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Greenland Bound

[ Roud 970 ; Ballad Index Ord317 ; trad.]

This song about the ca. 1840 West Grenland whale fishing was sung by A.L. Lloyd in 1957 on his and or Ewan MacColl's album Thar She Blows! (reissued in the 1960s on the Washington label as Whaling Ballads) and by A.L. Lloyd in 1967 on Leviathan! Ballads and Songs of the Whaling Trade. Here, he was accompanied by Alf Edwards, English concertina, and Dave Swarbrick, fiddle. A.L. Lloyd said in this album's sleeve notes:

When the ships left London, Hull, Dundee for the northern grounds, the yards would be decorated with ribbons snatched from any pretty girls venturing near the quay, and the men would sing on the maindeck till the harbour bar was passed. They would put in at the Orkneys or Shetlands to take on fresh provisions and water, and perhaps a man or two to complete the crew, and then off to the cold coast of Greenland. This tender farewell song was a favourite of Fred Clausen, a meat-cutter aboard the Southern Express, and native of Stoneferry, Hull. Its elegiac tone suggests it was made by a Scottish whalerman (English whale balladeers generally inclined to rough adventure or outspoken complaint). John Ord, folk song collector and superintendent of police, heard the melody, or something very like it, sung by fisher girls in north-east Scotland in the 1880s.

Louis Killen sang Greenland Bound in 1980 on the Folkways anthology Sea Music of Many Lands: The Pacific Heritage and in 1997 on his CD A Seaman's Garland (Sailors, Ships & Chanteys Vol. 2).

Lyrics

Once more for Greenland we are bound
To leave you all behind;
Our ship is painted greep and out blubber hooks are keen
And we sail before the icy wind.

We left our sweethearts and our wives
A-weeping on the pier.
Cheer up, my dears, we soon shall return
For it's only half a year.

With tarry dress we reached Stromness
Where we do go ashore.
With whalermen so scarce and the water even less,
We'll have to take on more.

And when we came to the northern ice
We crowded on full sail,
Each boat well-manned with a keen and lively band
All for to hunt the whale.

Now dark and dreary grows the night
And the stars begin to burn,
With the chasing of the whale and the trying of the oil,
And it seems like we'll never return.

Our six-month being done, we tie up again,
And the lads all go ashore,
With plenty of brass and a bonny bonny lass
For to make them tavers roar.

To Greenland's coast we'll drink a toast,
And to them we love so dear,
And across the icy main to the whaling grounds again
We'll take a trip next year.

Acknowledgements

The lyrics were copied from the Leviathan! sleeve notes.