ON A SONG IN SCOTT'S PIRATE—"FIRE ON THE MAINTOP."
In the 231st number of that excellent New York periodical, The Literary World, published on the 5th of July, there is an article on "Steamboats and Steamboating in the South West," in which I find the following passage:—
"I mentioned the refrain of the firemen. Now as a particular one is almost invariably sung by Negroes when they have anything to do with or about a fire; whether it be while working at a New Orleans fire-engine, or crowding wood into the furnaces of a steamboat; whether they desire to make an extra racket at leaving, or evince their joy at returning to a port, it may be worth recording; and here it is:
"'Fire on the quarter-deck,
Fire on the bow,
Fire on the gun-deck,
Fire down below!'
"The last line is given by all hands with great vim (sic) and volume; and as for the chorus itself, you will never meet or pass a boat, you will never behold the departure or arrival of one, and you will never witness a New Orleans fire, without hearing it."
The writer says nothing about the origin of this Negro melody, and therefore he is, I presume, unaware of it. But many of your readers will at once recognise the spirited lines, which when once they are read in Walter Scott's Pirate, have somehow a strange pertinacity in ringing in one's ears, and creep into a nook of the memory, from which they ever and anon insist on emerging to the lips. The passage occurs at the end of the fifth chapter of the third volume, where the pirates recapture their runaway captain:—
"They gained their boat in safety, and jumped into it, carrying along with them Cleveland, to whom circumstances seemed to offer no other refuge, and pushed off for their vessel, singing in chorus to their oars an old ditty, of which the natives of Kirkwall could only hear the first stanza: