XVII. PRESSGANG SONGS
These have a greater dramatic effect than any other type before dealt with. In the eighteenth century, when the constant war with France demanded a supply of men to man the navy, the pressgang was a very vital thing in the lives of the humbler classes. The law empowered (under a press warrant) officers of the King’s Navy to seize any man, with few exceptions, and then and there remove him to a King’s ship to serve as a common sailor. Violence was freely used, and at dead of night whole villages were cleared of their male inhabitants, and husbands and bread-winners dragged away, never, in most cases, to return. Such occurrences were well within the memory of those only just passed away. With such happenings in their midst, the folk-song makers had no lack of thrilling and appealing material. The romantic element was not absent, for it was quite possible, as the folk-song generally makes it, for an irate father to bribe the pressgang for the removal of an undesirable young ploughman, and so put an end to the love passages that existed between his daughter and him, thus leaving the ground clear for a wealthier or more favoured suitor. Poetic justice is almost always satisfied in the song by the lady seeking her true love on shipboard, and, by the production of “gold,” reclaiming him. “The Banks of Sweet Dundee,” which is widespread and a universal favourite, affords an excellent example of the pressgang song.
The beautiful song beginning—
“’Twas early, early in the Spring My love was pressed to serve the King,”
and that one called “The Nightingale,” are earlier in date and quite charming specimens of the class.
XVIII. HUNTING AND SPORTING SONGS
The folk-singer does not lack songs dealing with the sports he loves. The fox-and hare-hunting songs are in a degree reflexes of the eighteenth century ones—of great compass, and of much allusion to the Greek gods. It is in these that Diana, Aurora and Phœbus figure so largely.