We will sail—you may rail, we shall soon be out of sight.
The passengers united in order, peace, and love;
The wind is in our favour, how swiftly do we move!
Though tempests may assail us, and raging billows roar,
We will sweep through the deep, till we reach fair Canaan’s shore.
The Southern Harmony gives the maker of this song as I. Neighbours, who may indeed have been the author of the text. This text is clearly a parody, and the tune a close variant, of ‘When the Stormy Winds do Blow’ or ‘You Gentlemen of England’, a song of seafaring which appears to have been widely sung in England over a long period. References to a ‘Stormy Winds’ ballad reach back to 1660. The tune with different texts appeared as ‘Saylers for my Money’, ‘The Bridegroom’s Salutation’, ‘You Calvinists of England’ and ‘England’s Valour and Holland’s Terrour’. See Vincent Jackson, English Melodies from the 13th to the 18th Century, p. 114.
Other melodic relatives which have come to my notice are ‘The Trees do Grow High’, Sharp, One Hundred English Folk-Songs, No. 25; and ‘John Anderson My Jo John’, The Singer’s Companion, p. 72, and SMM, No. 146.
No. 137
[IDUMEA], OSH 47
Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)
