New Barbary- Morris (ME) 1940 Flanders G
[This fragment is the last of Flanders 7 versions in her Ancient Ballads books published in 1966 with notes by Coffin. Coffin (and Laws before him) apparently took Frank Shay's word that Charles Dibden (actually Dibdin) wrote a similar ballad based on the "George Aloe" which developed into "Coast of Barbary/High barbaree" songs. So far none has been found and apparently it's a mix-up because one of Didbin's songs is titled "Blow High Blow Low" - which is a completely different song.
I'm also wondering what rare US or Canadian ballad has the "George Aloe" in it- since none have been found.
R. Matteson 2014]
The Coast of Barbary
(Laws K33, related to Child 285)
"George Aloe and the sweepstake" (Child 285), which the jailer's daughter sings in The Two Noble Kinsmen, is extremely rare in America and is not found in the Flanders Collection at all. However, the common sea ballad "The Coast of Barbary" telling a similal stoly is known widely in the States and to some extent in England. This song places back to a piece written for the British Navy by Charles Dibden (1745-1814). Dibden based his composition on "George Aloe and. the Sweepstake" but retained little of his model beyond the plot outline and the "Barbary" refrain. In songs based on Dibden's original, the man-of-war defeats a pirate or privateer, although the merchantman, George Aloe, originally conquered a French naval vessel. The Flanders texts follow the usual songster versions known in New England. Flanders A, very close to the A text in Phillips Barry's Britislt Ballads from Maine, 413, is also like The American Songster (New York) version, as are the Flanders E and F fragments. Flanders B and C follow The Forget-me-not Songster (Turner and Fisher, Philadelphia) text, which in turn is like an old American broadside now in the Massachusetts Historical Society library and given as Barry D.
See Coffin, 152-3, for American bibliography to "George Aloe" and to the "Coast of Barbary." Laws, ABBB, 157-8, and Dean-Smith, 58, list the latter song. The tunes for Child 285 are related, but not closely, with the exception of the Kneeland and Delano tunes. Tunes for this ballad are exceedingly rare in the standard American collections.
G. Adam Momis, a restaurant keeper at Kingrnan, Maine, spoke of his grandmother- a McPhail, who died at the age of 92- who had "Drempt a song-drempt she heard, two sailors singing an old sea-song." Mr. Morris remembered, a fragment of a song his mother sang to him. He sang it to the dictaphone set upon his lunch counter, to the great detight of a Passamaquoddy Indian.
H. H. F., Collector; July 11, 1940.
New Barbary
"You are a saucy pirate, so you do say,"
Blow high, blow low, and so sail-ed we.
"Point out your Spanish guns and we'll show you British play,"
Cruising down along the coast of New Barbary.
Broadside to broadside these two ships they came;
Blow high, blow low, and so sail-ed we.
We shot the saucy pirate's three masts away,
Cruising down along the coast of New Barbary.