According to Stan Hugill this chanty was very popular in the days of sail. It was also known as "Paddy Doyle". The chanty was used specifically for "tossing the bunt," or furling the sail. Two or three verses were usually enough for the job. This is one of the few shanties reserved for bunting the fore or mainsail. Men aloft, furling the sail, would bunch the canvas in their hands till it formed a long bundle, the ‘bunt’. To lift the bunt on to the yard, in order to lash it into position, required a strong heave. Bunt shanties differ from others in that they employed fewer voices and were sung in chorus throughout. Hugill speculates that Paddy Doyle was a Liverpool boarding master. Doerflinger suggests Paddy Doyle was Irish. Sailors often stayed with boarding masters, who ran houses in every large seaport. They furnished "indifferent board and lodging" and also arranged berths for sailors with outward bound ships. Boarding masters often took men in on credit, but usually found a ship before the sailor's advance was used up. The sailors could then use the balance of the advance they received from the ship for clothes and gear for the voyage. They then usually purchased a sea bag with dungarees, oilskins, sea boots, belt, sheath, knife and a pound of tobacco from the boarding master. The gear was low quality and boarding masters had a poor reputation. Sailors referred to boarding masters and their henchmen as "crimps". It appears in the Roud Folk Song Index as #4695. It was printed in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas. Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd sang it in about 1956 on their and Harry H. Corbett's album The Singing Sailor. It was reissued on Row Bullies Row, Singing Sailors, Off to Sea Once More, and on the compilation CD Sailors' Songs & Sea Shanties.