Captain and the Mate, The

DESCRIPTION: "Our captain knows a lot of fine yarns, I know they must be true." "Oh, the captain told the mate, The mate he told the crew." A man builds a chimney to the skies. He catches a monster fish. He dents a stove. He turns a lion inside out. Etc.
AUTHOR: W. H. Wallis (source: Howson-SongsSunginSuffolk), though it includes traditional tales
EARLIEST DATE: 1901 (sheet music, according to Howson)
KEYWORDS: talltale animal fishing | captain mate chimney stove lion goat
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Howson-SongsSunginSuffolk, #106, "The Captain and the Mate" (1 text)
Roud #10729
NOTES [122 words]: Although the frame tale, of the captain telling tall tales to the mate and the mate telling the crew, seems original, the tales themselves are mostly older. The final verse is a retelling of "Bill Grogan's Goat." The one before that, of turning the lion inside out, arguably goes back to tales about Richard the Lion-Hearted, and we see other animals turned inside out in "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" and "The Catfish (Banjo Sam)." I don't know of songs that use the other three motifs (a chimney so tall that it must be lowered to let the moon go by; catching a fish so large that a whale was needed as bait; making dents in a red-hot stove with one's fists then pounding them out), but they're pretty standard tall tale types. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.0
File: Hows106

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