South Australia (song)

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South Australia (Roud # 325) is a sea shanty, also known under such titles as "Rolling King" and "Bound for South Australia ". As an original worksong it was sung in a variety of trades, including being used by the wool and later the wheat traders who worked the clipper ships between Australian ports and London. In adapted form, it is now a very popular song among folk music performers that is recorded by many artists and is present in many of today's song books.

History as a shanty

Information on the age, spread, and practical use of the shanty is relatively scanty. However, the evidence at hand does not suggest there is anything particularly or locally "Australian" about the song, contrary to how it has become popularly envisioned since the late 20th century.

It was first noted by sea music author L.A. Smith, who collected it "from a coloured seaman at the [Sailors'] 'Home'" in London and published it in her 1888 collection, The Music of the Waters.[1]

In the 1930s or 1940s, at Sailors' Snug Harbor, New York, shanty collector W.M. Doerflinger recorded veteran sailor William Laurie of Greenock Scotland, who began a career in sailing ships in the late 1870s. The one verse sung by Laurie was published, with tune, in Doerflinger's 1951 book.[2]

The shanty is not mentioned again until the 1900s (decade). Patterson (1900) mentions a heaving chanty titled "Bound to Western Australia," [3] and the veteran African-American sailor James H. Williams mentioned the song in a 1909 article.[4] [5]

This shanty is not attested in writing again until Lydia Parrish's study of the music tradition of Georgia Sea Islanders, published in 1942.[6]

In 1946, J.T. Hatfield shared his recollections of a much earlier, 1886 voyage as a passenger traveling from Pensacola to Nice. During this voyage, Hatfield had noted the shanties sung by the crew, who were all Black men from Jamaica. This version, which includes both tune and text, includes the unusual phrase, "Hooray! You're a lanky!", which may have been a mishearing by Hatfield.

Another remembered version comes in F.P. Harlow's Chanteying Aboard American Ships (1962), in which the author recalls shanties sung aboard the ship Akbar on a trip from Massachusetts to Melbourne, Australia in 1876. A crew mate "Dave" is said to have taught this to the crew while pumping at the windlass.[7] As no references to the song put it any earlier than the mid-1870s, it may well be that the song was new at the time.

Work function and lyrical variations

Smith said it was a capstan chanty, as evidenced by the refrain which indicates, "Heave away! Heave away!" Parrish found that stevedores hauling heavy timber used the song with the chorus, "Haul away, I’m a rollin’ king."

Lyrics

Like most shanties of this type, "South Australia" was sung to a flexible combination of customary verses, floating verses from within the general chanty repertoire, and verses improvised in the moment or particular to individual singers. The song was of indefinite length, and created by supplying solo verses to a two-part refrain followed by a grand chorus. The following is a sample.

(solo) Oh South Australia's my native home
 (chorus) Heave away! Heave away!
 (solo) Oh South Australia's my native home
 (chorus) We're bound for South Australia.
 Heave away, heave away
 Oh heave away, you ruler king,
 We're bound for South Australia

Solo verse couplets documented to have been sung to "South Australia" include the following from sailors of the 19th century.

I see my wife standing on the quay
 The tears do start as she waves to me.

I'll tell you the truth and I'll tell you no lie;
 If I don't love that girl I hope I may die.

And now I'm bound for a foreign strand,
 With a bottle of whisky in my hand.

I'll drink a glass to the foreign shore
 And one to the girl that I adore.[8]

As a popular song

In the 1890s, "South Australia" became popular as a camp song.[9] And by the second decade of the 20th century, it had been adopted by several college glee clubs.[10]

English folk revival singer A.L. Lloyd recorded the song, without citing a source, on the early 1960s album Blow Boys Blow. Based on his melody and the phrase "hear me sing," which are rather unique to the version published by Doerflinger, it is likely that Lloyd was at least partially influenced by that collection, which had just come out in 1951 and which he clearly made use of for other shanties he performed. The Clancy Brothers recorded the song in 1962, in a version that was clearly derivative of A.L. Lloyd's. Perhaps due to mishearing, they rendered Lloyd's phrase "lollop around Cape Horn" as the fairly nonsensical "wallop around Cape Horn." It is The Clancy Brothers' version that has mainly stuck as the version sung by folk music and shanty revival performers.

Recorded versions

The song has been recorded many times in both traditional and modern arrangements.

Traditional recordings

  • A.L. Lloyd on his 1958 Australian album "Across the Western Plains" and on his 1960 UK album "Outback Ballads"
  • A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl on their 1960 album "Blow Boys Blow"
  • The Seekers on their 1964 UK album, "The Seekers" (also known as Roving With The Seekers)
  • Trevor Lucas on his 1966 Australian album "Overlander"
  • The Corries on their album "Live from Scotland Volume 4" (1977)
  • The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem on their album The Boys Won't Leave The Girls Alone
  • Fisherman's Friends in their 2010 album Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends.

Modern versions

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Laura Alexandrine. The Music of the Waters. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co.
  2. ↑ Doerflinger, William Main. Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman. Macmillan: New York.
  3. ↑ Patterson, J.E. “Sailors’ Work Songs.” _Good Words_ 41(28) (June 1900): 391-397.
  4. ↑ Williams, James H. “The Sailors’ ‘Chanties’.” The Independent (8 July 1909):76-83.
  5. ↑ Hatfield, James Taft. “Some Nineteenth Century Shanties.” Journal of American Folklore 59(232): 108-113.
  6. ↑ Parrish, Lydia. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press.
  7. ↑ Harlow, Frederick Pease. Chanteying Aboard American Ships. Barre, Mass.: Barre Publishing Co., 1962
  8. ↑ Smith, Laura Alexandrine. The Music of the Waters. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co.
  9. ↑ Unknown. “The A.C.A. Meet of 1892.” Forest and Stream 39(10) (8 September 1892). Pg. 212.
  10. ↑ Associated Harvard Clubs. _Book of Songs_. Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1916.

External links

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