My email quote-of-the-day source sends along a little ditty that I find quite amusing and thought my fellow port-swillers with a taste for the nautical might enjoy as well:
Me father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light,
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night.
From this union there came three:
A porpoise, and a porgy, and the other was me!
Yo-ho-ho, the wind blows free,
Oh, for the life on the rolling sea!
One night, as I was a-trimmin’ of the glim,*
Singing a verse of the evening hymn,
A voice on the starboard shouted, “Ahoy!”
And there was my mother, a-sitting on a buoy.
Yo-ho-ho….
“Oh what has become of my children three?”
My mother then she asked of me.
“One was exhibited as a talking fish;
The other was served on a chafing dish.”
Yo-ho-ho….
Then the phosphorous flashed in her seaweed hair.
I looked again and my mother wasn’t there.
But her voice came echoing back from the night,
“To Hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light!”
Yo-ho-ho, the wind blows free,
Oh, for the life on the rolling sea!
– “Me Father Was the Keeper of the Eddystone Light”
(traditional English sea-faring ballad)
Yo, ho, ho!
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June 9, 2010 at 11:12 pm
B.B.
I learned it as “The Devil take keeper of the Eddystone Light”, but yeah, growing up it was one of my favorite chanties.