Caviar Comes from Virgin Sturgeon

DESCRIPTION: This quatrain ballad extols the virtues of caviar as an aphrodisiac; reports that the singer's parents were a lighthouse keeper and a mermaid; and details the sex lives of various denizens of the deep
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934
KEYWORDS: bawdy humorous animal
FOUND IN: Australia Canada Britain(England) US(MW,So,SW)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Cray-EroticMuse, pp. 240-243, "Caviar Comes from the Virgin Sturgeon" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Johnson-BawdyBalladsAndLustyLyrics, pp. 124-126, "The Ballad of The Virgin Sturgeon" (1 text)
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 172-173, "Caviar Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morgan/Green-RugbySongs, pp. 130-131, "The Virgin Sturgeon" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 157, "The Virgin Sturgeon" (1 text)
DT, VRGNSTRG* VRGNSTR2* VRGNSTR3*
Roud #10131
RECORDINGS:
Anonymous singers, "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light" (on Unexp1)
Charley Drew, "Caviar Comes from Virgin Sturgeon" (Party 6A/Musicraft Party 6A/Gala 2101, n.d. but probably 1939-1940)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Reuben and Rachel" (tune)
cf. "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light" (theme)
NOTES [160 words]: While the recording on "The Unexpurgated Folk Songs of Men" is [listed as] "Eddystone Light," it's mostly this song. Of course, they overlap so heavily that the distinction is fishy. - PJS
I don't know if it's related, but Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931-1942 (being volume three of The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II), 1948 (I use the 2001 Castle Books reprint), p. 283, reports that, in January 1942, the submarine Sturgeon attacked a convoy headed for Balikpapan. When the skipper, Lt. Commander W. L. Wright, heard explosions, he reported that "Sturgeon is no longer virgin." Sadly, the Japanese report no damage. The best guess is that the submarine's torpedoes exploded prematurely -- American torpedoes in the early years of the war were so unreliable that they hardly counted as weapons; it took ages for the authorities to test them, discover their extraordinary failure rate, and fix them. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: EM240

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