Captain Ward- Holt (NB) 1927 Barry A
[From British Ballads from Maine; Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, 1929. This fragment with music was collected in 1927 in Canada. Barry says, "This air is the second Part of an Irish melody of the Come-All-Ye type." Bronson has found no common melody for this ballad as it is not well established in tradition.
Barry's extensive notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW
(Child 287)
A. Fragment, taken down September 27, 1927, from the singing of Mr. Edward Holt, St. Andrews, New Brunswick. He could give no more of the words and no one was seen in New Brunswick who did know them. Melody recorded by Mr. George Herzog.
"Go home, go home," cries Captain Ward,
"And tell our king for me.
If he reigns king on dry land,
It's I'll reign king on sea."
Notes: Early as it is, this Coverly broadside was not the first American reprint of "Captain Ward." A Newburyport broadside (Ford 2919) of the infamous Captain James, with the imprint of "No. 4, Middle- Street"-- which is probably the same as "W. and J. Gilman, Middle-Street" (Ford 3041)- appends a list of songs for sale there, among which is "Captain Ward, a famous sea, song." The text of this is not known, but, since two songs in the list relate to the death of Washington, Mr. Ford dates the sheet as 1799. A number of American broadsides of "Captain Ward" are listed-- Ford 3006 (which we reprint), 3007 (similar, but with only one cut), 3007 a, 3007 b, 3041, all early. It is found in C. H. Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads, printed for the Navy Record society (English Navv), 1908, pp. 342ff., with the remark: "The ballad is possibly a legendary version of Rainborow's expedition to Sallee in 1637. Essex is celebrated as a naval commander in Queen Elizabeth's Champion (Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 405)."
The suggestion might be possible, if ballads were made in that way. A historical ballad may not be accurate-often it does not desire to give a correct impression of an event; and it may be revived, if once it was well known; but what is the chance, if a nautical song were wanted in America today to stir the people, of its having for its subject Admiral Decatur, or Admiral Farragut, or Admiral Dewey? The popular hero must be near to the people in time, if he is to appear in an entirely new song. The chances are always strong that a historical ballad was contemporary with the event. It is not hard to place the date of the persons mentioned in this song. Professor Child gives the dates of the death of Essex, Clifford, and Mountjoy named in the ballad, as 1601, 1605 and 1606, respectively. From this, if authentic, we should put Captain Ward's exploits as after 1606. "He seems not to be heard of after 1609, in which year Ward and his colleague Dansekar, are spoken of as the "Two late famous pirates" says Professor Child. The original text of the Bagford copy of the ballad (Child, V, 144-145), "printed by and for W. Onley," referred to c.1620 by Ebsworth (Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 405): the broadside itself was "dated at the British Museum, 1680 at the earliest" (Child, V, 145). W. Onley's printing dates are given by Child (III, 150) as 1650-1702.
An examination of the Maine texts presented shows that they fall into two classes, differing in the issue of the sea fight between Ward's ship and the Rainbow. Captain Gott's B-text, representing one class, agrees with A, D, and E in leaving the pirate victorious, flinging a mocking taunt to the king's ship as she retires from the conflict. Mr. Shorey's C-text, on the other hand, stands in a class by itself, since it closes with the capture, trial and execution of Ward. We have already seen that "Sir Andrew Barton,'' the original form of which made the pirate meet defeat and death in a fight with the king's ship, has in American tradition been crossed with the vulgate text of "Captain Ward," as a result of which the pirate is made to win the fight and cry defiance to his lawful sovereign as "king of the sea." Defying ones sovereign was an American game, and a song like this was good propaganda in war-time.
One cannot tell exactly what has happened, since the change might have been made by merely cutting off the end of the song. But there may be something more significant. Mr. Shorev's text adds a new element. Both his text and Captain Gott's are traditional, and in spite of their differences, both seem allied to the text in The Forget-me-not Songster. And, as we study it, the test in the Songster does not seem to be altogether that of the Coverly broadside. The songster text does not come from the Bagford broadside, since it contains some lines lacking in the British text, but found in Coverly's American print. The more one leads the Bagford text, the more it appears to be a rather garbled rewriting of an old and partly forgotten song, dressed in somewhat mock-heroic form. It lacks the ring of reality which the American texts have. It deals in futile exaggerations. "There has not been such a rover found out this thousand years," it says, where the songster and the Maine texts say "a hundred and fifty years." Ward offers a ransom of "full thirty tun of gold," whereas the American proffer of "ten thousand pounds in gold" should have been sufficient to tempt a Stuart king. Stanza 9 of the Bagford sheet is very weak historically when it refers to Essex, who died much more than "one two-years before" the fight with the Rainbow; while the reference to fighting the Dutch seems to place the text as after the middle of the seventeenth century.
We believe the date of printing of the broadside assigned by Professor Child is somewhat too early, and the date of the fight suggested by Firth is much too late. Taking the substance of all the texts together, we make out a consistent story. There is no question about Captain Ward having been a real person. who lived in the early reign of James I of England. The song says that he was a freebooter who preyed upon the Turk and the Spaniard, enemies of England both. He admits that he had also taken three English ships. He is on the wrong side of the law, but he is a brave and capable seaman and desirous of being a loyal one, too, offering King James his services and a large sum of money for a pardon.
But James could not understand a brave man. Instead of accepting Captain Ward's overtures, he is piously abhorrent of having anything to do with one who had preyed upon England's enemies a bit irregularly. Read in the light of Jame's known character, the story seems a true one. The king fits out the Rainbow to capture Ward and the commander of the King's ship vilifies Ward as a thief and a cowardly dog. Ward defies him, and they fight for twelve hours, after which the Rainbow is forced to withdraw. As they sail away Ward taunts them, but does not seem to try to destroy or to capture them, if indeed he was in condition to do so. but his taunt is of the sharpest.
"Go home, go home," cried Captain Ward,
"And tell your King from me,
If he reigns king upon dry land,
I'll reign king of the sea."
It is only twenty years after Elizabeth, James's immediate predecessor, had won the fight with the Armada and here is a freebooter ordering the King of England off the high seas, telling him that he has lost the sea power which was England's glory! Many of his English subjects would enjoy the mortification of their Scotch overlord under that stinging taunt, and would know the ballad when it would not be safe to be caught singing it.
But King James takes his loss as we should expect King James to do. His two thousand pounds invested in the Rainbow outweighs the loss of his sea power. Instead of saying a good word for a captain who has fought a twelve-hour fight for him, he cries shame upon him and laments the time when he had men
Who would have gone unto the sea,
And brought proud Ward to me.
Now comes Mr. Shorey's contribution to the story after the commoner version comes to a close. Apparently there was someone willing to make the attempt. They take bold Ward and all his crew and carry then prisoners to London. In this version Ward's words in his own defense fall into their proper place. He is defending himself before a Scotch king upon an English throne so that there is reason behind his words:
They brought him out before the King: he spoke both firm and free:
"I never robbed an Englishman, an Englishman but three.
As for the worthy Scotchmen, I love them as my own;
My chief delight is for to pull the French and Spaniards down."
But being a coward himself, James knows no mercy.
They found him guilty of high crimes, so beside the river Thames,
They built a strong, stout gallows tree and hung him high in chains.
It was the custom to hang pirates in chains between low-water and high-water marks. Lines like these in an American text are necessarily ancient. And they were quite unknown to Professor Child. The Maine texts seem to be more nearly related to the Forget-me-Not Songster copy. The histor,v of the Songster text is yet to be written, A chapbook, owned by the Harvard University Library, bearing the imprint "Stirling, C. Randall," contains a copy of "Captain Ward and the Rainbow." This text, in Biographical Contributions, No. 56, p. 42, is compared with the vulgate text printed by Child, and described as "a different version, beginning, "come all ye jolly sailors bold who live by tuck of drum" and contributing several additional stanzas. Now "Randall's printing dates," according to W. Walker (Peter Buchan, 279) "are known to be from 1794 to 1812." The Coverly broadside, on the other hand, is closer to the vulgate text. It may be fantastic to claim that a text picked up in Maine in 1928 can be older than one printed in London about 1680; but it is entirely possible. The Onley sheet has the appearance of a re-made song, printed for quick sale by peddlers. The Maine texts have deficiencies, but no careless glosses. We believe them to be purely traditional from the same source as the songster copied and to have been very early introduced into America, where the song has been kept for a very long time.
If Captain Ward was executed before 1609, then the song upon him was almost certainly contemporary. But with a Stuart upon the throne, as the target of the song, it could not have been printed in England nor openly sung there. That it would have been agreeable music to the ears of many of the emigrants to America who came with the first rush here, is obvious. And here it could have been more safely sung at least occasionally. But until the Stuarts were driven out in 1688, it could not have been sung in England. We feel it safe to say that the Onley broadside was printed soon after 1688, rather than "not before 1680." And it would have been likely to be, in some respects, poorer than traditional American copies, because the ballad had never been sung openly in England.
A modified version of "Captain Ward" is in W. A. Barrett's Engttsh Folk-songs, p. 63. The editor says "the words were still printed as a sheet, "but does not specify the date. The feature of the text is the change of "king" to "queen":
"Go home, go home," says saucy Ward, "and tell your Queen from me,
If she rules Queen of England, I'll rule King at sea."
This form of the text, however, coincides rather closely with a traditional text printed in JAFL, XXY, 177, as written down by Mrs. Kerns, a student in the State Normal College, Ypsilanti, Michigan. "It has been traditional in his family for many years. About twenty years ago, one of them made a written copy. The Kerns family came from the north of England to New Jersey about a hundred and fifty years ago, and it is thought they brought the ballad with them (in memory, not in print)." This text shows that Elizabeth was the queen meant, for in the last lines, she says:
"There was Captain Drake and Witherington and bold Lord Willoughby,
If e'er a one of them was alive, he'd have brought proud Ward to me."
This detail indicates that the text is "modified." and in all probability, not very old. Witherington is an intrusion from "Chevv Chase." To settle the history of our ballad in American tradition, we need a good text from the Southern Appalachians.