“I Am a Brisk Young Sprightly Lad”

Author: unknown
Earliest date: 1948 (Shay)
Keywords: sailor battle money

Description

"I am a brisk and sprightly lad, But just come home from sea, sire... A sailor's life for me, sir." "Yeo, yeo, yeo, Whilst the bosun pipes all hands With a yeo, yeo, yeo!" The sailor loves foreign ports, and promises to fight for the nation when attacked

Notes

This is another of those sea-poems Shay seems to have dug up somewhere; I have not found it elsewhere.

The boast about each man "hasten[ing] to his guns" would surely have sounded very strange to the sailors who fought in the Napoleonic wars -- it is estimated that half of the men in Nelson's fleet were impressed, and more were quota men. - RBW.

References

  1. Shay-SeaSongs, p. 138, "I Am a Brisk and Sprightly Lad" (1 text)
  2. BI, ShaSS138
The Traditional Ballad Index is copyright ©2008 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle. The Digital Tradition is copyright The Mudcat Cafe.