and Puccini, according to Lord-Lives, pp. 43-44. Apparently some of the listeners felt the band not quite up to the task (Lord-Lives, p. 43) -- but imagine five musicians trying to play Wagner!
We might add that ship's bands of this period played largely for charity (Preston, p. 141) -- though it seems that few passengers were particularly generous.
When the ship hit the iceberg, Captain Smith apparently roused the musicians to play during the evacuation (Barczewski, p. 132). At first, they seem to have played in the first class lounge; later, they moved toward the boats (though the piano players would have been unable to play on the boat deck itself, and without the piano the group would have been quiet indeed. Perhaps -- personal speculation only -- one of the piano players took over conducting, to try to keep the group together without the piano playing rhythm?).
As for what they played, most reports agree that the band started out by playing ragtime tunes (or at least "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which had been a big hit the year before but which critics have indignantly charged isn't ragtime), mixed with other light pieces (Lord-Lives, p. 109). Butler-Unsink, p. 91, mentions "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Great Big Beautiful Doll," "Can't You Hear Me Caroline," "A Little Love, A Little Kiss," and "Moonlight Bay," apparently based on the report of Lawrence Beesley.
According to Wade, pp. 61-62, it was a Mrs. Vera Dick who started one of the most enduring false stories. She was the one who reported that the band played "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship went down {#1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #16}. Obviously, if she had been near enough to hear the band, she would have been sucked down with it; Lord-Lives, p. 109, says she was at least a quarter of a mile away. Of course, one newspaper account claimed that the sound of the hymn continued *after* the ship sank! (Barczewski, p. 137).
Lord also observes that "Nearer, My God, To Thee" has different tunes in Britain and America -- yet passengers from both sides of the ocean claim to have heard it played. Odds are that someone, probably Mrs. Dick, started the story ,and it sounded so appropriate that people thought they remembered it. Or maybe it was a transferred memory from the memorial services; "Nearer, My God, To Thee" *was* played at some of the funerals (Barczewski, p. 44), including Hartley's (Barczewski, p. 139, though Eaton/Haas, p. 32, says that the tune used at Hartley's burial was "Proprior Deo," which few would have known as "Nearer, My God, to Thee").
The single most reliable account is that from junior wireless operator Harold Bride: "The water was then coming into our cabin. From aft came the tunes of the band. It was a ragtime tune. I don't know what. Then there was 'Autumn.' Phillips [the senior wireless operator] ran aft, and that was the last I ever saw of him alive" (Tibballs, p. 97; cf. Wade, p. 63).
This statement has frequently been taken to refer to the lively hymn "Autumn." "Autumn" was considered extremely appropriate, since it contains the line "Hold me up in mighty waters." But Lord-Lives, p. 110, offers very strong evidence against this suggestion; it is unlikely the band knew it or that passengers would recognize it. Lord-Lives, p. 112, suggests that Bride's reference was in fact to Archibald Joyce's "Songe d'Autumne," popular in 1912. We cannot possibly know; the evidence is too thin. But at least this piece is a reasonable suggestion, unlike "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Eaton/Haas, p. 32, mention a suggestion by Gavin Bryars that Bride actually said "Aughton," and was misquoted.
Still, there are authorities who stand by "Nearer, My God, to Thee" -- e.g. Butler-Unsink, p. 131, and tentatively Eaton/Haas, p. 32. I have to think this is wishful thinking; though Butler-Unsink addresses the counter-claim for "Autumn," he does not acknowledge the various problems with the claim for "Nearer...."
(It is ironic to note that the sinking does seem to have inspired a publishing boomlet -- Lycnh/Marschall, p. 213, shows three editions of "Nearer, My God, to Thee" with the Titanic on the cover.)
(I will add a minor speculation of my own here. Tibballs, p. 320, prints a report that a single violinist played "Nearer..." "[a]fter all his fellow musicians had been washed away." Speaking only for myself, if I were in a situation where I knew death was coming soon, I'd haul out one or another instrument and start playing -- it would be the best distraction and farewell I can think of. And Butler-Unsink, p. 57, says that there were many musicians among the third class passengers, who staged their own dances along the way. We also have tales of hymn-sings and such; Lynch/Marschall, p. 77. Could it be that one of the passengers played "Nearer..."?)
That report Tibballs cites (from the Western Daily Mercury) was an extensive one, printed two weeks after the accident, and it seems to have contained nearly every inaccuracy contained in the Titanic songs:
A. That Murdoch shot himself (pp. 320, 326, 333 in the Tibballs reprint).
B. "Explosions" (pp. 320, 325, 326, 328, 335; an exploding boiler is mentioned in Bessie Jones's version of {#3}, but in fact the Titanic crew shut down the boilers early to prevent an explosion, and Ballard saw no evidence of any such thing; if there were explosions, they were simply of compressed air and probably occured far below the surface). To be charitable, the process of shutting down the boilers did involve venting steam, which was a noisy process (it even made it hard for the wireless operators to work; Lynch/Marschall, p. 108) which someone might have interpreted as an explosion. Or, perhaps, a passenger below-decks might have heard the launching of the distress rockets and thought that was an explosion (cf. the description of the sound in Butler-Unsink, pp. 97-98; Lynch/Marschall, p. 99, calls it an unearthly roar which forced passengers to shout in order to be heard over the sound.).
C. An attempt to cross the ocean in "record time" (p. 324; cf. {#7}), when the Titanic had no chance whatsoever to cross faster than the Mauretania's record
D. Sundry claims to have been on "the last boat" (p. 324), when in fact the last boat was Lightoller's, which hadn't even been launched when the water rolled over it, and its passengers are well known
E. A claim that Titanic's "plates were ripped open from a dozen feet in from the bow to the second funnel" (p. 327) or "from the forecastle to the bridge (p. 335), which of course would have sunk her much faster
F. Two "Italians" trying to rush the boats; one "Dago" (yes, that was the word used, which will tell you the quality of this particular report) had to be shot (pp. 329, 338)
G. Plus, of course, several stories of the "last musician" (pp. 320, 326).
Even if no one played "Nearer, My God, to Thee," there was at least one hymn directly associated with the sinking: Philip Paul Bliss's "Pull for the Shore." This was sung aboard one of the lifeboats as they rowed away from the scene of the wreck (Wade, p. 236). There was bitter logic in the words:
Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore!
Heed not the rolling waves, but bend to the oar;
Safe in the life boat, sailor, cling to self no more!
Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the shore.
Harland & Wolff, which built the Titanic, continued to prosper into the Twenties, but the partition of Ireland and the decline of the shipping fleet cost it much business. From a peak in the tens of thousands of employees, it now has only a few hundred (one of the biggest factors in the decline of the Belfast economy), and is now Norwegian-owned; the land on which Titanic was built was sold off in 2003 (Barczewski, p. 245).
Southampton, the Titanic's home port, suffered more immediate losses; the larger part of the ship's crew came from there, meaning that hundreds of families lost a loved one. The Daily Graphic printed a report headed "Stricken Southampton" (Tibballs, pp. 239-240). Barczewski, p. 248, notes that there was one school in the town where no fewer than 125 students had lost a close relative. On p. 264, she notes that the population in 1912 was around 120,000, meaning that more than one Southampton resident in 200 was aboard the Titanic (p. 266 says that 699 of 898 crewmembers lived in the Southampton area, whilte, Butler-Unsink, p. 172, says that 80% of the crew came from the city), and more than one in 250 died aboard the ship.
Many of the Titanic songs of course stress the theme of hubris and how the ship had to be punished somehow. {#10 is the most extreme, but we also find this e.g. in versions of #1}. This bit of theology did not originate with the songwriters; Biel, pp. 59-63, and at other points in the chapter labelled "Mammon," shows how preachers of the time offered this argument (which is at best dubiously Biblical -- Jesus in fact quite explicitly said that special punishments did not come to special sinners; see e.g. Luke 13:4). Biel in fact cites {#10} as an example of how this doctrine became entrenched. Butler-Unsink, pp. 222-223, also discusses the mass religious outpouring on the theme of "God did it to show that humans are incompetent worms." (To which I say, the very fact that they can come up with such notions proves that they're right: We *are* incompetent worms. But it was the complacent British Board of Trade, and the cheapskate managers like Ismay, not the engineers, who are to blame.)
There were a number of goofy ideas proposed over the years to, well, raise the Titanic {#7}. Most are pre-Ballard -- the first was proposed in 1914 (Lord-Lives, p. 194) -- so they didn't realize the ship was in two pieces, and most were unworkable even with an intact ship; it seems unlikely that anything will ever come of this (though Arthur C. Clarke produced some ideas that might actually work). Nor did anyone really have any idea what to do with the ship once raised; the idea of a museum was proposed, but one wag calculated that it would be economically unviable just because of the amount of paint required for the ship (Lynch/Marschall, p. 201).
It is sad to report that scavengers *have* recovered some scrap metal -- and, reportedly, are turning it into wrist watches. Other artifacts have definitely been recovered. Sadly, the Gods have not seen to strike these grave-robbers with the sort of punishment they deserve.
The last survivor of the Titanic, Elizabeth Gladys "Millvena" Dean, died at the end of May 2009, more than 97 years after the sinking. (She was only a few weeks old when the ship sank, the child of a family trying to emigrate to America.) The legend, it seems clear, will survive much longer. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 2.5
File: RcTita15

Titles of Songs (Song of Songs, Song of All Songs, Song of Song Titles)


DESCRIPTION: Lyrics composed of titles or pieces of other songs, e.g. "Mickey O'Flannigan he had a Bull Pup, Down Where the Pansies Grow, Don't You Leave Your Mother, Tom, For Mary Kelly's Beau."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1863 (Foster's sheet music)
KEYWORDS: lyric nonballad parody
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Randolph 515, "Titles of Songs" (4 texts, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 380-381, "Titles of Songs" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 515A)
BrownIII 234, "Working on the Railroad" (1 text plus two unrelated fragments, the "B" and "C" fragments probably belong with "Roll on the Ground (Big Ball's in Town)"; the "A" text is a jumble starting with "Working on the Railroad" but followed up by what is probably a "Song of All Songs" fragment)
Dean, p. 131, "Reminiscences" (1 text)
Spaeth-ReadWeep, pp. 45-46, "The Song of All Songs" (1 text)
Saunders/Root-Foster 2, pp. 339-342+450, "The Song of All Songs" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 144, "The Chaunt Seller, Or, a New Batch of Ballads" (reproduction of a broadside page)
Roud #7598, 7599
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Songs of Old Ireland" (theme)
NOTES: There are actually several pieces which go under this title (Randolph's A, B, and C form one group, his D another; Dean's a third, specifically of Irish songs; Stephen Foster with Tony Pastor produced the piece printed by Spaeth in 1863, though Saunders and Root note that the lyrics are not by Pastor or Foster, and suggest John F. Poole as the writer). The Shepard broadside is particularly interesting, because it appears to be a Song of All Songs made into a street cry -- the seller is hawking the broadsides he sells!
All these songs have a common mechanism, however, and since it is often hard to tell one from another, I am lumping them here.
This has, of course, no relation to the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon, Canticles) in the Bible. For one thing, the Biblical book is erotic (arguably obscene), while this is clean. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: R515

Tittery Nan [Laws H16]


DESCRIPTION: Joe Dimsey steals old Josiah's mare; the old man repays the younger back by recovering his horse and pummeling him
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Linscott)
KEYWORDS: robbery fight thief injury
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Laws H16, "Tittery Nan"
Linscott, pp. 292-293, "Tittery Nan" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 712, TITERNAN
Roud #2194
NOTES: Laws says, correctly, that "this little piece with its gay refrain is hardly more than a nonsense song," though Linscott is of the opinion that it's based on fact. What fact she does not know.
Roud lumps this with "Titter-ni-an," as sung by Barney McCarthy. This is understandable based on the title, since he had only the sound recoding, but I would consider them separate (while allowing that "Tittery Nan" may be a bowdlerized remake). - RBW
File: LH16

Tittery-ry-an


DESCRIPTION: "An old women went out to the barn Some eggs for to hunt... A mouse ran up her cunt.." She runs to her husband, begging him to turn it around so it doesn't gnaw its way out. The husband has intercourse with her until the mouse runs out her sleeve
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (collcted from Barney McCarthy by Lomax)
KEYWORDS: sex humorous animal clothes
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: James P. Leary and Richard March, "Farm, Forest, and Factory: Songs of Midwestern Labor," published in Archie Green, editor, _Songs about Work: Essays in Occupational Culture for Richard A. Reuss_, Indiana University, 1993, pp. 256-257, "Titter-ry-an" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #2194
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Titter-ni-an
NOTES: Roud, based on the title, lumps the Lomax recording of Barney McCarthy with "Tittery Nan" [Laws H16]. It is evident from the text printed by Leary and March, however, that they are in fact separate songs -- though I would allow a slight possibility that "Tittery Nan" is a thoroughly bowdlerized rewrite of this song. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: JPLRMTRA

Titus Andronicus's Complaint


See references under Fortune My Foe (Aim Not Too High) (File: ChWI076)

To Anacreon in Heaven


DESCRIPTION: "To Anacreon in heav'n where he sat in full glee, A few sons of harmony sent in a petition." They ask the poet to be their patron, describe how they intend to drink and enjoy themselves, and wander off into sundry classical allusions
AUTHOR: Words: Ralph Tomlinson / Music: John Stafford Smith (?)
EARLIEST DATE: 1778 (The Vocal Magazine)
KEYWORDS: drink nonballad gods
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Spaeth-ReadWeep, pp. 8-11, "To Anacreon in Heaven" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld-WFM, pp. 528-533, "The Star Spangled Banner"
DT, ANCREON, ANACRON2
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Star-Spangled Banner" (tune) and references there
NOTES: Anacreon (c. 563-476 B.C.E.) was a Greek poet for whom the anacreonitic metre (^^-^-^--) was named. Only fragments of his poetry survive; what scraps remain are in praise of wine, love, and pleasure.
John Stafford Smith is most frequently listed as the author of this tune, and his name appears on the first dated sheet music (1799; the earliest printing, probably c. 1782, has no author listed). However, Samuel Arnold, who conducted the Anacreonitic Society's orchestra, has also been named.
This song was written for the Anacreonitic Society, devoted (like Anacreon's writings) to wine and pleasure. The society broke up in 1786.
For commentary on the various obscure allusions in this piece, the reader is referred to Spaeth's Read 'Em and Weep. Those who wish to see a list of all the (generally dreadful) lyrics set to the tune around the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Spaeth's History of Popular Music in America, p. 40. - RBW
Anyone who complains that our national anthem is bad poetry (and some do) should look at the lyrics to this song, its ancestor. They are immeasurably worse. The Library of Congress conducted a study of the song's origins in the early part of this century; among other issues, they considered (and rejected) a suggestion that the tune was composed by the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan. - PJS
File: SRW008

To Be a Good Companion


See I'll Drink One (To Be a Good Companion, The Sussex Toast) (File: K285)

To Chase the Buffalo


See Chase the Buffalo (I) (File: GrD61103)

To Cheer the Heart


See Farewell He (File: FSC41)

To Coont My Kin an' Pedigree


DESCRIPTION: The singer is offended that his antagonist, in "the filthy stuff that ye composed [with help]," ridiculed "my kin an' pedigree ... ye are like Melchisedeck we dinna know your race." He notes his antagonist's name is shared by a hangman.
AUTHOR: Peter McCombie (source: GreigDuncan3)
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: accusation nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan3 674, "To Coont My Kin an' Pedigree" (1 text)
Roud #6098
NOTES: GreigDuncan3 quotes Charles Murray's conclusion that this is part of a battle between rhymers: one being McCombie and the other named Milne. The Melchisedeck reference, according to GreigDuncan3, is to Hebrews 7.3 [more likely 7.1-3]: "For this Melchsedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God ... without father, without mother, without descent, ...." referring back to Genesis 14.18-20 and Psalms 110.4. - BS
While GreigDuncan3 quotes Hebrews 7:1-3, the actual reference in the song is indeed to Hebrews 7:3, which is the source of the statement that Melchizedek is without father or mother or genealogy. There is no hint of this in Genesis (which simply refers to him as king of [Jeru]salem) or in Psalm 110 (which calls him a "priest forever" -- although in fact the text of the verse is somewhat unclear and some think that it does not refer to Melchizedek). The reference to Hebrews is further supported by the spelling "Melchisedec," which is the form used in Hebrews 7:1 of the King James Bible; the Old Testament of the KJV, and most modern translations, spell the name "Melchizedek," which corresponds more closely to the Hebrew.
We might add that every New Testament reference to Melchizedek is in Hebrews: 5:6, 10, 6:20, 7:1, 10, 11, 15, 17.
There is an interesting twist here, in that the words used in Hebrews 7:3 for "without father" and "without mother" often refer to orphans or even illegitimate children -- a useful insinuation in a slanging contest. However, it seems unlikely that our author knew that.
In any case, the whole thing is probably overblown. Although the name "Melchizedek" does suggest "King [root 'melch'] of righteousness [root 'zadok']," it is likely that the name as used in Genesis is that of an actual Canaanite king; "Zedek" might even be his god. If Jerusalem had had Yahwist kings, there would have been no need for David to conquer it in the centuries after Abraham's encounted with Melchizedek. Hebrews is working from a legitimate Jewish tradition (hinted at in the Psalm and expanded in extra-canonical writings), but it is hardly based on actual history. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: GrD3674

To Daunton Me (I)


DESCRIPTION: "To daunton [subdue] me, and me sae young, And gude King James's auldest son, O that's the thing that ne'er can be, For the man's unborn that will daunton me." The singer claims that only poverty can keep him down: "Now I hae scarce to lay me on"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1821 (Hogg2)
KEYWORDS: exile nonballad Jacobites
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Hogg2 44, "To Daunton Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
GreigDuncan6 1134, "To Daunton Me" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #6826
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "To Daunton Me (II)" (tune, pattern)
cf. "To Daunton Me (III)" (tune, pattern)
NOTES: Here the singer plays the part of The Old Pretender, James [III and] VIII.
Like "The Shan Van Voght" in Ireland, "To Daunton Me" provides a theme to be adapted to different situations and dates. Hogg provides two other examples: the singer of "To Daunton Me (II)" is a supporter of The Old Pretender who would see "King James at Edinburgh cross, Wi' fifty thousand foot and horse"; the singer of "To Daunton Me (III)" is a supporter of the [Young] Pretender ("For Charles we'll conquer or we'll die"). Then there's the Robert Burns version pitting youth against wealth and age ("An auld man shall never daunton me.") The fragment GreigDuncan6 1134 may belong to any of these or to some other version entirely; the editor, Elaine Petrie, writes that "Volume 6, is the Heartbreak Hotel of the collection" [p. xvii]. Maybe so, but I would put the fragment either here, with "To Daunton Me (I)," (as would, apparently, Duncan [p. 551]), or the Burns version. - BS
I might add that this is song is utterly uncharacteristic of the Old Pretender; it seems to describe an optimistic, go-for-it sort of guy. But every book I can recall reading describes him as a pessimist, almost morose, unwilling to take risks even when the potential reward was great. The 1715 rebellion was an obvious example: It might have had a chance had he hurried to Scotland -- but he waited until after Sheriffmuir, came ashore just long enough to say he'd come, and left. Susan Maclean Kybett Bonnie Prince Charlie, Dodd Mead, 1988), p. 16. notes that James came to be called "Old Mr. Melancholy," and I have to say that the name fits. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: Hogg2044

To Daunton Me (II)


DESCRIPTION: "D'ye ken the thing that wad daunton me? Eighty-eight and eighty-nine, And a'the dreary years sinsyne" The singer wants "banishment to a' the Whigs," the return of King James to Edinburgh, and "the usurper forc'd to flee"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1821 (Hogg2)
KEYWORDS: nonballad Jacobites political
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hogg2 46, "To Daunton Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6826
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "To Daunton Me (I)" (tune, pattern) and discussion there
cf. "To Daunton Me (III)" (tune, pattern)
NOTES: William of Orange came to England in 1688 and formally became William III of England and William II of Scotland in 1689. - BS
The dating of this depends very much on the meaning of the word "return." Does the author mean that he wants King James II and VIII to come *back* to Edinburgh, where he was once King? In that case, it must be from before 1701, when James II died. Or does the author merely want the Stuarts back, in which case the Old Pretender, James III and VIII could be meant, and the song could come from almost any time.
For background on the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, see e.g. the notes to "The Vicar of Bray"; for the aftermath, see "The Battle of the Boyne (I)." - RBW
Last updated in version 2.4
File: Hogg2046

To Daunton Me (III)


DESCRIPTION: "At Moidart our young prince did land, With seven men at his right hand, And a' to conquer nations three: That is the lad that shall wanton me." Woe to those that exiled the king. "Raise the banner, raise it high; For Charles we'll conquer or we'll die"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1821 (Hogg2)
KEYWORDS: rebellion exile return nonballad Jacobites royalty
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 16, 1745 - Bonny Prince Charlie and "the seven men of Moidart" sail from Belle-Ile for Britain (source: Tim Robertson, "Bonnie Prince Charlie in Moidart, 1745-1746" at Moidart Local History Group site)
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hogg2 45, "To Daunton Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "To Daunton Me (I)" (tune, pattern) and discussion there
cf. "To Daunton Me (II)" (tune, pattern)
File: Hogg2045

To Hear the Nightingales Sing


See One Morning in May (To Hear the Nightingale Sing) [Laws P14] (File: LP14)

To Huntsville


See The Boston Burglar [LawsL16] (File: LL16)

To London I Did Go


See Little Brown Dog (File: VWL101)

To Men


DESCRIPTION: Young men are are concerned with their clothes, their snuff, and drink while they slight lasses. When courting they are "puffed up with pride" and "gar the siller flee" but after marriage "the hoose it is tae build the siller is tae borrow"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: courting marriage warning clothes money drink drugs nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Greig 150, p. 1, "The Young Men" (1 text)
GreigDuncan3 649, GreigDuncan8 Addenda, "To Men" (5 texts, 2 tunes)
Roud #6078
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Sheffield Apprentice" (tune, per GreigDuncan3)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
What Means Now A' the Young Men?
I Wonder All Ye Young Men
Oh What Do All the Young Men Mean
File: GrD3649

To Morrow


See I Want to Go to Morrow (File: DTmorrow)

To Pad the Road


See Paddle the Road with Me (File: Wa032)

To Pad the Road wi' Me?


See Paddle the Road with Me (File: Wa032)

To Reap and Mow the Hay


DESCRIPTION: The singer is in Scotland, driven from Ireland by the landlord and bad times. He is invited to stay a week "putting in the hay" with a 1914 veteran. He marries the farmer's niece. They'll go to Ireland now but return yearly to Scotland to make the hay.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1977 (recording, Paddy and Jimmy Halpin)
KEYWORDS: marriage war travel return farming hardtimes Ireland Scotland family
FOUND IN: Ireland
Roud #12937
RECORDINGS:
James and Paddy Halpin, "To Reap and Mow the Hay" (on Voice20, IRHardySons)
File: RcTRAMTH

To Roll Her In My Plaidie


DESCRIPTION: "There lives a lass by yonder burn... And aft she gies her sheep a turn That feed amang the bracken." "Could I believe she'd woo wi' me... I'd afttimes slip out owre yon lea And roll her in my plaidie." The poor lovestruck lad tells how he would woo her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1930 (Ord)
KEYWORDS: love courting
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ord, p. 420, "To Roll Her In My Plaidie" (1 text)
Roud #3948
File: Ord420

To Row Her in My Plaidie


See A Lassie Lives by Yonder Burn (File: FVS229)

To the Beggin' I Will Go


See A-Begging I Will Go (File: K217)

To the Memory of the Late Captain Kennedy


DESCRIPTION: "Slowly today we wend our way To a grave in Belvedere Behind the corpse of a hero bold." The singer tells of Kennedy's voyages, and describes his heroism when the Viking caught fire.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1936 (King, The Viking's Last Cruise)
KEYWORDS: ship fire rescue
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ryan/Small, p. 105, "To the Memory of the Late Captain Kennedy" (1 text)
File: RySm105

To the Pines, to the Pines


See In the Pines (File: LoF290)

To the Spanish Main -- Slav Ho


See Saltpetre Shanty (Slav Ho) (File: Colc097)

To the Weaver's Gin Ye Go


DESCRIPTION: "My heart was ance as blythe and free As simmer days were lang," but a weaver "has gart me change my sang." Sent to the weaver, he "conveyed me through the glen." As for what happened after, "I fear the kintra soon Will ken as weel's mysel'."
AUTHOR: Words: Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1788 (according to Kinsley, _Burns_)
KEYWORDS: weaving seduction sex pregnancy warning
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
MacColl-Shuttle, p. 23, "To the Weavers Gin Ye Go" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, GINYOUGO*
File: MacCS23

To the West A While to Stay


DESCRIPTION: "As I sit here sad and lonely, Thinkin' of my dear old home, Of my home an' dear old mother, How much further must I roam?" The singer recalls the sad parting when he told mother he was leaving. Now he learns that mother died while he was far away
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: death separation mother
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Randolph 191, "To the West Awhile to Stay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 189-190, "To the West Awhile to Stay" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 191)
Roud #4050
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ten Thousand Miles Away (On the Banks of Lonely River)" (plot)
NOTES: This song is item dB37 in Laws's Appendix II. - RBW
File: R191

To Turra Toon on Business Bent


DESCRIPTION: A tailor went to Turra "on business bent ... Some said he had no business, But it was the opening day." He arrived and came to a table with "dainties there for all ...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1908 (GreigDuncan8)
KEYWORDS: commerce food
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Greig #56, pp. 2-3, ("To Turra toon on business bent") (1 text)
GreigDuncan8 1905, "To Turra Toon on Business Bent" (1 fragment)
Roud #13555
File: GrD81905

To Wear a Green Willow


See The Nobleman's Wedding (The Faultless Bride; The Love Token) [Laws P31] (File: LP31)

To Your Tents O Erins


DESCRIPTION: "In Union, blessed Union, will Freedom be found." Union's first year is ending. Union "fills the traitors with fear." "'Men to your Tents', now through Erin be sung ... Till Erin, loved Erin, from tyranny's freed."
AUTHOR: Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) (source: Moylan)
EARLIEST DATE: before 1804 (_Paddy's Resource_, according to Moylan)
KEYWORDS: freedom Ireland nonballad patriotic political
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Oct 1791 - Society of United Irishmen founded in Belfast
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Moylan 36, "To Your Tents O Erins" (1 text)
NOTES: Union, here, cannot be the Union of Ireland with Britain (which occurs in 1801, after Tone's death); it must be the formation of the United Irishmen, co-founded by Tone in 1791. The text begins by enthusiastically supporting "Union." It ends by repeating references to I Kings 12:16 in which deceased Solomon's kingdom is permanently split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; this, following Rehoboam's rejection of Israel's call for relief ("So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them, the people answered the king [Rehoboam], saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse [Rehoboam again]: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David [Rehoboam once again, and/or Judah [actually the Davidic dynasty, as represented by Rehoboam, David's grandson and Jesse's great-grandson - RBW]]. So Israel departed unto their tents.") - BS
Like so much in Irish history, I personally would regard the "to your tents" phrase as words of ill omen, not good. Effectively the same phrase occurs in 2 Samuel 20:1 (slightly obscured in the King James rendering, it seems to me) as part of the rebellion of Sheba son of Bichri, which was quickly crushed. The rebellion of Israel against the Davidic dynasty was not crushed, but neither was Israel very successful; it took half a century before a dynasty was established which lasted for more than a year beyond the death of its founder, and the nation as a whole lasted only about 200 years.
The phrase "every man to his tent" occurs on a number of other occasions as well -- after battles in which the Israelites are defeated: The routed warriors flee to their own tents after the battle is lost. - RBW
File: Moyl036

To-morrow's my lovie's wedding day


See The Sinnerin o' Me and My Love (File: GrD61148)

Toad's Courtship, The


See Frog Went A-Courting (File: R108)

Toast to Beara, A


DESCRIPTION: "Let's drink a toast to Beara to the gallant sporting team: On the football fields of the County Cork today they reign supreme." Their victories are listed. The members of the team are named. "Here's success to all their followers"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1978 (OCanainn)
KEYWORDS: sports moniker nonballad
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
OCanainn, pp. 86-87, "A Toast to Beara" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES: OCanainn: This song is about the 1933 Beara [Gaelic] football team. - BS
File: OCan086

Tobacco


See Tobacco's But an Indian Weed (File: Log262)

Tobacco Pipes and Porter


DESCRIPTION: "Tobacco pipes, tobacco pipes, tobacco pipes and porter Mony ane will sing a sang, but few will sing a shorter."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (GreigDuncan3)
KEYWORDS: drink drugs nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
GreigDuncan3 568, "Tobacco Pipes and Porter" (1 short text)
ADDITIONAL: David Buchan, editor, Scottish Tradition: A Collection of Scottish Folk Literature (Boston, 1984), #49a p. 141, ["Songs for Non-Singers"] ("Tobacco pipes, tobacco pipes, tobacco pipes and porter")
Roud #5894
NOTES: Buchan: "Said or sung by persons unwilling or unable to comply with repeated requests" - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: GrD3568

Tobacco Plenty


DESCRIPTION: Singer has bad luck. He sat down to smoke but his pipe was empty. He tried to shave but, lacking a cake of soap, used a potato instead. He tripped over a hole in his socks and broke his nose ... If times improve he may pay the rent.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (GreigDuncan2)
KEYWORDS: hardtimes humorous drugs
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
GreigDuncan2 285, "Tobacco Plenty" (3 texts, 3 tunes)
Roud #5856
ALTERNATE TITLES:
One Day As I Sat on my Loom
File: GrD286

Tobacco Song, The


DESCRIPTION: "Ye fellows smokes tobacco, come pity my case, I'm here on this island without a damn taste." Desperate people without a draw or chaw are smoking tea and worse, or chewing wax. When the wind changes and the ice goes they'll get tobacco at St Peter's.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1977 (Lehr/Best)
KEYWORDS: ordeal nonballad drugs
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lehr/Best 109, "The Tobacco Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
RECORDINGS:
Anita Best, "Tobacco" (on NFABest01)
File: LeBe109

Tobacco Union (Talking with the Social Union)


DESCRIPTION: "Come young and old and hear me tell / How strong tobacco smokers smell, / Who love to smoke the pipe so well. / For tobacco they will smell, To burn and smoke in union." A condemnation of tobacco, of those who spend money to buy it, and of its effects
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: drugs accusation
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Randolph 508, "Tobacco Union" (1 text, 1 tune) (compare also the "B" fragment of 408, "The Little Brown Jug"))
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 378-380, "Tobacco Union" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 508)
Warner 91, "Talking with the Social Union" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TOBBACUN*
Roud #5721
NOTES: Apparently an adaption of the hymn "Heavenly Union." - RBW
File: R508

Tobacco's But an Indian Weed


DESCRIPTION: Tobacco is offered as a parable for life: "Grows green at morn, cut down at eve." "The pipe... Is broke with a touch -- man's life is such." "The smoke... shows us man's life must have an end." The moral: "Think on this when you smoke tobacco."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1699 (Pills to Purge Melancholy); also in Trinity College (Dublin) MS. G.2.21
KEYWORDS: nonballad drugs
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Beck 93, "A Peculiar Sermon for Shanty Boys" (1 text)
Logan, pp. 262-263, "Tobacco" (1 text)
Chappell/Wooldridge II, pp. 78-79, "Tobacco's But an Indian Weed" (1 text, 1 tune)
BBI, ZN2658, "Tobacco is but an Indian weed"
ADDITIONAL: Norman Ault, _Elizabethan Lyrics From the Original Texts_, pp. 56-57, "A Religious Use of Taking Tobacco" (1 text)
DT, INDNWEED*
ST Log262 (Full)
Roud #1457
NOTES: This also appears as a portion of a poem, "Smoking Spiritualized." The remaining portion is said to be "very inferior." "Smoking Spiritualized" was published under the name of Rev. Ralph (or "Ebenezer") Erskine in a book of Gospel Sonnets. Although some have thought that the Erskine version is older than that in Pills, the fact that Erskine was born in 1685 argues that the song is older than his work.
Ault offers an even earlier claim, crediting the piece to "Wisdome" and dating the poem "before 1568" (I'm not sure if that is based on the Trinity College manuscript or the dates for Wisdome or just pure fancy; my suspicion is the last). - RBW
Beck credits this to "some moralizing shanty boy of 1892." Surprise! - PJS
File: Log262

Tobasco


DESCRIPTION: The singer notes, "You can talk about your cities... But the little place of Tobasco is good enough for me." Tobasco has no fancy buildings, ornate churches, or sidewalks, and is not right for everyone -- but it suits the singer just fine
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1982
KEYWORDS: nonballad home
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
FSCatkills 158, "Tobasco" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST FSC158 (Partial)
File: FSC158
GSPLITRBalladIndex.HTMLGSplit Archive&{FCCE7D5C-7BB5-4EC3-B04B-4F0350F5B7B7}!¾R ‡Â+&2