Oh, sailed you by the Goodwins,
Oh, came you by the Sound?
And saw you there my true love.
That was homeward bound?
"Oh, never will he anchor
Again in English ground;
A-sailing by the Lowlands
Your sailorman is drowned."
"They gave his ship her death-blow
As she was sailing by,
And every soul aboard her,
Oh, they left them all to die."
"They were not common pirates
Nor rovers of Sallee . . .
But gentlemen of high estate
Come out of Germanie!"
It was no worthy gentleman.
Though he were crowned King;
It was no honest seaman
That wrought so vile a thing.
But the foulest of all pirates
That ever sailed the sea . . .
And they should swing as pirates swing
Upon the gallows tree,
A-sailing by the Lowlands
That took my lad from me!
Notes
From SAILOR TOWN: Sea Songs and Ballads, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by George H. Doran Co., New York, US, © 1919, pp. 118-119. Earlier published in THE NAVAL CROWN by Elkin Mathews in 1915. First published in PUNCH magazine, Volume 148, March 10, 1915, p. 108.
Composed during the first year of World War 1.
"The Goodwins" are a reference to a large bank of shoal sands that lies 6 miles east of the coast of Kent near the entrance to the English Channel from the North Sea.
Charley Noble
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