Dibdin does ample justice to the bravery, the generosity, the good-humour, the kind-heartedness of sailors; and, as a class, they deserve his encomiums. His songs abound with just and noble sentiments, and manly virtues were never more constantly and strikingly enunciated by any author. We dearly love Charles Dibdin for this; and as a writer of popular lyrics, we class him as the very first England has ever produced. In this department of literature, we consider he holds the same place in England as Burns does in Scotland; Béranger, in France; Freiligrath, in Germany; and Hans Christian Andersen, in Denmark.
The reader will now ask: 'What songs do sailors sing?' We answer, that their favourite sea-songs[5] are the most dismal, droning doggrel it is possible to conceive; and yet they relish them mightily, because they are stern matter of fact, and in most instances are descriptive of a battle, a chase, a storm, or a shipwreck—subjects appealing powerfully to their sympathies. The following may be taken as a tolerably fair specimen of the style of the genuine 'sailors' songs:'—
'It was the seventeenth day of May, in the year 'ninety-six,
Our taut frigate the Ajax, she from Plymouth did set sail;
Eight days out, com'd a squall from north-east by north,
And then by four bells, morning-watch, it did freshen to a gale.'
Perhaps the most universally popular song among seamen is Rule Britannia; but in general they do little more than sing the chorus, and the way in which a crew of tars, when half-seas-over, will monotonously drawl out 'Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!'—repeating it over and over again, as if they never could have too much of a good thing—is highly amusing. We believe that a decided majority of the songs sang in the forecastle are not sea-songs at all, but purely land-songs; and, strange to say, the most popular of these are sentimental ditties, such as were, a score of years ago, drawing-room favourites! It is very rich to hear 'ancient marineres,' rough as bears, hoarsely quavering, I'd be a butterfly! or, O no! we never mention her; or, The days we went a-gipsying, long time ago! They are also very partial to songs about bandits and robbers.
Well, after all, we have often, when in a tight craft, tossing amid howling billows, complacently repeated—and perchance shall again—the closing lines of The Sailor's Consolation, which, we believe, but are not certain, Dibdin wrote—
'Then, Bill, let us thank Providence
That you and I are sailors!'
FOOTNOTES:
[4] See The 'Romance' of Sea-Life, No. 414 of the Journal.
[5] We must explain that the working-songs of seamen—or such as they sing when heaving at the pawl-windlass, catting the anchor, and other heavy pieces of work—are of a different class altogether, and consist chiefly of a variety of appropriate choruses to lively and inspiriting tunes. These songs sound well, and are worth anything on shipboard, for they stimulate the men far more than grog would do with only a dead, silent heave or haul.