Spanish Ladies
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Song Sheet
sea chantey
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
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Lyrics:
Farewell an' adieu to you fair Spanish ladies,
Farewell an' adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For we've received orders for to sail for old England,
An' hope very shortly to see you again.
Chorus:
We'll rant an' we'll roar, like true British sailors,
We'll rant an' we'll rave across the salt seas,
'Till we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England,
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-four leagues.
We hove our ship to, with the wind at sou'west, boys,
We hove our ship to for to take soundings clear.
In fifty-five fathoms with a fine sandy bottom,
We filled our maintops'l, up Channel did steer.
Chorus
The first land we made was a point called the Deadman,
Next Ramshead off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight.
We sailed then by Beachie, by Fairlee and Dungeyness,
Then bore straight away for the South Foreland Light.
Chorus
Now the signal was made for the Grand Fleet to anchor,
We clewed up our tops'ls, stuck out tacks and sheets.
We stood by our stoppers, we brailed in our spankers,
And anchored ahead of the noblest of fleets.
Chorus
Let every man here drink up his full bumper,
Let every man here drink up his full bowl,
And let us be jolly and drown melancholy,
Drink a health to each jovial an' true-hearted soul.
Chorus
"Spanish Ladies", also known as "We'll Rant and We'll Roar" and "Brisbane Ladies"<br> is a British sailing song, describing a voyage from Spain to the Downs.<br> The Downs is a roadstead (an area of sheltered, favourable sea) in the southern North Sea<br> near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South<br> Foreland in southern England. Another version is known as<br> "Talcahuano Girls",<br> a song about the early 19th century Pacific sperm and right whale fishing.<br> The oldest mention of the song appears in the 1796 logbook of HMS Nellie, making it<br> likely an invention of the Napoleonic era. The timing of the mention in the Nellie's<br> logbook suggests that the song was created during the War of the First Coalition<br> (1793–96), when the Royal Navy carried supplies to Spain to aid its resistance to<br> revolutionary France.<br> The song predates the proper emergence of the sea shanty. Shanties were the work songs<br> of merchant sailors, rather than naval ones and were banned in the Royal Navy.<br> It was recorded by<br> Bob Roberts on Breeze for a Bargema (1981),<br> A.L. Lloyd on Leviathan! Ballads & Songs of the Whaling Trade (1967) and others.<br> It was printed in<br> Bell's Early Ballads Illustrative of History, Traditions, and Customs and Ballads and<br> Songs of the Peasantry of England (1877),<br> Chappell's The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859),<br> Creighton and Senior's Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia (1960),<br> Dixon's Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846),<br> Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas: Shipboard Work-Songs from the Great Days of<br> Sail (1961),<br> Hugill's Songs of the Sea (McGraw-Hill, 1977),<br> Huntington's The Gam: More Songs the Whalemen Sang (2014),<br> Karpeles' Folk Songs from Newfoundland (1970),<br> Karpeles' The Crystal Spring: English Folk Songs Collected by Cecil Sharp (1975),<br> Kinsey's Songs of the Sea (1989),<br> Mackenzie's Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (1963),<br> Palmer's The Oxford Book of Sea Songs (1986),<br> Ranson's Songs of the Wexford Coast (1975),<br> Roud and Bishop's The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (2002),<br> Sharp's Folk songs from Somerset (1909),<br> Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs (1916),<br> Shay's American Sea Songs and Chanteys (1948) and<br> Stone's Sea Songs and Ballads (1906).<br> It appears in the Roud Folk Song Index as #687.<br>
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