Salmon Fishers

DESCRIPTION: "Cam ye by the salmon fishers? Cam ye by the roperee? Saw ye a sailor laddie Sailing on the raging sea?" The girl may describe the sailor she loves, or how they courted, or how they expect to marry
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1898 (Gomme)
KEYWORDS: love courting sailor floatingverses
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1607, "Cam' Ye By the Salmon Fishin'"; Greig/Duncan8 1608, "I'm Gaun Some Wye"; Greig/Duncan8 1609, "Tip for Gold and Tip for Silver"; (5 texts, 3 tunes)
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 82, "The Salmon Fishers" (1 text)
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 78, "(Cam you by the salmon fishers)" (1 text)
DT, SALMFISH
ADDITIONAL: Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #39, "Cam' Ye By" (1 text)
Roud #12978
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Katie Cruel (The Leeboy's Lassie; I Know Where I'm Going)" (lyrics)
NOTES [198 words]: This is a difficult song to assess. The first stanza has relatively invariant. What follows is not. Several of the other versions (Montgomerie's, Gomme's II) follow this with stanzas straight out of "Katie Cruel/I Know Where I'm Going." Other texts have none of this -- but don't agree particularly closely, either.
Under the circumstances, any song starting with the "Salmon Fishers/Salmon Fishing" stanza must file here, but it must be accepted that any short "I Know Where I'm Going" might be a defective version of this, or of the "Katie Cruel/Leeboy's Lassie" type. - RBW
Greig/Duncan8, Gomme, and McVicar (Ewan McVicar, Doh Ray Me, When Ah Wis Wee (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 317-319) point out the variability of the couplets attached to the first verse. Greig/Duncan8 has two fragments -- 1608 and 1609 -- that do not include the Salmon Fishers line but that "occur as accretions to" "Salmon Fishers." Greig/Duncan8 1608, Roud #13500, is a "Katie Cruel/Leeboy's Lassie" verse ("I'm gaun some wye, I Ken wha's gaun wi me") that is like lines included in "Salmon Fishers" II by Gomme 2.180; 1609, Roud #21190, is a pair of couplets included in "Salmon Fishers" III by Gomme 2.181. - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: MSNR078

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