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INTRODUCTION ix
fashion, and to this practice we owe a number of prosaic ballads on every possible subject. The best of the professional ballad-writers did not limit themselves to the versification of actual events, but went further and embodied in verse their conception of the dangers and pleasures of sailors and of typical incidents of seafaring life. Martin Parker's Saylors for my Money is a typical example of this, and such compositions form the staple of most collections of naval ballads, probably because their more general character and their greater merit gave them wider popularity and a longer life.
Another class of ballads consists of those written by sailors themselves to describe actions in which they had taken part. A ballad was not a difficult thing to write; the metre was usually simple, the rules about rhyme not exacting, and the traditional formulas and phrases to be employed were familiar. Hence it is not surprising that sailors, and occasionally officers, sometimes undertook to celebrate the exploits of the ships in which they served. Such ballads were produced in considerable frequency in the eighteenth century, and even early in the nineteenth, and some specimens are reprinted in this volume. One written by a seaman on board the Burford, Vernon's flagship, describes the capture of .Portobello ; a second, written on board the flagship of Admiral Mathews, relates his battle off Toulon ; a third, by a lieutenant of the Bellerophon, celebrates Howe's victory on the first of June, and is said to have been actually sung in the gun-room of the Bellerophon (pp. 177, 186, 271). In some cases the author reveals himself in the last lines of the ballad.
' I am a saucy foremast Jack, and to the Arrow do belong,'
says the writer of one upon a sloop of that name. |
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