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A girl upon the shore did ask a favour of the sea,
Please bring my blue-eyed sailor boy safely back to me;
Forgive me if I ask too much, I will not ask for more,
But I shall weep until he sleeps safe upon the shore.
As if the sea did hear her plea, a vision did appear,
The drifting tip of some wrecked ship came floating ever near;
A figure there did cling to it, approaching more and more,
As if to ride on some strange tide safe upon the shore.
So give a sailor not your heart lest sorrow you do seek;
Let true love not be torn apart by favours from the sea.
"My love," she cried, as she espied the figure on the spar,
His clean white shirt was drenched and torn, he must have floated far;
She thought with bliss how she would kiss the lips she did adore,
And oh how sweet to see his feet safe upon the shore.
So give a sailor not your heart lest sorrow you do seek;
Let true love not be torn apart by favours from the sea.
As he drew near she felt the fear that something was astray,
His mouth was slack and his blue eyes stared blindly at the day;
And in a daze she turned her gaze from the corpse the driftwood bore,
And the cold, cold sea pushed ruthlessly safe upon the shore.
So give a sailor not your heart lest sorrow you do seek;
Let true love not be torn apart by favours from the sea.
Now fishermen they cast their nets like miners pan for gold,
And sailors push off from the dock and pray the gales will hold;
The sea just sits silently but sometimes she does more,
And someone weeps while her love sleeps.... safe upon the shore.
After some very hard days of travel we found ourselves in the seaside town of Olympia in Washington. All hands had been working hard writing new songs to appease dreaded taskmaster Steve Berlin. Minds and bodies were well frayed. The usually "too cool for school" Foster passed McCann his morning's efforts on a single sheet of paper. The dark tale of a lover lost at sea was too much for our resident "bad seed' to resist and he decided to run with it..... literally. 10K later Murray's poem had a melody..... and a chorus. The world's first Love Shanty was born.The YouTube video below features an excellent cover performance by Travis Hatcher of Labrador and Amherst, Nova Scotia.
