Some lay their bookys on their knee,
And read so long they cannot see.
'Alas! mine head will split in three!'
Thus sayeth one poor wight.
A sack of straw were there right good;
For some must lay them in their hood:
I had as lief be in the wood,
Without or meat or drink!
For when that we shall go to bed,
The pump is nigh our beddës head:
A man he were as good be dead
As smell thereof the stynke!
Howe—hissa! is still used aboard deepwater-men as Ho—hissa! instead of Ho—hoist away! What ho, mate! is also known afloat, though dying out. Y-howe! taylia! is Yo—ho! tally! or Tally and belay! which means hauling aft and making fast the sheet of a mainsail or foresail. What ho! no nearer! is What ho! no higher now. But old salts remember no nearer! and it may be still extant. Seasickness seems to have been the same as ever—so was the desperate effort to pretend one was not really feeling it:
And cry after hot malvesy—
'Their health for to restore.'
Here is another sea-song, one sung by the sea-dogs themselves. The doubt is whether the Martial-men are Navy men, as distinguished from merchant-service men aboard a king's ship, or whether they are soldiers who want to take all sailors down a peg or two. This seems the more probable explanation. Soldiers 'ranked' sailors afloat in the sixteenth century; and Drake's was the first fleet in the world in which seamen-admirals were allowed to fight a purely naval action.
We be three poor Mariners, newly come from the Seas,
We spend our lives in jeopardy while others live at ease.
We care not for those Martial-men that do our states disdain,
But we care for those Merchant-men that do our states maintain.
A third old sea-song gives voice to the universal complaint that landsmen cheat sailors who come home flush of gold.
For Sailors they be honest men,
And they do take great pains,
But Land-men and ruffling lads
Do rob them of their gains.
Here, too, is some Cordial Advice against the wiles of the sea, addressed To all rash young Men, who think to Advance their decaying Fortunes by Navigation, as most of the sea-dogs (and gentlemen-adventurers like Gilbert, Raleigh, and Cavendish) tried to do.