Child Ballads - Narrative

Mermaid

'The Seamen's Distress,' the second piece in The Glasgow Lasses Garland, British Museum, 11621. c. 3 (68). "Newcastle, 1765?" Version A
1. 'The stormy winds do blow,' Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, p. 742.
2. The same, p. 743.
3. Notes and Queries, 6th Series, VII, 276.
Version B
Communicated by Mr. Chappell. Now printed in Old English Ditties, Oxenford and Macfarren, 'The Mermaid,' I, 206. Version C
'The Mermaid.'
1. Long, Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect, 1886, p. 42.
2. Broadside, H. Such, 177 Union St., Boro'.
Version D
1. Motherwell's Manuscript, p. 145.
2. The Bonnie Mermaid,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxiii, No XXX, one stanza.
Version E
Greenland,' Kinloch Manuscripts, VII, 245. Version F

This is the ballad referred to under 'Sir Patrick Spens,' II, 19. It is still common as a broadside.

B a 6 has taken a burlesque turn. It is scarcely worth while to attempt to account for the vagaries of F, in which 'the kemp o the ship' takes the place of the mermaid, and the kaim and glass are exchanged for the bottle and glass. The first stanza of F may not belong here, or possibly (but not probably) a voyage to Greenland may have been lost from the other copies.

In B, C, D, the ship sails on Friday, against all good rules.

'The Sailor's Caution,' the third piece in The Sailing Trade, Glasgow, Printed by J. and M. Robertson, Saltmarket, 1801, begins like A, has a stanza (the fifth) representing A 4, 5, and concludes thus, after a stanza (the sixth) resembling A 3:

	The mermaid on the rock doth sit, With comb and glass in hand: 'Cheer up, cheer up, bold mariners, You are not far from land.
	'So now cheer up, bold mariners, Or smother in the deep; All this I do for a sailor's sake, Whilst losing of my sleep.
	'Here is a token, bold mariners, A token of good will, And if ever that you come this way, 'T is here you'll find me still.'
British Museum, 11621. b. 13 (15).

This page most recently updated on 26-May-2011, 19:14:04.
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