Lustely, lustely, lustely let us saile forthe,
The wind trim doth serve us, it blows from the north.
Hoisting, pulling, however, and work of the sort on shipboard, yield in importance, so far as refrains are concerned, to the regular cadence of the oar, where voices have kept tune and oars have kept time from earliest days. Not only in the classical period, where actual song and music came to take the place of the refrain,[[666]] but with Egyptians, Africans, Tonga Islanders, wherever rowing is practised, these refrains are known; the Maoris, for example, “row in time with a melody which is sung by a chorus sitting in canoes.” The same thing is told of the Indians of Alaska.[[667]] A refrain already noted seems to have served in England both for hoisting and for rowing; Skelton mentions it:—
Holde up the helme, loke up, and lete god stere,
I wolde be mery, what wynde that ever blowe,
Heve and how, rombelow, row the bote, Norman, rowe!
and D’Israeli says that sailors at Newcastle in heaving anchor still have their Heave and ho, rumbelow; while it is recorded that in 1453, Norman, Lord Mayor of London, chose to row rather than ride to Westminster, and the watermen made this roundel or song:—
Rowe the bote, Norman,
Rowe to thy Lemman,—[[668]]
so that two refrains are confused in the laureate’s account, and the exquisite reason, with a Lord Mayor in the case, is no more probable than such stories of origins are wont to be. For example, Cnut is credited[[669]] with a little song, which he is said to have composed as he rowed by Ely and heard the chanting of the monks; “ordering the rowers to pull gently, and calling his retinue about him, he asked them to join him ... in singing a ballad which he composed in English and which begins in this way:—