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SONGS AND BALLADS |
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Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, Knights, which refers to their expedition to Portugal in 1589 (Peel's Works, ed. Bullen, ii. 233). One might mention also Donne's two poem's The Storm and The Calm, both expressly said to refer to * The Island voyage with the Earl of Essex,' i.e. the expedition to the Azores in 1597 (Donne's Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 3-10). Last of all, and best, there is Drayton's Ode to the Virginia Voyage (Poems, 1627, p. 295).
The surprising thing is not the paucity of literary references to the exploits of the Elizabethan seamen, which were generally, if inadequately, commemorated, but the limited number of songs and ballads on the subject which have reached us. The popular literature of the period was very extensive in amount and very diverse in character. The registers of the Stationers' Company for the reign of Elizabeth contain very numerous entries of ballads which deal with the incidents of the day or with aspects of the life of the time. Few of them, comparatively, deal with sailors or seafaring matters, and of those many have perished. There was a famous ballad entitled Row well, ye mariners, registered in 1566, which was sufficiently popular to be ' moralised' two or three times over—that is, converted into a spiritual song of an allegorical nature (Collier, Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers Company, i. 130, 161, 175). The words are lost, though the tune has survived {Old English Popular Music by W. Chappell, ed. 1893, i- I27)- Lost, too, are The Sailors New Tantara, published in 1584, a ballad In Praise of the Queens Ships (beginning ' O the Elizabeth Jonas') published in 1586, The Sailor's Joy, published in 1595, and A true Sailors Song against Spanish Pride that appeared in 1590 (Arber, Registers of the Stationers' Company, iii. 200, 210, |
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