The Golden Vanity: A Song History

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"The Golden Vanity," also known by titles such as "The Lowlands Low" and "Sinking in the Lonesome Sea," is Child ballad 286 and Roud 122.[1][2] In outline the tale holds firm: a hostile galley threatens a ship, the ship's boy is offered gold and the captain's daughter to deal with it, he swims out and bores holes in the galley until it sinks, and the captain then breaks his bargain and leaves him in the water.[1][2] Where versions part company is the ending, which may reward the boy, drown him, let him die after his shipmates pull him aboard, or bring him back as a ghost who sinks the ship.[1][2]

Engraving of a tall galleon under full sail on a calm sea

Francis Scott King, Galleon in Full Sail, engraving, ca. 1880–1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the ballad.

The oldest known text is a London broadside in Samuel Pepys's ballad collection, "Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in the Low-lands," printed for J. Conyers; the English Broadside Ballad Archive tentatively dates it 1663–1685, while Steve Roud, quoted on Mainly Norfolk, places it in 1682–1685.[2][3] Its subtitle tells how "the famous Ship called the sweet Trinity was taken by a false Gally" and won back by a ship-boy.[3] Roud considers this probably the original form of the song, and Francis James Child titled the ballad "The Sweet Trinity (The Golden Vanity)."[1][2] Linking the song to Raleigh is another matter: the Ballad Index judges any connection to real events impossible to make, album notes quoted on Mainly Norfolk likewise find no historical event behind it, and those commentators differ even over whether the broadside makes Raleigh the wronged party or the faithless captain.[1][2]

Collectors found it regularly in England and Scotland, but far more often in North America, and Bertrand Bronson printed over a hundred of its tunes.[2] Cecil Sharp noted it in North Carolina in 1916, including a version from Jane Gentry at Hot Springs, printed in his 1917 Appalachian collection with Olive Dame Campbell.[4] The Carter Family recorded it as "Sinking in the Lonesome Sea" in New York on May 5, 1935, and the take was issued on several labels, among them Vocalion 03160, Conqueror 8644 and Columbia 37756.[5] Later singers recorded it widely, from Jean Ritchie and Horton Barker to A. L. Lloyd and the Almanac Singers.[1][2]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Golden Vanity, The [Child 286]".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Golden Vanity / The Sweet Kumadee / The Merry Willow Tree / The Old Virginia Lowlands".
  3. UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive: "Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in the Low-lands" (EBBA 21858).
  4. Internet Archive (State Library of North Carolina): "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians" (Campbell & Sharp, 1917).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "ARC matrix 17478. Sinking in the lonesome sea / Carter Family".