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	Music of the Waters. 67

	(The boy's strength then fails him, and he is taken on board by his comrades, but only to die.) " His messmates took him up, but on the deck he died, It was in the Lowlands, low. Then they took the little boy, and sewed him in a hide,' And they threw him overboard to go down with the tide, And he sank in the Lowlands, low in the sea, And he sank in the Lowlands, low." This song is a type of the nautical ones now so much in vogue in concert-halls and drawing-rooms, and of which Mr. Stephen Adams may be said to be the pioneer. The reason I have mentioned it here is, that I feel almost certain that it suggested the sailors' favourite chanty," Lowlands," or the chanty suggested the song. Not knowing the date of the song in Mr. Christie's collection, I can only suppose that one of these surmises is correct, and I should be inclined to give the preference to the latter. I may add that the tunes are in no way alike. Amongst the numbers denoted as sailors' songs in the index to Mr. Chappell's volumes are the three following :— " We be Three Poor Mariners," an old sea-song of Charles Sloman's; "Britons,Strike Home,"which,however,must not be confounded with PurcelPs, and " The Spanish Armada." THE SPANISH ARMADA.



	" In eighty-eight, ere I was born, as I can well remember, In August was a fleet prepar'd, the month before September. F 2