Tempest, The (Cease Rude Boreas)

DESCRIPTION: "Cease rude Boreas blustering killer... Messmates hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea." A storm comes up; the crew struggles mightily to survive. The mast falls, the ship leaks; they make it home and rejoice
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Journal from the Galaxy); Hugill thinks it dates from the 1700s
KEYWORDS: storm disaster ship sea
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 597-598, "Come, and Listen to My Ditty" (1 excerpt, 1 tune, possibly a rewrite)
Huntington-SongsTheWhalemenSang, pp. 70-72, "The Tempest" (1 text)
Hugill-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 144-145, "Rude Boreas" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kinsey-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 158-160, "Rude Boreas" (1 text, 1 tune)
Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads XII, pp. 18-20, "The Storm" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2252, p. 152, "The Storm" (1 reference)
Roud #949
NOTES [149 words]: Roud appears to lump another Boreas song here, "Blow, Boreas Blow" or "The Storm" ("Blow, Boreas, blow, and let thy surly winds Make the billows foam and roll"), found in "Pills to Purge Melancholy" and reprinted as Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads XIII, pp. 21-22. I really think they're separate, though; Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads attributes it to "R. Bradley."
It appears this was popular enough to be parodied; Pamela A. Miller, And the Whale Is Ours: Creative Writing of American Whalemen, David R. Godine/Kendall Whaling Museum, 1979, p. 131, prints a piece by Sylvester Miller, captain of the whaler Bayard in 1835, called "Storm of Canal," which opens "Hark the Captains loudly balling, For and aft by fendred stand, Down the scuttles quick be hauling In the tow line hand boys hand," one of those standard jokes about canal boats, which Miller says is a parody of "Cease Rude Boreas." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: SWMS070

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