Blood Red Roses

DESCRIPTION: Shanty. Characteristic lines: "Come/go down, you blood red/bunch of roses, Come down... Oh you pinks and posies, come down...." The verses generally refer to life at sea, with perhaps floating verses on other themes
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1890 (JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Bolton)
KEYWORDS: shanty ship flowers
FOUND IN: US(NE) Bermuda
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman, pp. 22-23, "Come Down, You Bunch of Roses, Come Down" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, pp. 365-367, "Bunch O' Roses," "Ho Molly!" (3 texts, 3 tunes - includes a fragment of text titled "Ho Molly! which seems to follow the same meter and rhyme) [AbrEd, pp. 275-277]
Kinsey-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 83-84, "Blood-Red Roses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, pp. 132-134, "Blood Red Roses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 27, "Blood Red Roses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colquhoun-NZ-Folksongs-SongOfAYoungCountry, p. 19, "Blood Red Roses" (1 text, 1 tune) (p. 12 in the 1972 edition)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, H. Carrington Bolton, "Gombay, a Festal Rite of Bermudian Negroes", Vol. 3, No. 10 (Jul-Sep 1890), p. 224, "Pretty yaller girls, Come down" (2 texts)
DT, BLOODRED*
ADDITIONAL: Frederick Pease Harlow, _The Making of a Sailor, or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger_, 1928; republished by Dover, 1988, p. 124, (no title) (1 fragment, 1 tune, probably this)
Roud #931
RECORDINGS:
A. L. Lloyd, "Blood Red Roses" (on Lloyd3, Lloyd07)
Henry Lundy & David Pryor, "Come Down, You Roses" (AAFS 511 A1, 1935; on LomaxCD1822-2)
Tamburlaine, "Blood Red Roses" (on NZSongYngCntry, but in a very untraditional style)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "O Mary, Come Down!" (lyrics)
NOTES [77 words]: Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman comments of this piece, "I doubt that the movie version, with a 'blood red roses' chorus, is authentic folklore." However, that's the version I've always heard (including even an alleged New Zealand version), so I've adopted that title. Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman also thinks the "bunch of roses" refers to Napoleon. Obviously that is the case in other "roses" songs, but I can't see any connection here. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: Doe022

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