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Rummy was a good old dog,
And a sea dog through and through;
He sailed aboard the Alice Gray,
With the captain and his crew.
They found him on a summer morn,
(Been swimming in the sea)
It was off the coast of Newfoundland,
And a Newfoundland was he.
And It's....
[Whistle]
Come on here, old Rummy,
Got some hard tack bread and a codfish head;
[Whistle]
Come on here, old Rummy,
Won't you bring some luck to me?
They fished him out and they dried him off,
And they gave him bread and bone;
And he slept and he dined and he liked the find,
And he found himself a home.
The crews may come and the crews may go,
And the captains may depart;
But Rummy and the Alice Gray,
Could not be kept apart.
And then one day in the early spring,
The Alice Gray left home;
And Rummy would not sail with her,
But would only sit and moan.
The Alice Gray she was lost that night,
The ship and all her men;
And Rummy stayed ashore,
And he never went to sea again.
It's always wise to check the skies,
When you're sailing far from shore;
But Rummy knew though the skies were blue,
It was time to sail no more.
And the Gloucester men they shake their heads,
And they wonder what to do;
And they don't leave home without a bone,
For Rummy, 'cause he knew.
Transcribed from a radio tape made many years previously by Walter Corey and posted by him at The Mudcat Café on 3 January 2000.
Ernie Pigeon responded on 23 Jul 2010: "The song Rummy was one of a group of really good Gloucester, Massachusetts oriented sea songs that were used in a PBS documentary called The Gloucestermen. This documentary dealt with the days of fishing schooners (it was the boats themselves that were called Gloucestermen), and in addition to a lot of good songs, has some wonderful stories of the old fishing days, mostly narrated by Gloucester historian, Joe Garland. I watched this show on Boston based channel 2 (WGBH), and made a reel to reel audio tape of the whole show labeled 22 Nov 1973."
And From Brian on 8 Sep, 2010: "Back in 2002 I tracked down the singer, Rob Carlson, who wrote back that the radio program The Gloucestemen was his first job out of college."
