Ship A-Sailing, A

DESCRIPTION: "I saw a ship a-sailing, A-sailing on the sea, And it was deeply laden with pretty things for me. There were comfits in the cabin and almonds in the hold." The sails are satin; the mast, gold; the sailors, white mice; the captain, a duck.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1815 (Family album, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: talltale playparty nonballad ship animal
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 284-285, "A Ship A-Sailing" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 470, "I saw a ship a-sailing" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #271, p. 163, "(I saw a ship a-sailing)"
ST Lins284 (Partial)
Roud #3742
NOTES [91 words]: This seems to go back to Halliwell (1852), though Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland connects it with a game called the "Duck Dance."
The incomparable Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, p. 168, believed that the duck-Captain was Sir Francis Drake, while the "four-and-twenty white mice with chains about their necks" were slaves. I'd be more inclined to believe it if Thomas could bridge the more than two century gap between the actual song and the events it allegedly describes. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: Lins284

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