Robbie T. Hutchison             [Bold Daniels]                  SA1974.12.2

This is one of the songs which Robbie learned from his uncle Peter.  Other versions of this piracy song  were collected on the south coast of England and in Nova Scotia and Labrador.  A long and similar text can be found in a rare book by M.C. Dean – The Flying Cloud And One Hundred and Fifty other Old Time Songs and Ballads of Outdoor Men…– published in Minnesota in 1922-3.  The book which can be found online at archive.org contains several other ballads featured on our website. Other versions are listed in Steve Roud’s folksong index (no. 1899) and for a longer text than this one visit
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/Bold_Daniels.htm.

Oh ‘twas in the month of January from Liverpool we set sail
Kind Neptune did conduct us with a sweet and pleasant gale
In the Roving Elizabeth we were bound, bold Daniel our Captain’s name
For we were out from Liverpool bound for the Spanish Main

Oh we’d just been out a day, boys, a day but scarcely three
When the lookout from the mast head cried “A strange sail, Sir, I see.”
With black colours under his mizzen peak he bore down our way
“I know he is a pirate.” Bold Daniels he did cry.

“Oh it’s back your fore-main-topsails and come down here on our lea.”
“I’ll see you in hell,” says Daniel, “I’d rather sink at sea.”
Then he flew aloft his pirate flag for us to terrify
But with our big guns and small arms, at him we did let fly.

Oh we loaded our six-pounders an’ we fought him on the Main
An’ when the battle it began it was about half-past ten.
Oh we loaded our six-pounders and fought that twenty two
And at twenty-five minutes after five the pirate sang out ‘mar blue’.

Oh we fought and beat the pirate down off the Colombian shore
Then we steered for a port in America called the city of Baltimore;
There we’ll drink success to Daniels, likewise his manly crew
Who fought and beat the pirate whose number was twenty-two.