| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
xxvi SONGS AND BALLADS
In addition there are two amatory ballads, one registered June 13, 1631, called A Sayler new come over; the other, registered on July 18, 1636, A dainty new ditty of the Sayler and his Love, which is possibly the Pleasant new song betwixt the Sayler and his Love reprinted in the Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 470. ,
Yet the most famous of English naval ballads originated during this period. Martin Parker's Saylorsfor my Money is undoubtedly, as Mr. Ebs-worth points out, the far back original of Campbell's Ye Mariners of England {Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 797). It has a rival in The Jovial Mariner or the Seaman's Renown, by Lawrence Price (ib. vi. 639). Neptune's Raging Fury or The Gallant Seaman's Sufferings, which begins ' You gentlemen of England,' is an adaptation of Martin Parker's ballad, written probably towards the end of Charles I.'s reign, or perhaps during the Protectorate (ib. vi. 431). All three are here reprinted (pp. 40-46). The third, Neptune's Raging Fury, came to be known as The Old Mariners to distinguish it from later adaptations, and an abridged version of it, consisting of the first, the eleventh, and the thirteenth verses, was current in Campbell's time under the title of The New Mariners. Campbell borrowed from it his refrain, and the phrases, ' roar on the shore ' and ' sweep through the deep,' and honestly entitled the verses he sent to the editor of the Morning Chronicle in 1800, an Alteration of the old ballad 'Ye Gentlemen of England' (Beattie, Life of Campbell, i. 341).
During the Commonwealth and the Protectorate the English navy became the most powerful in Europe, and yet the naval victories of those ten years left hardly any trace in ballad literature. One reason for this was the rigid censorship of the |
||