Robert Hutchison [The Jolly Tar] SA1974.12.5
Robbie Tammie learned this song from Alec Barclay, a Whalsay man who worked as a ploughman in Scotland for a number of years. The missing verse three and the alternative last verse is taken from Robert M. Ballantyne’s The World of Ice (1893). Gavin Greig recorded a similar text entitled the Sailor’s New Leg from an unrecorded source (Greig Duncan Folk Song Collection, vol. i, 354) and Aberdeenshire farmer John Strachan sang a version with a different tune for fieldworker Hamish Henderson: it can be heard on the Tobar an Dualchais website: http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/19980/1. Stephen Roud indexed both of these versions (no. 5822) but no others are known to have been recorded.
Oh my comrades you must know, it was many years ago,
That I left my daddy’s cottage in the green woods o
And I joined a man-of–war for to be a jolly tar
An’ fight for king and country on the high seas o.
Pull boys merrily, the wind is flowin’ free;
Pull boys merrily an’ lightly o;
Pull boys merrily, the wind is flowin’ free;
And is twirlin’ up the foaming waters sky high o.
Oh there’s been many a bloody fight but Trafalgar was the sight
Where we beat the Frenchmen in their glory o;
Where Britannia’s jolly sons beat the thunder blazing guns
An’ Nelson was the bravest in the forefront o.
Pull, boys, etc.
[missing verse 3]
[A roaring cannon shot came an’ hit the very spot
Where my leg goes click-an’-jumble in the socket o,
And swept it overboard with the precious little hoard,
Of pipe an’ tin an’ baccy in the pocket o]
Pull, boys, etc.
Oh they took be down below and they laid me in a row
With my killed and wounded messmates on a table o,
And along came Dr Keg an’ sang here’s a living leg,
I’ll sew it on the stump if I am able o.
Pull, boys, etc.
Oh this sturdy leg and limb it belong to fightin Tim
An this other end they sewed it on the socket o,
Then up the hatch I flew an’ I dashed among our crew
An’ I sprang aboard the Frenchman like a rocket o.
Pull, boys, etc.
Oh ‘twas this that gained the day, for the leg it held the sway
An’ the battle raged with fury while it lasted o;
But Britannia’s jolly sons beat the thunder ‘f blazing guns
An’ Nelson was the bravest in the forefront o.
Pull, boys, etc.
———————-
[Alternative last verse]
Oh ‘twas this that gained the day for that leg it cleared the way–
And the battle raged like fury while it lasted O!
Then ceased the shot and shell to fall upon the swell,
And the Union Jack went bravely to the mast-head O!’
Pull, boys, etc.