Six Days Shalt Thou Labor

DESCRIPTION: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh -- holystone the decks and scrape/scrub the cable" (or "the seventh the same, and clean out the stable," etc.) A (sailor's) complaint about hard work and dishonoring the Sabbath
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1840 (Two Years Before the Mast)
KEYWORDS: work hardtimes
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 228, "For Six Days Do All That Thou Art Able" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, David D. Anderson, "Songs and Sayings of the Lakes," Volume 12, Number 1 (Spring 1962) p. 6, "(Six days thou shalt work)" (1 text)
Roud #16857
NOTES [156 words]: The first two lines of this are quoted in various forms; the description contains the earliest form I know, from Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. But it seems to have generalized.
Grant Uden and Richard Cooper, A Dictionary of British Ships and Seamen, 1980 (I use the 1981 St. Martin's Press edition), pp. 372-373, call this the "Philadephia Catechism," but do not explain the name.
We might add that, while some of the tasks described in the song are make-work, make-work was necessary at sea, especially aboard a naval vessel that had many more hands than were ordinarily needed to run the ship. Almost none of the sailors could read or do much except sail a ship; their only entertainment was grog (which had to be rationed, both because the supply was finite and because they had to be sober enough to work the ship) and maybe music. Had they not been kept busy, they would have gone stir-crazy -- or mutinied. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Br3228

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