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SONGS AND BALLADS |
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A second, entitled The Glorious Victory of Navarino, gives more details :
' On the 20th of October the glorious fight began, Bold Ibrahim vainly boasted he'd slaughter every man ; But Codrington resolved was the Asia should display A bright example to the rest, and he would lead the way.
The Genoa and the Albion he placed by his side
And near to him De Rigny, commander of the Armide,
The Glasgow and the Cambrian, the Dartmouth and the
Rose Were placed in fine order alongside of their foes.'
A fragment of a third ballad, said to consist of seventeen verses in all, is quoted by Mr. Kipling in The Black Sheep :
' Our vanship was the Asia, The Albion and the Genoa, And next came on the lovely Rose, The Philomel her fireship closed, And the little Brisk was sore exposed That day at Navarino.'
The intervention of England in the Syrian war in 1840, which fills so large a place in James Han-nay's naval novel, Singleton Fontenoy, produced a ballad on The Capture of St. Jean a"Acre which will be found on p. 333. It attributes all the credit of the success to Charles Napier, and makes no mention at all of Sir Robert Stopford. It seems to have been written or at least inspired by someone serving on board the Wasp, from the particularity with which it relates the movements of that ship.
The popularity of Napier comes out very plainly in the whole group of street songs and ballads relating to the Crimean war. |
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