Sea ShantiesAug 1, 2017
"[ Roud 8287 ; Ballad Index Hug522 ; trad.]
Shanties from the Seven Seas (complete) (p523)
It is now established that many songs of the black stevedores are at the origin of many sea shanty. The discussion on this song is still open: from the research of Hulton Clint among the songs of African-American workers in the white plantations (and in the minstrel song - Thomas “Daddy” Rice, 1833) Shinbone Alley and Sally are connected to similar verses before of the diffusion of sea-shanty.
On the other hand we have an eighteenth-century English
ballad entitled Sally in our Alley
Chorus
Help me, Bob (1),
I'm bully (2) in the alley,
Way, hey, bully in the alley !
Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley,
Bully down in “shinbone al ” (3)!
I. [Verse]
Sally (4) is the girl that I love dearly,
Way, hey, bully in the alley !
Sally is the girl that I spliced dearly (5),
Bully down in “shinbone al “
II. [Verse]
For seven long years I courted little Sally,
But all she did was dilly and dally (6).
III. [Verse]
I ever get back, I'll marry little Sally,
Have six kids and live in Shin-bone Alley.
Alternative lines Morrigan
I'll leave Sal and I'll become a sailor,
I'll leave Sal and ship aboard a whaler
Alternative lines Three Pruned Men
Sally got down and dirty last night,
Sally got down and she spliced,
The sailors left last night,
The sailors got a ball of wax.
NOTES
1) God
2) bully has a positive value as its original meaning; bully
= good guy, a “first rate” sailor. And yet today we tend to translate bully as
someone ready to throw punches (if they make him lose his temper or if he's
drunk). "Bully" comes from the Dutch "Boel" meaning
"brother or lover" originally meaning "a sweetie", but the
meaning has deteriorated from admiring "good guy" to
"swaggering" and finally to "pimp" (the name reserved for
the protectors of prostitutes, notoriously abusive and violent).
Stan Hugill also suggests a further interpretative
hypothesis: the sailor is so drunk that he can no longer sail to his ship
without skidding here and there. Tom Lewis thus explains the verse
https://youtu.be/hdAaLVOucwo?t=336. A more or less imaginative interpretative
hypothesis good for entertaining the public in a concert
(3) Shinbone Alley is an alley in New York but also in St
George (Bermuda). Metaphorically speaking it is found in every “sailor town”.
More generally it is an exotic indication for the Caribbean, the alley of a
legendary “pirates den”, where every occasion is good for a fist fight! Or it
is the alley of an equally generic port city of the continent full of pubs and
cheerful ladies, where if you get drunk, you end up waking up “enlisted” on a
man-of-war or a merchant ship.
4) Sally (or Sal) is the generic name of the girls of the
Caribbean seas and of South America
5) also written as “Spliced nearly” means “almost married”,
and yet the meaning lends itself to sexual allusions. In slang to splice it
means having sex (uniting parts of the body in sexual activity)
6) to wastetime, especially by being slow, or by not being able to make a decision.
Another version
V1
Sally am de gal way down our alley way hay
Sally am de gal that I spliced nearly bully down
V2
I left my Sal to go a-sailing way
I left my Sal to go a-whaling [wailing]! bully
V3
I found meslf down on the quay-o way
Found meself with time so free-o Bully
V4
Waltzed up to the angel inn-o way
Kicked the door I waltzed right in -o
V5
Waltzed up to the baroom counter
there I met with greasey Annie
V6
Greasey Annie is a slimey whore-o
Every shellback's knocked on her door -o
V7
I bought her gin I bought he rum -o
Bought her wine both red and white -o
V8
When I'ld spent all my tin -o
Offto bed we then did creep-o
V9
All night long we tossed and tumbled
Dawn did come and cocks! did crow-o
Short Sharp version
The second source comes from sailor John Short via Cecil
Sharp's publication. The fragments of Short's text are more reminiscent of
Sally in Our Alley, Henry Carey's composition published in 1726, which became
very popular in the United States in the nineteenth century. The curators of
the project write: “ It feels as though this version is far closer to a
cotton-screwing chant than the Hugill version. (Carpenter makes a note beside
the version from Edward Robinson that it also was for 'cotton screwing'). There
is only one complete verse and a couple of phrases from Short to Sharp, so the
additional words are from Hugill's version but ignoring location aspects and
reworked to fit Short's significantly different structure "....
****
EXCERPT #2
From https://thejovialcrew.com/?page_id=975 The Jovial Crew
Songs and tunes of the sea, pub, and shore – Historic and
contemporary. [article written by
"Bully in the Alley
A really popular chantey although sung more like a forebitter or a music hall song by most performers. Here I’ll give a standard approach to chords (the same for verse and chorus) for this song because it has been requested, but it is traditionally sung a capella. Both Tim and Rick alternatively perform this song with their own variations, as is traditional. It’s origins are somewhat obscure due to various theories about the lyrics, sometimes placing the song as a Caribbean island source, although it has been shown by some musicologists to have migrated TO the Caribbean rather than the other way around. “So help me Bob, I’m Bully in the Alley” is the one most often misinterpreted with a wide range of explanations… However, some search into 19th century vernacular usage of American English would sometimes show the word “bully” to be one of many slang words to equal “drunk” or “sh-tfaced*”, but in a “good” fashion, such as “I’m feeling good”, or, “I’m feeling no pain”; it has been pointed out to me that Teddy Roosevelt used “Bully!” to mean “splendid!” and that Mark Twain had written “That’s Bully” to mean “that’s fine” or “top notch”, and “I’m bully” to mean… Well, you get the point. Of all the explanations in this regard I’ve found, the best worded version, in my opinion, is from Hank Cramer, in which, for this song, he wrote – “While ashore, sailors did like to go out drinking, usually in groups. And they may not all have the same capacity for drink, leading to one sailor becoming incapacitated, or “bully”, while his mates were still willing to party on. Until they were all ready to go back to the ship, they would have to stash their mate someplace safe and out of the way — like the alley.” Here is a portion of an article published in 1865 showing “bully” in context…
“My buckwheat looks first rate, and the oats and potatoes
are bully.”…
-snip-
*This word is fully spelled out in this article.
****
EXCERPT #3
From https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=31335
[Pancocojams Editor's Note: These numbers don't coincide with the order that these comments are found in that discussion thread. The words in italics were written that way in that comment.]
1. Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Feb 01 - 06:46 PM
"when you are just singing, it can be nice to have more than 2 or 3 verses, but "Bully in the Alley" was a 'short haul' chanty, used for short, intensive jobs, and didn't come with extras. As we see, a few people have added some that seem to be 'in the tradition', but it started out as with only the three, with one switched to 'chorus' as it became a performed song instead of just a work song."
**
2.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 19 Jun 02 - 11:47 PM
He is saying that he is top dog in Shinbone Alley ... ? It
certainly sounds more like a boastful sailor's view of life on shore leave."
**
3.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 11:27 AM
Bully in the Alley is one of my favorite songs, and I wanted to learn a little more about it.
There's a youtube video where Tom Lewis presents a
wonderfully colorful explanation for the meaning of "Bully in the
Alley" that seems to expand a bit on the standard notion that it merely
refers to a drunken sailor. Tom Lewis claims that this explanation was given to
him by none other than Stan Hugill. I will do my best to transcribe this,
although the video is worth watching, as Tom Lewis can be seen doing a
marvelous Hugill impression. (i'll post the link below)
Hugill:
"on a traditionally rigged ship, if the standing rigging
is made of natural fiber, it tends to stretch. If it's not kept tight, the mast
will tend to flop to one side or the other, which is not really too much of a
problem except for the helmsman. Because the helmsman will be at his wheel,
he'll be following his course, and be nicely on his course, and suddenly the
mast will FLOP to one side, as the wind has changed, or the sea direction has
changed. Suddenly, he's got to compensate for that. And he'll just get it
nicely back on its course when the mast will FLOP the other way, and he'd
suddenly have to compensate for that! So he's sort of steering in the right
direction, but he's only making an approximate course. At that point, the ship
is said to be 'Bully in the Alley'..........The sailor in the song has spent
too long in a tavern, and he's trying to get back to his ship, but he's only
steering an approximate course. So he's calling for his mates to give him some
help."
I'm interested that I've never come across this particular explanation anywhere else. Not knowing anything about sailing myself, I'm hoping somebody else has stumbled on this particular explanation for the more obscure nautical expression (as opposed to the standard one about being blind drunk in an alley) and could shed more light on it.......Cheers
Hugill Explanation as Recounted by Tom Lewis"
4.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 09:13 PM
I was at that performance, and I think I recall chatting about it with someone(s) afterwards.
IMO this explanation is total fancy. I could speculate that Hugill was pressed by people to offer an explanation, and he didn't want to let down the other festival folks who looked up to his experience. I don't know if he gave the explanation in a positive/confident way, or if he also provide caveats (e.g. like "I'm really not sure, but here's a theory...") and people who *wanted* to feel secure dropped those caveats when they retold it. It just seems unlikely to me that Hugill would be privy to any special information about the meaning, so whatever he would say would be more imagination than fact.
I am not in the right mindset right now to offer any really serious opinion of my own on the meaning, except to say that I tend to doubt it has anything much to do with sailing. If anything related to the singers' working environment, I'd guess it pertains to something stevedores were doing. Playing the word-match game, the "alley" might be some space or passage through which cargo must go.
In all, I'm doubtful of it being a "nautical expression." That's my gut reaction.
5.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 11:28 PM
"Thanks. From what I've read/understand, Hugilll was certainly one put a fanciful spin on a simple story. And the general feel in these forums is that he began to buy more and more into his authoritativeness, shifting his tone over the years from apprehensive to firm assertion when discussing origins and meanings.
I had a feeling, it being a second hand yarn and all, and
there being no other accounts to back it up, that this explanation was too good
to be (totally) true."
6.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 07:07 AM
"I agree with Gibb. Another possibility is that the association once occurred randomly to Hugill, stuck in the back of his mind, and then, many years later, he recalled it when asked without thinking about where it came from!
7.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 11:25 AM
In the South Street area of Lower Manhattan is another Shinbone Alley, as documented in an illustration from DARKNESS & DAYLIGHT IN NEW YORK, Helen Campbell, published by A. D. Worthington & Co., Hartford, ©1897, p. 252.
"Bully in the Alley" as I mentioned way up above was a standard shout of the stevedores who manned the screw-jacks which crammed the bales of wool into ships in Sydney Harbour around 1900, as documented by poet/labor organizer Edwin J. Brady (1869-1952) who worked as a clerk on the docks.
Cheerily,
Charley Noble"
8.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 04:31 PM
"A visitor to New Orleans claimed to have heard Black men at work singing a "Shinbone Alley" song. It actually corresponds in part to TD Rice's stage minstrel song (c. 1833?), so there may have been some cross-influence—if this was not the source Rice took it from. The author is not clear whether he actually heard it there, or if this is a general "type."
"...those who have never visited the South and South-west, let them journey hitherward, and hear the negroes singing at their work — regaling their humble fancies with some such intellectual bijou as —
'As I was gwyin' down Shinbone alley,
Long time ago,
There I spied ole Johnny Gladdin',
Long time ago,
oh-e-oh!' "
["Leaves from the South-West and Cuba." _The Knickerbocker_ 8.1 (July 1836). Pg. 51.]
9.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bully in the Alley
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 05:03 PM
"The other reference I want to share is to the same song used in a corn shucking context.
Hentz, Caroline Lee. _Linda; or, The Young Pilot of the Belle Creole._ New York: F.M. Lupton, 1881.
This novel was written in 1848 (published 1850). The author, born ca.1801/2, lived in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama at various times in the 1820s-40s.
An extended quotation here. Scene from a Louisiana plantation. Also features some form of "Sittin' on a Rail." Pp. 157-8.
Soon she saw a torch-light glimmering through the trees, and she found herself near a large corn-crib, from which the choral strains were issuing. To one unaccustomed to such a spectacle, nothing could have been more picturesque lhan the scene that presented itself to Linda's eye. Large, pine torches were flaring near the door, and threw their red light on the black visages of about forty or fifty negroes, sitting in a ring round an immense pile of corn, on which was seated the sable master of the ceremonies, who was tossing the corn down to the group below, who seized it, one by one, with a yell of delight, and, squaring their elbows and shrugging their shoulders, they vied with each other in stripping off the dry husks from the golden ears. The African monarch of this harvest festival, as he threw the grain into the dexterous hands of the workmen, rolled out a volume of voice that shook the pine-boards of the crib, and every negro joined in the chorus with a vehemence and glee, a physical joy and strength, which none of the pale race can imitate—
"As I went out by the light of the moon,
Merrily ringing this old tune,
I come across a big raccoon
A sotting [sic] on a rail,"
shouted the Agrarian king; and then the sable orchestra
chimed bravely in—
"A sotting [sic] on a rail, a sotting on a rail—
I come across a big raccoon
A sotting on a
rail."
Then, as the spirit of melody waxed stronger, the master
would vary his strains, and—
"As l went down to Shinbone alley,
Long time ago,
To buy a bonnet for my Sally,
Long time
ago,"
echoed through the woods, in one full, deafening chorus,
dying away only to be repeated with more Herculean vigour. There is nothing
that bears the name of music, that can be compared to the negro's singing; he
sings all over; every muscle quivers with melody; it gushes from every pore The
sounds seem to roll from the white of his eyes, as well as through his ivory
teeth. His shoulders, elbows, knees, all appear instinct with song. He winks,
he grins, stamps with his feet, taps with his heel, pats with his toes, raps
with his knuckles—in short, gesticulates in every possible manner the human
form admits. Oh! he is in his glory at a corn shucking!
I get the feeling from the tone of this that the author
would not simply have been quoting T.D. Rice's popularized version--which
suggests this was the vernacular tradition on which Rice based his song.
These references don't explain "bully in the alley," but they point to the existence of a similar song in an Afro-American work context before sailor chanties became widespread."
****
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