Music Of The Waters - online book

Sailors' Chanties, Songs Of The Sea, Boatmen's, Fishermen's,
Rowing Songs, & Water Legends with lyrics & sheet music

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124             Music of the Waters.
never, I am afraid, prove sufficiently melodious, even when intermixed with the chimes of historic St. Nicholas, to suggest so charming an idea as the blending of the cries of the Newhaven fishwives with the bells of old St. Giles, Edinburgh, did to Lady Nairn.
" ' Row the boat, Norman, Heave and ho, rumbelow.'
This roundel is to imitate the merry ringing of the bells on Lord Mayor's Day.
"In 1453, Sir John Norman, who was then Lord Mayor of London, was the first ' to brake that ancient and olde continued custome of riding with great pomp into West­minster to take his charge, and chose rather to be rowed thither by water.' The watermen made of him a roundel or song, to his great praise,—
" ' Row the boat, Norman, Heave and ho, rumbelow.'
The second singer begins two bars after the first, and the third two bars after the second. They continue in that order, without stopping at the end of the line, but recom­mencing and singing it over many times.
" There seems to be some reason to suppose that this was rather Whittington, whose famous mayoralty was prior to Norman's.
" ' Row the boat, Whittington,
Thou worthy citizen, Lord Mayor of London.' "
The above quotations and extracts are again from Mr. ChappelFs volumes.1
D'Israeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," says, " Our sailors at Newcastle, in heaving their anchors, have (still ?) their ' Heave and ho, rumbelow,'" and he might have
1 " Popular Music of the Olden Time."