1 note
[Note 050.10] A song called Calais Packet beginning "Who's for the packet were just upon starting" (Roud V302 Madden Collection (London Printers 3)) includes the line "Hollo! Stand clear I want to make a tack" so is clearly about a sail powered packet. The sung verses are quite different but the scansion of the sung verses is the same and the patter is similar The sail-powered version was printed several times and seems to have been widely known. The broadside "In support of Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, a candidate in the Northumberland parliamentary election of 1826" [British Library General Reference Collection C.194.b.119(317) ] names "The Calais Packet" as the tune to which it should be sung.
The sailing packet song probably served as the model for the song above. and was almost certainly sung to the same tune. Greenwich Coaches, a song by Thomas Hudson printed in his 13th Comic Songster in 1832 or soon after, uses the same structure.
[Note 056.1] "Curse the polis and bailiffs ever; For they are they, who drove me away" suggests that the hero had been a poacher. The line "I let down for siven years afore" may be significant in that any criminal with a sentence of 7 years of longer could be transported. After 1828, if three or more persons assembled for the purposes of poaching and if one of them carried an offensive weapon, they were liable to fourteen years' transportation [ref: Brown, Roly. http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/bbals_24.htm]
[Note 056.5] "the waves bet Banaher": the waves were overwhelming. According to the Irish Times July 16th 1931; the popular Irish saying "That beats Banagher and Banagher beats the devil" is derived from a belief that a handful of sand from the grave of Saint Muros O'Heney, in the graveyard attached to Banagher Old Church, is able to overcome all evil - even the devil himself.
[Note 056.4] "our poor devoted bark" occurs in the first verse of The Bay of Biscay (Roud 24928) written by Andrew Cherry (1762-1812) an Irish actor and writer. [Ref: http://ingeb.org/songs/loudroar.html] The British Library has a copy of the song which it dates to c1835. [General Reference Collection 11630.f.7.(10.)] so the song may well have been popular soon after.
[Note 056.6] "hidin' in the great big chimney, like a pickled herring". The peat fires common in Ireland produced a smoke that was conducive to storing fish