Chorus.—Here’s a health, etc.
“At Looe, in East Cornwall, it was usual forty years ago, and probably it is still, for labourers to sing ‘The Long Hundred’ (a song of numbers), when throwing ballast with shovels from a sand barge into a ship. The object was said to be threefold; ‘to keep time (i.e. work simultaneously), to prevent anyone from shirking his share of work, and to cheer themselves for the labour,’ which was by no means light. A shovelful of ballast was delivered by every man with each line of the song, which ran thus:—
The Long Hundred.
‘There goes one.
One there is gone.
Oh, rare one!
And many more to come
To make up the sum
Of the hundred so long.