Pirate's Serenade, The

DESCRIPTION: "My boat's by the tower, my bark's in the bay, And both must be gone ere the dawn of the day." The pirate waits for his bride. He asks that his roughness be excused. She shall "rule as Queen." He sees her signal that she is coming
AUTHOR: William Kennedy ? (source: Whistle-Binkie) / music: John Thomson (1805-1841) (source: Frank-NewBookOfPirateSongs)
EARLIEST DATE: 1842 (_Whistle-Binkie_)
KEYWORDS: courting marriage ship pirate
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, pp. 152-153, "The Pirate's Serenade" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, p. 132, "Serenade Song of Hurrah for the Rover and His Beautiful Lass" (1 text, 1 tune)
Frank-NewBookOfPirateSongs 52, "The Pirate's Serenade" (1 text, 1 tune, #31 in the first edition)
Dime-Song-Book #3/72, p. 51 and #3/62, p. 58, "The Pirate's Serenade" (1 text, so different from the usual texts that I have to think it deliberately rewritten)
ADDITIONAL: Alexander Rodger, editor, _Whistle-Binkie_, Second Series (Glasgow, 1842), pp. 99-100, "The Pirate's Serenade"
Roud #2698
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.25(493), "The Pirate's Serenade," T.A. Jackson (Birmingham) , c.1860
NOTES [112 words]: See two very similar broadsides for "The Pirate's Serenade" attributed to Geo. A. W. Langford Fahie and with the tune "I Am Off for Baltimore": LOCSinging, as111010, "The Pirate's Serenade," J. Andrews (New York), 1853-1859; also sb30427a, "The Pirate's Serenade" - BS
According to Frank-NewBookOfPirateSongs, the text and tune of this did not often appear together, raising the possibility that the tune would not be widely known in tradition. And, indeed, although the Creighton tune starts like that in Frank, the rest looks significantly different, although I could believe that the one evolved into the other (e.g. by eliminating accidentals in the original tune). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: CrMa152

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