Print This Page#02252 Print This Page
It's only a rivel and just a puff that's moving her old brown sail,
Like a sickly man with a fever and faint she mutters awhile and stays;
In a short while after the wind it died, and she rolled on the oily sea,
Like a sickly man with a fever and faint she was moving uneasily.
There ain't no stir in our old barque now, she might have been a log —
Three leagues away and land lay low in a cold, grey bank of fog;
About three points on her starboard bow one summer's night in June,,
Where the sky and the water seemed joined in one, lit up up with a brightful moon.
Through bloody reds and silvery stars on a faint and a glorious night,
Straight from our barque to the ocean stood our wavering, burning lights;
There's something in that shiny bank about one league away —
Like the dreary form of a stoutish rock on the face of the water lay.
There ain't no rock in my east line now, in my chart not here about —
I looked through my night-glass steadily but I could not make it out;
I fixed my eye on that ugly form 'til it passed by our quarter-deck,
And I ordered the crew to lower a boat for maybe it is a wreck.
We rowed aboard that ugly form as it stood in the light of the moon —
I read from the bow of that mystic barque her strange name, Glen Alone;
We hailed them but never a word was spoke, there was no one on her deck.
We unshipped our oars, attached her side, and climbed aboard the wreck.
Through rugged yards and splintered spars, her mainmast and mizzen gone —
There's scattered boats on her blizzard deck, but human forms were none;
Until we saw one human form was crouched upon her deck,
With an old sou'wester and guernsey on, shipmate, one of the wreck.
I gently raised that old chap's hat, I remember the moon was full —
I was starting aft when the light fell on his glimmering, ghostly skull;
In starting aft the deck seemed flushed, all muddled with shady light,
And six more skeletons there we found all bleached to a dawny white.
Through rugged yards and splintered spars to her cabin we then made way —
Stretched on the locker in full length her skeleton captain lay;
And in his bony fingers he held the note I read next day —
'Shipwrecked we are and our food all gone, we pray and fade away.'
O we rowed away from that ugly form as she stod against the moon —
I read from the bow of that mystic barque once more, the Glen Alone;
When faster and faster into the deep the blade of our stout oars fell —
Her deck seemed swarmed with shadows and cries a-bidding their last farewell.
I will never look out of my night-glass again by the pitiful light of the moon —
But I'll think on the horrors we once performed in the wreck of the Glen Alone!
Collected in 1983 from Pius Power, Sr, of Southeast Bight, NL, by Genevieve Lehr and Anita Best and published as #43 in Come And I Will Sing You: A Newfoundland Songbook, pp.76-77, edited by Genevieve Lehr (University of Toronto Press © 1985/2003).
Genevieve Lehr noted that Mr. Power learned this song from Mr. George Follett in the 1920s when Mr. Follett was in his seventies. Lehr also noted that rivel is possibly the result of a sound change; its standard equivalent would be ripple.
From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:
Rivel - also ravel, revel; a loose thread; a short piece of thread clinging to one's clothing.
See Ghostly Crew for another Newfoundland ballad of haunting at sea.
