I Saw Three Ships

DESCRIPTION: (While sitting on a sunny bank,) the singer sees three ships arrive on Christmas. In the ship are (pretty girls) or Mary, (Joseph), and/or (Jesus). (They/all) (sing/whistle/rejoice) as they sail on to Bethlehem
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1666 ("As I sat on a sunny bank" version in Forbes's Cantus)
KEYWORDS: religious Jesus nonballad ship
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond,West),Wales) US(Ap,MW,SE) Ireland
REFERENCES (20 citations):
Broadwood/Maitland-EnglishCountySongs, p. 111, "As I Sat on a Sunny Bank" (1 text, 1 tune)
Karpeles-TheCrystalSpring 98, "As I Sat on a Sunny Bank, or I Saw Three Ships" (1 text, 1 tune)
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin 147, "The Bells of Heaven" (1 text, 1 tune)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 104, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text)
Dearmer/VaughnWilliams/Shaw-OxfordBookOfCarols 3, "Sunny Bank"; 18, "I Saw Three Ships" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Combs/Wilgus-FolkSongsOfTheSouthernUnitedStates 315, pp. 141-142, "Three Ships Came Sailing In" (1 text)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 53, "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" (1 fragment)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 53, "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" (2 excerpts, 2 tunes)
Ritchie-FolkSongsOfTheSouthernAppalachians, p. 43, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 152, "As I Sat on the Sunny Bank" (1 text)
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 213-214, "I Saw Three Ships"; p. 255, "As I Sat under a Sycamore Tree" (2 texts)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 471, "I saw three ships come sailing by" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #331, pp. 180-181, "(I saw three ships come sailing by)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 252, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 379, "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" (1 text)
Tobitt-TheDittyBag, pp. 166-169, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text, 1 tune)
Tobitt-YoursForASong, pp. 56-59, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text, 1 tune)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, pp. 112-113, "I Saw Three Ships" (1 text)
DT, ISAW3SHP*
ADDITIONAL: Ian Bradley, _The Penguin Book of Carols_ (1999), #35, "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" (1 text)
ST OBB104 (Full)
Roud #700
RECORDINGS:
Elizabeth Cronin, "The Bells of Heaven" (on IRECronin01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce adds. 137(22), "The Sunny Bank," T. Bloomer (Birmingham), 1821-1827; also Harding B 7(38), Harding B 7(30), Harding B 7(37), Harding B 7(35), "As I Sat on a Sunny Bank" ("As I sat on a sunny bank")[some have no title]; Harding B 7(16), "The Sunny Bank"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Glasgow Ships" (some lines, but not the tune)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
As I Sat Under a Sycamore Tree
NOTES [787 words]: It probably need not be pointed out that there is no Biblical basis for this story, and that Bethlehem is nowhere near the ocean nor any body of water large enough for any kind of ship.
This makes it worthwhile to ask, Which version is older? There are secular and Christmas versions. The "Christmas" version is the one now widely sung, and the Combs version is a religious text -- but two of Gomme's three versions are secular. Similarly, the Opie version is set on New Year's day, and lists three pretty girls as passengers. On the other hand, several texts refer to "Our Savior Christ and His Lady." This sounds very Catholic -- and hence probably old -- to me.
(I do note that the new year at one time was held to take place on March 25, the day Jesus was conceived, but I don't see a hint of a connection in the song.)
Ian Bradley, in the Penguin Book of Carols, raises the question of why three ships are needed to bring two passengers -- in his version, Jesus and Mary. This is a logical question. One likely answer is that the original included Joseph as well, but he was later written out or accidentally dropped. Bradley, though, has a different explanation: That three ships sailed in because they were bearing the relics of the three Magi, or perhaps the Magi themselves. Of course, the Bible nowhere says that there were three Magi; it merely says that the Magi (unnumbered) brought three gifts. (For more on the number of Magi, see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)."
Another possibility is that there is one ship for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit.
David C. Fowler, The Bible in Middle English Literature, University of Washington Press, 1984, p. 112, has a different explanation: "It is not clear at first glance why the VIrgin Mary and Christ should be sailing by ship into (landlocked) Bethehem on Christmas day, as the carol affirms. But the suggestion that the song originally celebrated Mary Magdalene's sea journey to Marseille seems to me quite likely." Fowler, p. 104, describes how, in the Golden Legend, Mary Magdalene (falsely conflated with Mary of Bethany), Lazarus and Martha (here treated as the Magdalene's siblings rather than as the siblings of Mary of Bethany), Martha's servant Marcella (the invented name of woman who allegedly called out "Blessed is the womb that bore you..."), SIdonius (the invented name of the man born blind of John, chapter 9), Saint Maximin (apparently created out of whole cloth), and others were put in a rudderless board for their Christian preaching, but instead of being lost, they were carried to Marseille, which they evangelized. After the Reformation, when these drug dreams were written out of Mary Magdalene's story, the song was shifted to Christmas.
Personally, I'd guess that three is simply an auspicious number. Sure, one ship could carry Jesus and his mother, but three ships gives him an escort -- with the other two ships representing the other two persons of the Trinity. As for how they sailed to Bethlehem -- hey, how many people in England knew you couldn't reach Bethlehem by sea? Being near the sea was the norm in England, so they transferred it to Bethlehem.
Or maybe they sailed to Bethelehem Hospital (Bedlam), to visit the idea who dreamed up that Mary Magdalene story. - RBW
Also see Calennig, "Sandy Banks" (on Callenig, "A Gower Garland," Wild Goose WGS 299 CD (2000)). The notes have it noted in Wales by Rev J.D. Davies in 1877. Just two ships here. - BS
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin has the form and "Christmas day in the morning" in common with "I Saw Three Ships" but has none of the usual lines.
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin: "The bells of heaven began to ring... The bells of hell began to blow... The gates of heaven were dressed in white... The gates of hell were dressed in black... I'll buy for you a little red book... I'll send you up to school to heaven...."
My inclination is to split OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin from the rest of Roud #700 but sources frequently refer to a 1794 Ritson citation in Scottish Songs that link the "bells of heaven" to "I Saw Three Ships." I don't have the 1794 edition but, from the 1869 edition: "[an] Aberdeen collection, printed in 1666, contains many songs of a much earlier period.... At the end of the same publications are three singular compositions ... which are conjectured to have been sung by peasants in the Christmas holidays before the Reformation; the music is a church chant [f: ... Our Lord harped, our lady sang, And all the bells of heaven they rang, On Christ's sunday at morn" (Ritson, Scottish Songs (Glasgow: Hugh Hopkins, 1869 ("Digitized by Google")) Vol. I p. 99). - BS
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File: OBB104

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