Ratcliffe Highway [200-202] (155-157)

Masterpiece Theatre???
No, it's just a bawdy sea ballad-- the lyrics to the "main" version of the chantey "Blow the Man Down" (i.e. "As I was a walkin' down Paradise Street...") can be traced to this song; we can call it a forebitter, though Hugill was informed that it had been used as an actual chantey for capstan or pumps. Note that it is the "story" of the solo verses/lyrics, and not the chorus or melody that it gives to Blow the Man Down (the latter aspects seem to have come from an African-American source).




The song is very much of the British Isles type, more Irish than anything. The vocable "tu re lye" chorus is telltale. "Highway" is rhymed with "see," suggesting that the latter must be said in an Irish accent in order to make rhyme! Hugill notes, "Many of these Western Ocean songs and shanties were sung in an Irish accent," by which he means you fake the accent for certain songs. (I am not doing that here, at least not very much.)

Ratcliffe Highway was a vice area of London; in Blow the Man down it become the Liverpool equivalent, Paradise Street.

Hugill omits verses 6 and 7 without trying to disguise them. I had to reconstruct these verses from other sources, mainly the "Cruisin' Round Yarmouth" of Ewan MacColl and "Chinatown Bumboat" of Salty Dick.

Also found in:
Doerflinger 1951

Please check out the whole chanteys project playlist, at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=58B55DD66F22060C

Category:

Music

Tags:

• shanty
• chantey
• bawdy
• risque
• ballad
• folk
• song
• Irish
• nautical

[fredxmertz]

nicely done. yes, the mispronunciation adds to the humor of it, and gives it 'street cred'!

[hultonclint]

Thanks, friend.

[philipsmovies]

Excellent. I am always intrigued by the use of phrases like: "toorilay aye" and "fiddly diddly daye", i asked a friend a veteran folk singer and he said that's what they wrote those days.

[hultonclint]

I'm afraid I can't any better answer! I think it is the result of singing without instruments. Maybe it is a kind of "mouth music." Maybe it is just to create a chorus and a rejoinder for others, without worrying about words. It does seem more common in Irish songs, but I have no serious proof of that--could be equally English

[hultonclint]

sorry about low volume -- not quite sure what happened

[toweronepower]

You must be the only person in England or not to sing that nowadays.

[philipsmovies]

and now i have seen the description box and it almost answers my question(below), i think!