Dark-Eyed Sailor: A Song History
"The Dark-Eyed Sailor" is a broken-token ballad: a stranger courts a young woman who stays true to William, her sailor, after seven years apart, until he proves who he is with his half of a ring the two had broken, and they marry.[1] Catalogued as Roud 265 and Laws N35, it was often printed as "Fair Phoebe and her Dark-Eyed Sailor."[1][2] The earliest copy listed by the Traditional Ballad Index is a broadside in the Bodleian Library's Johnson Ballads collection dated before 1809, and the Index catalogues about two dozen other broadside copies.[1] Notes gathered by Mainly Norfolk name the London printers Pitts and Catnach among its early publishers, with printers in other English cities following.[2]
Johannes Christiaan Schotel, A Man O'War Lying at Anchor, pen and brown ink, watercolor; framing line in graphite, early 19th century. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
Collectors found the song across Britain, Ireland, the United States and Canada.[1] Lucy Broadwood noted a version in 1893, Cecil Sharp took one down in Devon in 1904, and Percy Grainger collected another in 1906.[2] The folklorist Edith Fowke ranked it among the most widely sung broken-token ballads in North America, and A. L. Lloyd put the striking sameness of collected texts down to the reach of the printed sheets.[1][2] Field recordings include Warde Ford in 1938 and, in England, Jack Clark at the Eel's Foot in Suffolk in 1947, Phil Tanner in 1949, and later Sam Larner and Walter Pardon.[1][2]
A. L. Lloyd recorded it in 1956, and later revival recordings followed: Peter Bellamy recorded it in 1969, Steeleye Span on Hark! The Village Wait (1970), Christy Moore on Prosperous (1972), and June Tabor with Oysterband on Freedom and Rain (1990).[2] Janene Millen and Shawn McCurdy include it in From Ditties To Dirges, a collection of ballads, laments and other mostly British Isles songs, most of them arranged for solo mountain dulcimer, with this one in DAD tuning.[3]
Sources
- Traditional Ballad Index: "The Dark-Eyed Sailor (Fair Phoebe and her Dark-Eyed Sailor) [Laws N35]".
- Mainly Norfolk: "The Dark-Eyed Sailor".
- Janene Millen And Shawn McCurdy: "From Ditties To Dirges".
- Image: Johannes Christiaan Schotel, A Man O'War Lying at Anchor, pen and brown ink, watercolor; framing line in graphite, early 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.