Blow Ye Winds in the Morning

DESCRIPTION: The call is going out for whalermen in New England. The song warns of the conditions the potential recruit will face: Boarding masters, hard times at sea, the dangers of taking the whale. Chorus: "Blow ye winds in the morning, Blow ye winds high-o...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1859 (Journal of the Elizabeth Swift)
KEYWORDS: whaler ship sea work
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (17 citations):
Lomax/Lomax-FolkSongUSA 44, "Blow, Ye Winds in the Morning" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-TreasuryOfAmericanFolklore, pp. 829-831, "Blow, Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-SongsTheWhalemenSang, pp. 42-46, "Blow Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, pp. 24-26, "Blow Ye Winds" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Shay-AmericanSeaSongsAndChanteys, pp. 126-128, "Blow, Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, pp. 191-192, "Blow, Ye Winds" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, pp. 130-131, 211-213 "Blow Ye Winds in the Morning" "It's Advertised in Boston" (2 texts, 2 tunes -- second version has a different chorus, "Cheer up lively lads, in spite of stormy weather. Cheer up...we'll all get drunk together")
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, pp. 219-224, "Blow, Ye Winds" (3 texts plus several fragments, 3 tunes) [AbrEd, pp. 168-171]
Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs 118, "Blow Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 100-101, "Blow Ye Winds, Aye-O" (1 fragment, 1 tune, padded out to be a full song, but there is no real reason to think the additional words are the right ones)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 318-319, "Blow Ye Winds" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 85, "Blow Ye Winds In The Morning" (1 text)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, p. 84, "Blow, Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
33MuchLovedSongs, pp. 2-3, "Blow, Ye Winds" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, BLOWYE*
ADDITIONAL: Frederick Pease Harlow, _The Making of a Sailor, or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger_, 1928; republished by Dover, 1988, pp. 346-347, "Blow Ye Winds in the Morning" (1 text, 1 tune)
Stewart Gordon, _A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks_, ForeEdge, 2015, p. 172, "(no title)" (1 text)
Roud #2012
RECORDINGS:
Almanac Singers, "Blow Ye Winds, Heigh Ho" (General 5015A, 1941; on Almanac02, Almanac03, AlmanacCD1)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Coast of Peru" [Laws D26] (floating verses)
cf. "Peter Gray" (chorus lyrics)
SAME TUNE:
There's Culling To Be Done (File: Garl290)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Blow, Boys, Blow
NOTES [122 words]: Whalers were considered the lowest sort of sailors; most seamen had to be desperate to ship on a whaler. This song perhaps helps explain why.
There is some hyperbole in here that perhaps takes some explaining. Versions may refer to the ship taking "500 sperm" in a season. This is not possible; a ship could not find that many whales, could not kill them, could not process them, and could not carry that much oil back to port! Checking records from the 1880s, the most whales I saw taken by any ship in a season was sixteen. There were doubtless cases of a ship taking more -- I was only spot-checking, and whales had been more common in the earlier years of whaling. But "500 sperm" is at least ten times the maximum possible. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: LxU044

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