member the refrain well (for he did sing it at last); it ran thus:—
"My crew are tried, my bark's my pride,
I'm the Pirate of the Isles."
It was no rose-water piracy that the boy sang of; it was the genuine pirate of the Isle of Pines,—the gentleman who before the days of California and steamers was the terror of the Spanish Main. He was depicted as falling in deadly combat with a naval cruiser, after many desperate deeds. What was most striking to us of the cabin was, that the sympathy of the song, and evidently of the hearers, was all on the side of the defier of law and order. There was no nonsense in it about "islands on the face of the deep where the winds never blow and the skies never weep," which to the parlor pirate are the indications of a capital station for wood and water, and for spending his honeymoon. It was downright cutting of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy.
There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches. Such is the rhyme of "Uncle Peleg," or "Pillick," as it is pronounced,—probably an historical ballad concerning some departed worthy of the Folger family of Nantucket. It begins—
"Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat
On the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int;
He rolled up his trowsers and set her afloat
From the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int."
Like "Christabel," this remains a fragment. Not so the legend of "Captain Cottington," (or Coddington,) which perhaps is still traditionally known to the young gentlemen at Harvard. It is marked by a bold and ingenious metrical novelty.
"Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea-e-e,
Captain Cottington he went to sea."
The third verse of the next stanza announces that he didn't go to sea in a schoo-oo-ooner,—of the next that he went to sea in a bri-i-ig,—and so on. We learn that he got wrecked on the "Ba-ha-ha-hamys," that he swam ashore with the papers in his hat, and, I believe, entered his protest at the nearest "Counsel's" (Anglicé, Consul's) dwelling.
For the amateur of genuine ballad verse, here is a field quite as fertile as that which was reaped by Scott and Ritson amid the border peels and farmhouses of Liddesdale. It is not unlikely that some treasures may thus be brought to light. The genuine expression of popular feeling is always forcible, not seldom poetic. And at any rate, these wild bits of verse are redolent of the freshness of the sea-breeze, the damps of the clinging fog, the strange odors of the caboose-cookery, of the curing of cod, and of many another "ancient and fish-like smell." Who will tell us of these songs, not indeed of the deep sea, but of soundings? What were the stanzas which Luckie Mucklebackit sang along the Portanferry Sands? What is the dredging-song which the oyster "come of a gentle kind" is said to love?
These random thoughts may serve to indicate to the true seeker new and unworked mines of rhythmic ore. We are crying continually, that we have no national literature, that we are a nation of imitators and plagiarists. Why will not some one take the trouble to learn what we have? This does not mean that amateurs should endeavor to write such ballad fragments and popular songs,—because that cannot be done; such things grow,—they are not made. If the sea wants songs, it will have them. It is only suggested here that we look about us and ascertain of what lyric blessings we may now be the unconscious possessors. Can it be that oars have risen and fallen, sails flapped, waves broken in thunder upon our shores in vain? that no whistle of the winds, or moan of the storm-foreboding seas has waked a responsive chord in the heart of pilot or fisherman? If we are so poor, let us know our poverty.
