`The Doxology for a Wind-Up'

What little I know of the sea and seafaring men I learned from Homer, Melville and Conrad. Born a landlubber (Lake Erie doesn’t count), I was nearly 16 when I first saw salt water. The ocean will always remain a strange, scary, mythic place, the natural realm of storytelling. For much of the weekend I listened to a belated birthday present, Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys, a two-CD gathering of 43 songs, most of which are not as cornball as the title implies. Most, drawn from the ballad tradition, are story-songs. It’s the best new (or old) music I’ve heard since Tom Waits came out with Orphans. The opener, “Cape Cod Girls,” performed by a Popeye-voiced Seattle musician, Baby Gramps, is my favorite if judged by effortless memorization. Here’s a video of an abbreviated version of the song from The David Letterman Show. And here are samples of lyrics from other songs in the collection:

The euphoniously named Jack Shit performs “Boney Was a Warrior,” about Napoleon Bonaparte:

“Boney was a warrior
A warrior, a terrier.
Boney beat the Prussians,
The Austrians, the Russians.
Boney went to school in France
He learned to make the Russians dance.”

The Akron Family, who also accompany Baby Gramps, perform a sparse arrangement of a beautiful ballad, “One Spring Morning”:

“Since hard fortune
Around me frowns,
I’ll sail this ocean
Round and round.
I’ll sail this ocean
Until I die.
I’ll quit my ways
On the mountain high.”

And John C. Reilly renders a rousing drinking song, “Fathom the Bowl,” which has its own Wikipedia entry:

“From France we do get brandy, from Jamaica it's rum,
Sweet oranges and lemons from Portugal come;
But stout, ale and cider are England's control,
Bring me the punch ladle, we'll fathom the bowl.”

For the best song I know about cannibalism, consult Ralph Steadman and Co. singing “Little Boy Billee,” about dining on the cabin boy. Notes accompanying the CDs mention the two shipwrecked sailors in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, my favorite Poe story, who eat a cabin boy named Richard Parker. Here’s the song’s conclusion:

“They hung Gorging Jack and Guzzling Jimmy,
But they made an admiral of Little Boy Billee.”

As a bonus, a reproduction of Howard Pyle’s painting Marooned, the image of desolation, is on the cover of the CD. With his book Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, he distilled our expectation of what pirates look like.

To put sea chanteys in their proper literary context, read this exchange between Stubb and Starbuck from Chapter 119, “The Candles,” of Moby-Dick:

“`Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,' said Stubb, regarding the wreck, `but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But never mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;' -- (sings.)

“Oh! jolly is the gale,
And a joker is the whale,
A’ flourishin' his tail, --
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
lad, is the Ocean, oh!
The scud all a flyin’,
That's his flip only foamin’;
When he stirs in the spicin', --
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
lad, is the Ocean, oh!
Thunder splits the ships,
But he only smacks his lips,
A tastin’ of this flip,-
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
lad, is the Ocean, oh!

“`Avast Stubb,' cried Starbuck, `let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.'

“`But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up.'”