Recordings & Info 287. Captain Ward & the Rainbow
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) Excerpt from The British Traditional Ballad in North America by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America
5) Folk Index
6) Commentary by Barry Finn (Mudcat)
7) Leslie Nelson (Online)
8) Seaman's Song of Dansekar the Dutchman
9) Excerpt: The Forget-Me-Not Songsters and Their Role in the American Folksong Tradition
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 224: Captain Ward & the Rainbow (115 Listings)
Alternate Titles
The Jolly Mariner
Famous Sea Fight Between Captain Ward and the Rainbow
Captain Ward
Captain Ward the Pirate
Saucy Ward
Ward The Pirate
Traditional Ballad Index: Captain Ward and the Rainbow [Child 287]
DESCRIPTION: Captain Ward asks the king to grant him a place to rest. The king will not grant a place to any pirate (though Ward claims never to have attacked an English ship), and commissions the (Rainbow) to deal with Ward. Ward defeats the Rainbow
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: before 1733 (broadside, Bodleian Douce Ballads 1(80b))
KEYWORDS: ship pirate battle royalty
HISTORICAL_REFERENCES: c. 1604-c. 1609 - Career of Captain John Ward. A fisherman from Kent, Ward's first notable act was his capture of a royal vessel in 1604.
FOUND_IN: Britain(England(Lond,West),Scotland(Aber)) Canada(Mar,Newf) US(MW,NE,SE) Ireland
REFERENCES: (20 citations)
Child 287, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text)
Bronson 287, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (11 versions)
Greig #128, p. 2, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow"; Greig #114, p. 3, "Why lie ye here at anchor"; Greig #117, pp. 2-3, "We focht from eight in the mornin'" (1 text plus 2 fragments)
GreigDuncan1 39, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (3 texts, 2 tunes) {A=Bronson's #8, B=#6}
Ranson, pp. 49-50, "Saucy Ward" (1 text)
Butterworth/Dawney, pp. 38-39, "Saucy Ward" (1 text, 1 tune)
BarryEckstormSmyth pp. 347-363, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (2 texts plus a fragment and a version from the Forget-me-not Songster and a possibly-rewritten broadside, 2 tunes, plus extensive notes on British naval policy) {Bronson's #9, #10}
Flanders/Olney, pp. 204-206, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #11}
Flanders/Brown, pp. 242-244, "Captain Ward and the Rain-Bow" (1 text from the Green Mountain Songster)
Flanders-Ancient4, pp. 264-270 "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (2 texts, 1 tune, the first text being the Green Mountain Songster version)
Gardner/Chickering 83, "Captain Ward" (1 text)
Peacock, pp. 840-841, "Captain Ward" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell-FSRA 22, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text)
Leach, pp. 670-673, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text)
Friedman, p. 362, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text)
Logan, pp. 1-10, "Captain Ward" (1 text)
BBI, ZN949, "Gallants you must understand"; ZN2410, "Strike up you lusty Gallants"
DT 287, WRDRNBOW* WRDNBW2*
ADDITIONAL: C. H. Firth, _Publications of the Navy Records Society_ , 1907 (available on Google Books), p. 30, "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" (1 text)
Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 145, "A Famous Sea Fight Between CAPTAIN WARD and the RAINBOW" (reproduction of a broadside page)
ST C287 (Full)
Roud #224
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce Ballads 1(80b), "A Famous Sea-Fight Between Captain Ward and the Rainbow" ("Strike up ye lusty gallants)", T. Norris (London), 1711-1732; also Harding B 4(107), "A Famous Sea-Fight Between Captain Ward and the Rainbow"; Harding B 4(108), "A Famous Sea Fight Between Captain Ward and the Rainbow"; Firth c.12(8), "Famous Sea Fight Between Capt. Ward and the Gallant Rainbow"; Harding B 11(831), "Capt. Ward and the Rainbow" ("Come all you English seamen with courage beat your drums"); Firth c.12(6), "Captain Ward"; 2806 c.16(334), Harding B 11(4034), Firth c.12(7), "Ward the Pirate[!]"
CROSS_REFERENCES:
cf. "The Outlaw Murray" [Child 305] (theme)
cf. "Sir Andrew Barton" [Child 167] (theme)
SAME_TUNE:
Captain Ward (per broadside Bodleian Douce Ballads 1(80b))
The Wild Rover (per broadside Bodleian Firth c.12(6))
ALTERNATE_TITLES:
The Jolly Mariner
NOTES: Compare with this broadside for a different ballad on the same subject: Bodleian, Wood 402(39), "The Seamans Song of Captain Ward, the Famous Pyrate of the World, and an English[man] Born" ("Gallants you must understand"), F. Coles (London), 1655-1658; also Douce Ballads 2(199a), Wood 401(79), "The Seamans Song of Captain Ward, the Famous Pyrate of the world and an English Man Born" - BS
Although the "historical" Captain Ward was active during the reign of Britain's King James I, the context sounds more like that in the time of Charles I. The religious and political situation, as well as financial interests, dictated that Charles should have been allied with the Protestants of the Netherlands and Germany against Spain -- but instead Charles implicitly supported Spain while quarreling with the Dutch about herring fishing.
The result was an undeclared war between many of Charles's sailors and Spain. And many of the fighters, like Ward or the later Captain Kidd, thought right was on their side. Indeed, the Earl of Warwick was creating a group of pirates who were carefully trained according to Calvinist principles -- Puritan raiders (Herman, p. 157f.)
This would also explain why the king was trying to crack down: Piracy had gotten completely out of hand in his father's reign. Ritchie, p. 140, writes, "Only the most inept pirates ended their lives on the gallows during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The nadir of English concern and ability to control piracy came during the reign of James I. Taking no special pride in the Royal Navy and abhorring the expenses generated by the fleet, James sold some of his ships and let most of the others rot at the docks. The resulting growth of piracy in and around English waters caused the Dutch to request permission to send their ships into English waters to attack the brigands. Bereft of means to do the jobs, James acquiesed."
Stokesbury, p. 47, notes that the strong navy of Elizabeth was down to 37 ships by 1607, and most of them in poor repair; he attributes this to the corruption of the Treasurer of the Navy, Sir Robert Mansell. As a result, Stokesbury declares on p. 48, "[T]his was the high point of the era of piracy; the Moorish pirates in particular, raiding out of ports on the North African shore, virtually ruled the sea. Thousands of sailors were enslaved, and there was a waste of about seventy English merchant ships a year to pirates. In some cases they were so bold that they even raided along the southern English coasts, seizing peasants, whom they carried off to slave markets. Not since the days of the Norsemen had there been such a scourge at sea."
BarryEckstormSmyth, however, try to relate the whole thing to the politics of James I -- and to the opposition to that king. Of course, Charles I generated even more opposition, and talking about events in his father's reign might make the discussion slightly safer. The drawback is that the historical Captain Ward was dead by then.
DictPirates, p. 360, gives Ward's dates as 1553-1623; he was imprisoned for piracy in England in 1602, impressed in 1603, turned pirate, and took to the Mediterranean. In 1606, he took service with the ruler of Tunis. In 1607, his fleet suffered a series of setbacks. He may have tried to buy a pardon from the King of England, but the idea failed. He turned to Islam and lived more or less happily ever after.
If we accept that Ward was active at the very start of the reign of James I, that gives us still another scenario, which ties in with the death of Elizabeth I and the accession of James I. Elizabeth of course spent much of her reign at war with Spain; famous incidents in this war were the voyage of the Spanish Armada and Drake's circumnavigation of the globe. Semi-official piracy was one of Elizabeth's key weapons against the Spanish; her ships captured Spanish treasure ships and interfered with Spain's attempts to build a stronger navy.
But all wars come to an end. Ritchie, p. 13, notes that peace was made with Spain in 1603, the year James I succeeded to the English throne. And suddenly English privateers who had been attacking the Spanish had to become either unlicensed pirates or join someone else's service. If Ward kept raiding the Spanish after peace was made, that might explain the King's attitude toward him.
The comment about the captain being king upon the sea does date to the reign of James I -- but, according to Rodger, p. 349 and Herman, p. 144, it was not made by Ward but by one Peter Easton (or Eston). Easton, who took over the pirate fleet of Richard Bishop in 1611, did so much damage that he was offered a pardon in 1612, refused it, saying, "I am, in a way, a king myself." The next year, he was offered a lordship in Spain, which he took.
There is one other source which might perhaps have influenced this song a little, although the names are reversed (that is, the Captain Warde involved is not the pirate but his victim). A Flemish pirate named John Crabbe became famous along the Channel in the early fourteenth century, and his first noteworthy prize was a ship called the _Waardebourc_ captained by John de Warde (McNamee, p. 209). - RBW
Greig #114 (before Greig recognized this as a "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" fragment): "... a ballad about Wallace and the Red Reiver...." The reference is to the 1298 capture of the pirate Richard Longoville, a.k.a. the Red Reiver, by William Wallace (see the Wikipedia article "William Wallace"). - BS
>>BIBLIOGRAPHY<<
DictPirates:Jan Rogozinsky, _Pirates_, Facts on File, 1995 (reprinted 1997 by Wordsworth as _The Wordsworth Dictionary of Pirates_; this is the edition I used)
Herman: Arthur Herman, _To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World_, 2004 (I use the 2005 Harper Perennial edition)
McNamee: Colm McNamee, _The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306-1328_, Tuckwell, 1997
Ritchie: Robert C. Ritchie, _Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates_, Harvard University Press, 1986
Rodger: N. A. M. Rodger, _The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660-1649_ (1997; I use the 1999 Norton edition)
Stokesbury: James L. Stokesbury, _Navy & Empire_, Morrow, 1983
Child Collection- Child Ballad 287: Captain Ward and the Rainbow
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
287 Alba Captain Ward Alba 1977 2:07 Yes
287 Annwn Captain Ward and the Rainbow + I Know You Rider Live at the Starry Plough 1998 12:19 Yes
287 Any Monday Captain Ward The Roll of the Sea 2001 2:37 Yes
287 Bell Duncan Captain Ward and the Rainbow (1) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
287 Bell Duncan Captain Ward and the Rainbow (2) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
287 Cyril Poacher Captain Ward and the Rainbow The Horkey Load - English Traditional Singers Vol 1 197? No
287 Cyril Poacher Captain Ward and the Rainbow Plenty of Thyme 1999 No
287 Dan Milner Saucy Ward Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea 2009 4:14 Yes
287 Dave Burland Captain Ward and the Rainbow Dave Burland 1972 2:17 Yes
287 Dr Faustus Captain Ward The First Cut 2003 4:41 Yes
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) - Vol. 4 1956 No
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) - Vol. 8 [Reissue] 196? 1:56 Yes
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Child Ballads) - Vol. 2 1964 1:53 Yes
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow Ye Mariners All - More Shanties and Forebitters 1971 1:56 Yes
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow Ballads - Murder Intrigue Love Discord 2009 2:00 Yes
287 Ewan MacColl Captain Ward and the Rainbow (Ward the Pirate) Scotland 1951, 1953, and 1958 (Lomax T3469) 1957 1:14 Yes
287 FinTan Captain Ward Beó 2006 3:13 Yes
287 Golden Bough Captain Ward and the Rainbow + Ned Coleman's Pirate Gold 2008 No
287 Hadden, Rothfield & Carr Captain Ward When These Shoes Were New 1985 3:30 Yes
287 James Mason Captain Ward and the Rainbow The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
287 John Spiers & Jon Boden Captain Ward fRoots 31 2008 4:14 Yes
287 Jon Boden Captain Ward A Folk Song a Day - January 2011 3:30 Yes
287 Pete Castle & Ian Lawther Captain Ward Apples, Cherries, Hops and Women - Folk Songs from Kent, Vol. 2 1998 No
287 Peter Bellamy Ward the Pirate Tell It Like It Was 1975 2:32 Yes
287 Peter Bellamy Ward the Pirate Peter Bellamy + Fair Annie 2005 2:23 Yes
287 Peter Christie Captain Ward and the Rainbow (1) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
287 Peter Christie Captain Ward and the Rainbow (2) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
287 Rachael McShane Captain Ward No Man's Fool 2009 4:09 Yes
287 Robin Williamson Captain Ward Brass Project Live 1999 3:08 Yes
287 Robin Williamson Captain Ward and the Rainbow The Old Fangled Tone 1999 3:40 Yes
287 Roy Harris Captain Ward Round Cape Horn - Traditional Songs of Sailors, Ships and the Sea 1998 3:45 Yes
287 Roy Harris Captain Ward Champions of Folly 1980 3:40 Yes
287 Salmontails Captain Ward and the Rainbow + Pipe on the Hob Salmontails 1980 3:16 Yes
287 Simon Spalding Captain Ward and the Rainbow Anchor & Thistle - Maritime Music of Scotland 2010 No
287 Spiers & Boden Captain Ward Vagabond 2008 4:13 Yes
287 Steve Tilston Captain Ward Of Many Hands - from the Tradition 2005 3:36 Yes
287 Tempest Captain Ward Balance 2001 3:44 Yes
287 The Clutha Captain Ward and the Reindeer Scotia! 1971 1:46 Yes
287 The Demon Barbers Captain Ward The Adventures of Captain Ward 2010 No
287 The Demon Barbers Captain Ward BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2011 2011 3:50 Yes
287 The Jolly Rogers The Pirate Ward Pirates' Gold 1997 No
287 The London Madrigal Singers & Christopher Bishop Ward, the Pirate Vaughan Williams - The Collector's Edition 2008 2:39 Yes
287 The Tannahill Weavers Captain Ward + The Streaker Capernaum 1994 2:57 Yes
287 Tundra Captain Ward and the Rainbow A Kentish Garland 1978 3:07 Yes
Excerpt from The British Traditional Ballad in North America
by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America
287. CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW
Texts: Barry, Brit Bids Me, 347 / Broadsides: Coverly, Bostoa Public Library; Harvard University Library 25242.5.5, 25276.4381 / Chappell, F-S Rnke Alb, 45 / Flanders, Vt F-S Elds, 242 / Forecastle Songster (Nafis and Cornish, N.Y., 1849) / Forget-me-not Songster (Locke, Boston, c. 1842) / Forget-me-not Songster (Nafis and Cornish, N.Y.), 41 / Forget-me-not Songster (Turner and Fisher, Philadelphia), 200 / Gardner and Chickering, Bids Sg$ So Mich, 216 / Green Mountain Songster, 56 / JAFL, XVIII, 137; XXV, 177 / Pearl Songster (Huestis, N.Y., .1846), 136 / Shoemaker, Mt Mnstly, 300 / Thompson, Bdy Bts Brtchs, 33.
Local Titles: Captain Ward, Captain Ward and the Rainbow, Captain Ward the Pirate
Story Types: A: The English king has a ship, the Rainbow, built and sent out to sea. She encounters the Scot, Captain Ward, who, upon being recognized as a pirate who had robbed the English and ordered to surrender, fights her and routs her with the taunt that the king can rule the land, but Ward rules the sea.
Examples: Barry (B), Gardner and dickering. Shoemaker.
B: The Scotsman Ward writes the English King and requests that he be taken into the Royal Navy with his ship for 10,000 of gold. The King (or Queen) refuses him as being untrustworthy. Ward sets off again, undismayed, and robs, among others, an English merchantman. When the news reaches the King, he has the Rainbow built. This boat attacks Ward, captures him, and takes him back to England. Ward speaks right up to the King and says that he hates France and Spain and has robbed but three English ships. Nevertheless, he is hung.
Examples: Barry (C).
C: The story is similar to that of Type B. However, after losing the fight, the Rainbow returns to the King and tells him Ward will never be taken, and the monarch bewails the three great men he has recently lost. They would have captured Ward had they been alive.
Examples: Barry (D), Flanders (B).
Discussion: Child, V, 163 dates the events of this ballad as having occurred between 1604 and 1609 and cites John Ward of Kent as the hero. The deaths of Essex, Clifford, and Mountjoy in 1601, 1605 and 1606 respectively tend to back up these statements. They are the three heroes who would have taken Ward had they been alive. Barry, Brit Bids Me, 358 63, in a difficult, but informative discussion, investigates the British and American versions of the story in detail.
From his arguments, it seems very possible that the Type B ballads give the end of the story as it occurred in actuality and that, although Ward escaped once, he was later captured by other men in James* service and hung. The Type A and C texts do not reveal these subsequent events and only tell of the escape Type A, the most common of the three in America, being a shorter version of the Type C (Child) story. If this reasoning is true, then the name the Rainbow has been confused and appears both on James' defeated ship (A, C) and on his victorious ship (B). However, it is equally possible that a tragic ending and a happy ending exist on the same ballad because of folk whim, contact with Sir Andrew Barton (see my discussion under Child 167, as well as Barry, op. cit., 253ff.) or another reason.
The savage opening stanza of the Chappell, F-S Rnke Alb, 45 text is worth note. In it, the King calls Ward a "wanton, lying, stinking thief".
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Folk Index: Captain Ward
Douglas Family. Thompson, Harold W.(ed.) / Body, Boots & Britches, Dover, Bk (1962/1939), p 33
Captain Ward and the Rainbow [Ch 287]
Emrich, Duncan / Folklore on the American Land, Little, Brown, sof (1972), p475 [1920s?]
Friedman, Albert B. (ed.) / Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-S, Viking, sof (1963/1957), p363 [1852]
Palmer, Roy (ed.) / Oxford Book of Sea Songs, Oxford, Bk (1986), p 18/# 10 [1650] (Famous Sea Fight Between Captain Ward and the Rainbow)
Flanders, Helen H. & George Brown / Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads, Folklore Associates, Bk (1968/1931), p242 [1830s]
Leach, MacEdward / The Ballad Book, Harper & Row, Bk (1955), p670
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Commentary by Barry Finn:
In 'The Book of Pirate Songs' (a very well done job with the research) by Stuart Frank, he presents three old ballads. Captain Ward, Dansekar The Dutchman & Captain Ward & the Rainbow (#287). His notes on The older of the two 'Captain has Ward born in 1553 in Kent & being a Fisherman before enlisting in the navy & "commenced 'rover' about 1604" (Child V:143) by perpetrating a naval mutiny, taking command, and turning the ship to piracy. "By 1606 he commanded a fleet of 500 & living in a palace at Tunis. In 1609 he "tried unsuccessfully to obtain a pardon" from King James 1 (Cordingly 1996, 90). That same year with Ward still active & thriving in the Mediterranean, his terrible reputation achieved new heights: one Andrew Barker wrote a book about him (Child V 143; Ebsworth VI: 423: Logan,4) and the ballad "Captain Ward" was licensed, making it pehaps the earliest pirate ballad to appear in print in English. Child appears to be mistaken in his contention that Ward "seems not to be heard of after 1609". According to Cordingly (Cordingly 1996,13) Ward died in his bed of natural causes -plague-in 1622.
Frank goes on to mention that: For both this and the copmanion ballad, "Dansekar the Dutchman" which appeared on the same sheet at the same time, the tune specified is "The King's Going to Bulloign," now lost. Early editions of "Captain Ward & the Rainbow" call for a tune called "Captain Ward" but that tune cannot be the one intended here, as the "Rainbow" ballad and this one (Captain Ward) are metrically incompatible and cannot be sung to the same tune. Simpson does not even mention "Captain Ward", "Dansekar," or "The King's Gone to Bulloign"; Child barely recognizes "Captain Ward" as anything more than archival text; & Bronson follows suit. They may have a point. There is little evdence that "Captain Ward" hass been sung at all during the past 3 centuries.
Of Dansekar he says: "A cohort of Captain Ward, he was hanged at Tunis in 1611 two years after the ballad was first printed. The text is notable for it's catalogue of English vessals captured, which, given the journalistic nature of broadsides, may be regarde as faily accurate".
Of the "Captain Ward & the Rainbow, Frank also says that "CH Firth. an astute naval historian, suggests that the "Rainbow" ballad may be a "ledgendary version" of the actual Britishnaval expedition to the Barbary Coast commanded be Captain William Rainborow in 1637, which resulted in the rescue from slavery of "300 or 400 Englishmen' - hence the transformed name Rainbow and the confusion with Ward's notorious earlier career on the adjacent North African coast".
"Only the "Rainbow" has been recovered from tradition and several tunes are associated with it. Early broadsides consulted bt Bell, Child, Euing & Firth call for something called Captain Ward, which cannot be the same tune as for the older ballad ("Captain Ward") in fact it "remains unidentified" (Bronson IV:363) ". . .and does not appear to have survived" (Simpson, 720n). Thius is an odd melody composed by George Frederick Handel that was exploited on the London stage in two of John Gay's musical plays, "The What D'ye Call It: A Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Farce" (1715) and "The Beggar's Opera" (1728); it also "appeared in a host of musical miscellanies" & furnished the melody for "Sir John Barleycorn" & "The dying Virgin's Farewell," among other ballads 9719f). Thus, "'Twas when tha seas were roaring" [Tune A} (Tune A, Twas when the seas were roaring" by Handle, per Simpson, 720 is the tune given in Frank's book as the tune for "Rainbow")mat be the the most authentic antiquarian tune that survives for "Captain Ward & the Rainbow".
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From Lesley Nelson's Site:
This ballad was registered circa 1680 by W. Onley in London. It was registered as The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow. To the tune of Captain Ward. It also appears in a black letter ballad (broadside) in Bagford Ballads (1878) as well as in the Pepys and Roxburghe Manuscripts. Two other ballads of Captain Ward (The Seamen's Song of Captain Ward and The Seamen's Song of Dansekar) were entered in the Stationers' Register on July 3, 1609. The ballad also appears later on stall sheets in Scotland and in America.
This ballad is Child Ballad #287 (Captain Ward, Captain Ward and the Rainbow).
According to Child, John Ward was from Kent and is said to have become an outlaw circa 1604 when he persuaded the crew of a King's ship to turn pirate. Ward's career apparently ended around 1609, when he and his associate Daneskar are referred to as "late famous pirates" (see the first link below).
According to another source Captain Jack Ward was a Feversham fisherman whose career spanned 1603 to 1615 and who was never brought to justice.
The Rainbow was one of Drake's four ships that took part in the expedition in Cadiz in 1587. In a longer version of the ballad (in Child) the King refers to three captains who might have ended Ward's career earlier. They are George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland (1605), Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy (1606) and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1601). Clifford and Blount took part in the defeat of the Armada.
There's another song about "The Rainbow" fleeing some pirates, the title of which I forget for the minute but sung from the point of view of the sailors on the vessel. It has the line
"The good ship, The Royal, called Rainbow by name"
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Seaman's Song of Dansekar the Dutchman, His Robberies Done at Sea.
Tune: The King's Going to Boulogne (Bulloign)
Sing we (Seamen) now and than (sic)
Of Danseker the Dutchman,
whose gallant mind has won him great renown
To live on land he counts it safe,
But seeks to purchase greater grace
by roving on the Ocean up and down.
His heart is so aspiring,
That now his chief desiring,
is for to win himself a worthy name,
The Land has far too little ground,
The idea is of a larger bound,
and of a greater dignity and fame.
Now many a worthy gallant,
Of courage now most valiant, with him hath put their fortunes to the sea,
As the world about have heard
Of Densekar and English Ward,
and of their proud adventures every day.
There is not any Kingdom
In Turkey or in Christendom,
but by these pyrates have received loss:
Merchant men of every Land
Do daily in great danger stand,
and fear do much the Ocean main to cross.
They make Children fatherless,
Woeful widows in distress,
in shedding blood they took much delight,
Fathers they bereave of sons,
Regarding neither cries nor moans,
so much they joy to see a bloody fight.
They count it gallant bearing,
To hear the canons roaring,
and Musket shot to rattle in the sky:
Their gloates would be of the biggest,
To fight against the foes of Christ
and such as do our Christian faith deny.
But their cursed villainies,
And their bloody piracies,
are chiefly bent against our Christian friends
Some Christians so delight in evils
That they become the sons of Devils,
and for the same have many (?)warneful ends.
England suffers danger,
As well as any stranger,
Nations are alike unto this company,
Many English merchant men,
And of London now and then,
have tasted of their vile extremity.
London's Elizabeth
Of late these Rovers taken have
a ship well laden with merchandise,
The nimble Pearl and Charity
All ships of gallant bravery,
are by these Pyrates made a lawful prize.
The Trojan of London
With other ships many a one,
have stooped sail and (? yielded out of hand,
These pyrates they have shed their blood,
And the Turks have bought their goods
being all too weak their power to withstand.
Of Hull and Bonaventer,
Which was a great frequenter,
and passer of the straits to Barbary:
Both ship and men late taken were,
By Pyrates Ward and Dansekar
and brought by them into captivity.
English Ward and Dansekar,
Begin now to jar,
about dividing of their gotten goods,
Both ships and soldiers gather head,
Dansekar from Ward is fled,
so full of pride and malice are their bloods.
Ward does only promise,
To keep about rich Tunis,
and be Commander of those Turkish Seas,
But valiant Dutch-land Dansekar,
Doth hover near unto Angier,
and there his threatening colours now displays.
These Pyrates thus divided
By God is sure provided,
in secret sort(?) to work each others woe,
Such Wicked courses cannot stand,
The Devil thus puts in his hand,
And God will give them soon an overthrow.
Bodleian Ballads, Douce Ballads 2(199a); Wood 401(79) and other copies (hard to read). Printed by Coles, Vere and Wright, London, between 1663 and 1674.
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Excerpt: The Forget-Me-Not Songsters and Their Role in the American Folksong Tradition
by Norm Cohen
American Music, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 137-219
Texts found in FMNS: 16. "Captain Ward" [Child 287] Seaman John Ward, from Kent, the presumed factual subject of this ballad, was an active sea rover in 1604-9, who retired to an alabaster palace in Tunis after his successful career of maritime depredations. Readers may choose between two alternate endings: either Ward was finally captured and hanged before 1610 or he died of the plague in 1622.[102] Firth printed three ballads dealing with Ward: "The Seaman's Song of Captain Ward, the Famous Pyrate of the World, and an English-Man Born," "The Song of Dansekar the Dutchman (Second Part of the Sea-Man's Song of Ward and Dansekar)," and "The Famous Sea-Fight Between Captain W ard and the Rainbow." ("Dansekar" refers to the Dutch pirate, Simon Danser.) The latter, copied from Roxburgh Be allads, is our song, but in severely altered form.[103]
Thomson studied the various broadside prints of the ballad and concluded that the earliest was printed by Coles between 1630 and 1655.[104] In the eighteenth century the ballad was reprinted frequently on British broadsides. One broadside, printed by W. Onley of London and in the Bagford collection, was dated by the British Museum to 1680 at the earliest; however, the English ballad authority Ebsworth believed the ballad was written ca. 1620.[105] Thomson, h owever, dated it closer to 1700. Most of these broadside texts are closer to the Coles text than to the songster text, the opening stanzas of which are compared below:
FMNS Coles text
Come all ye jolly sailors bold, Strike up you lusty Gallants,
That live by tuck of drum; with musick and sound of Drum:
I'll tell you of a rank robber, For we have discryed a Rower
Now on the seas is come. upon the Sea is come.
His name is called captain Ward, His name is Captain Ward,
As you the truth shall hear; right well it doth appear:
For ther's [sic] not been such a robber, There has not been such a Rower
This hundred and fifty years. found out this thousand years.
The songster text is closer to several early American printings than to any of the British o nes. These include a text in The Green Mountain Songster, a manuscript written by a Vermont revolutionary soldier in 1823, a broadside published by Nathaniel Coverly in Boston, and a version in the Stevens-Douglass manuscript, which is almost identical to it.[106] Barry, Eckstorm, and Smith presented three versions from tradition (one but a fragment) and reprint the version from FMNS (Boston, J. S. Locke [ca. 1842]), offering extensive musings about the history of the ballad and the events that inspired it. Of the songster text, they wrote, This copy [i.e., reprinting] does not undertake to reproduce all the inaccuracies and misprints of the songster text. It is clearly a corrupt form of the ballad, derived, no doubt, from a poorly printed stall-copy. The same text, with trifling variations, is in editions of The Forget Me Not Songster (Phila: Turner and Fisher; and New York: Nafis and Cornish)- also in The Pearl Songster and The Forecastle Songster.[107]
Following this text, the authors reprinted the Coverly broadside, probably printed in 1812-15 "when we were at war with England and any song casting discredit upon a royal warship would be popular."[108] An earlier American broadside is also cited by them-a copy not examined, but included in a list of ballads for sale in a broadside dated 1799. Barry, Eckstorm, and Smith concluded that the traditional Maine versions are akin to the FMNS text, but are undecided about the place of the latter in the history of the ballad.[109] They concluded further that these American versions are in fact closer to the original, which must have been written soon after the events it described (ca. 1620), than the Onley broadside, which, they argue, was not written prior to the Stuarts' removal from the throne in 1688. Some American version must have been brought to the New World earlier than that, and was the source of the Coverly broadside, the Songster version, and the traditional versions. Given the authors' zeal for asserting the primacy and superiority of New England ballad versions over all competitors, we might wisely suspend judgmenta boutt he chronological sequence of the various retellings of the Ward episode. As for the role of the FMNS in fixing oral tradition, however, we must, following Barry, Eckstorm, and Smith, also suspend judgment, since there are no recoveries that are unambiguously derived from the songster, while there are several that are closely related to it.
The ballad has been recovered extensively from oral tradition, mostly in the Northeast and Canada.[110] Th e text collected in Newfoundland by Peacock in 1958 is possibly derived from the FMNS text, though it lacks five of twenty-seven stanzas and has several minor textual differences. The Green Mountain manuscript is close to the FMNS text, especially in some unusual locutions-for example, the "tuck of drum" of the first line (an English expression in use as far back as 1500). The same locution occurs in one of the versions collected by Barry, Eckstorm, and Smith in Maine; however, this version ends with a couplet not occurring in the FMNS text relating Ward's hanging on a gallows beside the Thames river.
Footnotes:
102. Helen Hartness Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England, vols. 1-4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960-65),4 :264; Frank, Book o f Pirate Songs, 26.
103. Firth, N aval Songs and Ballads 2, 5-31; Chappell, e d., Roxburghe Ballads 6, :426.
104. The Coles broadside was reproduced in The Euing Collection of English Broadside Ballads (Glasgow: U niversity of Glasgow, 1971), 108-9.
105. Chappell, ed., Roxburghe Ballads 6, : 405.
106. Thompson,e d., with Cutting, A Pioneer Songster 2, 5 -29. Altogether this manuscript contained nine of the forty-five s ongs in this survey, most in versions so close to the songster texts as to strongly suggest the latter as a source.
107. Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, BBM, 351ff.
108. Ibid., 355. The Coverly b roadside i s cited by Ford, Broadsides Ballads & c.,n o. 3006.
109. "The history of the Songster text is yet to be written"- p. 361.
110. For references to American field-collected versions, see Coffin, British Traditional Ballad i n North America (1977 ed.), 155-56 and 279. To these add Kittredge," Ballads and Songs," 332. The earliest is the text given in The G reen M ountain S ongster, a manuscript compiled by a Vermont Revolutionary War soldier in 1823.