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"Threescore and Ten" is a song by William Delf about the great storm of 1889
that caused much destruction and loss of life all along the east coast of Great Britain - as
the song says, from Yarmouth down to Scarborough. (The seaman of East Anglia always
use 'down' for north and 'up' for south).
John Conolly, of Grimsby, writes of this song: "In the 1880's, a series of great gales wrecked hundreds of fishing boats along the East coast of Britain, and many men were lost. William Delf was a Grimsby fisherman who tried to help the widows and orphans by writing poems about these disasters and selling copies of them, the proceeds going to the dependents of the men lost at sea. The "Threescore and Ten" poem was one of his better efforts, but nobody seems to know how it acquired a tune and a chorus. The song as it is now known was discovered by a Yorkshire collector, Mr. Nigel Hudlestone. He recorded it as sung by some fishermen at Filey, on the Yorkshire coast about 100 miles north of Grimsby."It is listed in the Roud Index as #16873. It was recorded by Louis Killen, The Watersons, The Clancy Brothers, Bok, Muir & Trickett and others. I learned it first from The Clancy Brothers and later from Bok, Muir & Trickett's Turning toward the Morning album. |