Cruising Round Yarmouth

DESCRIPTION: Sailor on leave in Yarmouth tells a girl he's a fast-going clipper; he takes her in tow to her house, where he puts his jib boom into her cabin. He drinks a health to the girl, and to the doctor who "squared his main yards -- he's a-cruising again"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (recorded from Harry Cox)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Singer, a sailor taking shore leave in Yarmouth, meets a young woman. He tells her he's a fast-going clipper; she tells him her hold is free. She looks Dutch, "round at the quarters and bluff in the bow"; he takes her in tow through the town to her house, where she lowers her topsails and he puts his jib boom into her cabin. With his shot-locker empty and powder spent, "I can't fire a shot for it's choked at the vent." He drinks a health to the girl, and to the doctor who "squared his main yards -- he's a-cruising again"
KEYWORDS: disease sex beauty ship bawdy humorous sailor whore
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Bone-CapstanBars, pp. 77-82, "Blow th' Man Down" (2 texts, 1 tune, of which the second text may have a bit of "Cruising Round Yarmouth" in it, though that fragment may have been the inspiration for this song)
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, p. 128, "The Whale Island Anthem" (1 fragment)
Roud #2432
RECORDINGS:
Harry Cox, "Cruising Round Yarmouth" (on LastDays)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
While Cruising Round Yarmouth
NOTES [74 words]: It's worth noting that many Dutch prostitutes worked the streets of British ports. - PJS
What's more, there was an East Anglian rhyme with the lines,
Pakefield for poverty, Lowestoft for poor,
Gorleston for pretty girls, Yarmouth for whores.
(See Enid Porter, The Folklore of East Anglia, Batsford, 1974, p. 164.) Although, in Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy's version, she's a "Chatham" hag/whore. I'd still consider it the same song. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: RcCRYar

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