We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,
And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull;
We'd a big black Jolly Roger, flapping grimly at the fore,
And we sailed the Spanish Waters in those happy days of yore.
We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;
It's a point which weighs against us, and a fact to be deplored –
That we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid ourselves aboard.
Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,
And the paint-work all was spatter-dashed with other people's brains,
She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank,
And the pale survivors left us – by the medium of the plank!
Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do
Than to dance a lively hornpipe, as the old salts taught us to;
Oh the whistlin' on the fo'c's'le, and the slapping barefoot soles,
And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!"
Ah! the pig-tailed, feisty pirates and the pretty pranks we played,
All have since been put a stop-to by that naughty Board of Trade;
The schooners and their merry crews are laid away to rest,
A little south the sunset – in the Islands of the Blest.
A little south the sunset – in the Islands of the Blest.
(Based on a poem by John Masefield from Salt-Water Poems And Ballads,
edited by John Masefield, published by The Macmillan Company, N
ew York, US, © 1921, pp. 64-65.
Adapted for singing by Charlie Ipcar, © 2007.
Tune after traditional On the Range of the Buffalo.)
|
Jeff Logan
Portland, Maine |