> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > Blood Red Roses
> The Watersons > Songs > The Folksons: Blood Red Roses

Blood Red Roses

[Trad.]

This halyard shanty was recorded in 1956 by A.L. Lloyd and chorus for his, Ewan MacColl and Harry H. Corbett's album The Singing Sailor. This track has been reissued lots of times, on their albums Row Bullies Row, Singing Sailors (Wattle Records), Off to Sea Once More (Stinson Records), and A Hundred Years Ago, and on the compilations Sea Songs and Shanties (Topic Sampler No 7), Chants de Marins IV: Ballads, Complaintes et Shanties des Matelots Anglais, Classic A.L. Lloyd, and Sailors' Songs & Sea Shanties. It is unknown who sings chorus although Ewan MacColl's voice can be detected.

A.L. Lloyd commented in the A Hundred Years Ago sleeve notes:

One of the best of halyard shanties, undeservedly little known until it became current in the folk song clubs fairly recently. Old Cape Horners have been unable to suggest the meaning of the refrain. Stan Hugill, in his excellent Shanties from the Seven Seas quotes a fragment that may be relevant:

Ho Molly, come down
Come down with your pretty posy
Come down with your cheeks so rosy
Ho Molly, come down

and in the Classic A.L. Lloyd sleeve notes:

For a halyard shanty this one is unusually well evolved. Stan Hugill thinks it probably started life early in the nineteenth century. I'd have thought later, by its shape. Its first mention in print is 1879. Old Cape Horners have been unable to suggest the meaning of the refrain. In some Napoleon ballads the British army is referred to as “the bunch of roses.” More probably it's an image garbled from a scrap quoted by Hugill:

Come down with your pretty posy
Come down with your cheeks so rosy

A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl sang Blood Red Roses also on the Riverside LP Thar She Blows! and Lloyd sang it in his uncredited role as lead shantyman in the movie Moby Dick, directed by John Huston in 1956.

A live performance fragment of Blood Red Roses by an early incarnation of the Watersons called the Folksons (Lal, Mike and Norma Waterson, John Harrison, and Pete Ogley) from 1964 was published in 2004 on the Watersons' 4CD anthology Mighty River of Song.

Lyrics

A.L. Lloyd sings	The Folksons sing
Our boots and clothes is all in pawn Go down, you blood red roses, go down. And its flamin' drafty 'round Cape Horn, Go down, you blood red roses, go down. Oh, you pinks and posies, Go down, you blood red roses, go down.	Our captain he has set us down Go down, you blood red roses, go down And he has sailed till Auckland town Oh, you pinks and posies Go down, you blood red roses, go down
It's 'round that cape we all must go Around all stiff through the frost and snow.	Well the captain he's left us on grog And just once looked(?) he in a ten pound tug
Oh my old mother, she wrote to me, My dearest son, come home from sea.
It's growl you may, but go you must, If you growl too hard your head they'll bust.
Just one more pull and that will do For we're the boys to kick her through.	Just one more pull and that will do Just one more pull to see us through
	Well the captain he's come over with fear He's grown him a tail like Lucifer

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Reinhard Zierke