In my novel, A Good Name, I included a hauling shanty called “Daar Was Eens Een Meisje Loos” or in English, “Once There Was a Crafty Girl.” This song is Dutch but very similar to English sea shanties of the time. In this version, the chorus is even in English. Here you can hear a recording in Dutch from 1953.
Once there was a crafty girl
Ch: Hurrah, my boy! Hurrah, my boy!
Who wanted to go sailing as ordinary seamen,
Ch: Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, my boy!
She took service for seven years,
Because she didn't fear any danger.
She brought her chest and gear aboard,
Like a young sailor should.
While researching sea shanties, I found Dianne Dugaw’s book, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. She found 113 folk songs that feature what she called ‘warrior women.’ One of the features of the ballads is that the heroine’s plan to disguise herself as a man is never seen as ridiculous.
“The Female Warrior ballads not only accept but depend upon the belief that a woman would want to and indeed could masquerade as a soldier – and quite well enough to get away with it… Eighteenth-century women had good reason to engage in activities similar to those described in the ballads: leaving home and family, travelling alone, bearing arms, engaging in trickery, and surviving by their own hook or by crook. Indeed, the ballad women survive by their wits…. This period was a turbulent and disruptive age, particularly for the common people. Violence, crime, and warfare were incessant, and survival at the middle and lower rungs of society demanded as much ingenuity, assertiveness, and physical stamina from women as from men. … Lower class women in the eighteenth century were quite as vigorous and uninhibited physically and emotionally as the ballad heroine.” (124)
My main character, Leemka, fights for her survival at a time when the scale is rigged against lower class women and does so with sass and resilience.
If you are interested in hearing more of these ballads, the Warrior Women Project at Wayne University has lyrics, images, and analysis. Academic research centres, like this one, were invaluable while researching this book and I cannot recommend them highly enough to other writers.
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