OK, whaling is bad, and Munguin doesn’t advocate it, but this song, once you get it in your head, just won’t quit.
Try not to think about the lyrics so much as the way these people have worked together, at a distance, to make a great sound and one which has gone viral over the last two weeks.
The guy in the centre, who started it all, is Nathan Evans, a postie from, I think, Airdrie, although as he’s just been signed for a record deal, he may have delivered his last letter.
tris, I am sure you know this already, but Dundee was a whaling port.
I always liked “The Bonnie Ship the Diamond” (even tried to learn the words).
And “Shenandoah” always gets me in the tear ducts.
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Yes, DonDon. There used to be a massive whale carcass in the museum at the Albert institute. I don’t remember if it is still there… The last time I was there was a while ago. In fact I was with Abu, his mum and dad and his sister.
Happy days.
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I vaguely recall walking through a whale carcass when I was young; best guess is that I would’ve been six at the time. Apparently it was an “attraction” during the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s!
Fifty+ years later and the most vivid memory is that it wiz honkin’! Hardly surprising, since reading about them a few years ago, I discovered they only used three over about twenty-five years!
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LOL.
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https://www.mcmanus.co.uk/object-of-the-month/may-19
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Thanks, Marcia. It’s still there.
Another horror story though. The animal died of exhaustion.
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I have a grandson in Canada who has been working on a project studying how much whales are disturbed by underwater noise such as ships engines.
He was interested, though rather dismayed when I showed him from family records that my great grandfather from Peterhead was a whaler. He was even hunting the Right Whales, the same ones my grandson is now trying to help!
Nearly 200 years between their births and both called James.
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Times change and what was acceptable, indeed respectable, at one time can be out of the question later…
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There was a whale skeleton in the Edinburgh museum in the mid 1990s. It had been washed up or stranded somewhere in the shore of the Forth.
As it was summer and quite warm the smell was terrible and the doors had to be kept open during the day.
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LOL. I guess dead things do stink…
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Not to mention, “Fareweel tae Tarwathie”. I’ve always been a big fan of the shanties and the forebitters.
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Yes, andimac, that’s another good one.
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andimac, by an amazing youtube coincidence, I have just this minute discovered that Bob Dylan used the tune of “Farewell to Tarwathie” to write “Farewell Angelina”.
Joan Baez recorded it in 1966.
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DonDon……I love “Shenandoah” too. The recurring lyric “across the wide Missouri” always gets me. The folk song with many different lyrics may have originated on the Missouri River.
Wiki: “The song appears to have originated with American and Canadian voyageurs or fur traders traveling down the Missouri River in canoes, and has developed several different sets of lyrics. Some lyrics refer to the Oneida chief Shenandoah and a canoe-going trader who wants to marry his daughter. By the mid 1800s versions of the song had become a sea shanty heard or sung by sailors in various parts of the world.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Shenandoah
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Beautiful arrangement, Danny.
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Dundee built some great ships whalers and sealers
http://www.fdca.org.uk/Stephens_Whalers.html
This one went on to work for USA government
https://www.hazegray.org/features/bear/
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I didn’t realise how big the business was.
I note though that even back then they over killed:
“When the Greenland seal fishing became unproductive due to over killing, Stephen sent his ships to the Newfoundland coast and achieved a lot of success there.”
The stupidity of humans, mixed with greed, huh!
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Down the shore in Leith, (just opposite where Spook used to live) is an old harpoon gun embedded in the quay a few yards from the swing bridge.
Evil thing.
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The gun, I assume… Not Spookie.
That was a lovely apartment he had there.
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Naughty, perhaps…
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LOL. I’m sure he was.
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Yeah it was šš·
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A few years ago there was a programme on TV about whaling and two men from Dundee who sailed on a whaler because it was the only work they could get at the time, said they would never forget the screams of the whales when the harpoons hit. It had stayed with them for the rest of their lives. Lest we forget what we do to the creatures who share our planet. We really should hang our heads in shame.
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Indeed. I agree totally.
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That is so incredibly sad, how awful and it happened to so many, unbearable. š
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A pleasant enough little ditty but let’s be frank, it’s hardly For These Are My Mountains. Is it?
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Well, in fairness, no, it isn’t!
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It’s certainly a lot more family friendly than Alestorm’s ‘pirate metal’ sea-shanties!
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Arch of whalebone on top of North Berwick Law.
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They are replicas now Don.
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There used to be a massive jawbone on The Meadows in Edinburgh, at the end of a path through it, we used to call Jawbone Walk?
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They were taken down & sent to a conservator Tati. The conservator subsequently went bust & the jawbones were in limbo for a long while.
Conservation work has resumed & I do believe (but don’t quote me on it) they will be reinstated – eventually.
Jawbone Walk still runs from the site of the arch to the N. end of Middle Meadow Walk.
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Sorry, Tatu.
Why is it called ‘autocorrect’ when it causes more typos than it avoids?
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There are hundreds of Whales dying, off the coast of California right now, starving to death.
A massive Whale, they think possibly the biggest ever recorded, was found on a beach recently can’t remember where. The cruelty and destruction of sealife by humans is unbearable imo. The beautiful creatures of the sea must suffer hugely before and during their murder. Humans have no right to kill these creatures, and to think that ‘Whaling’ is still practiced in some countries is absolutely abhorrent. Sharks,whales, dolphins, seals, etc all deserve a life free of persecution. Humans are very destructive, sometimes it’s hard to find good things to say about them.
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Another song, beautifully rendered and certain to get Munguinites greetin’ faced – a well as angry – as comments already show.
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I couldn’t watch that, John. All these animals’ blood.
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Another song, Scottish, and equally haunting – but no blood, so you can listen without having to grimace. Judy Collins incorporated what at the time were the first recordings of whales vocalising and apparently communicating under water.
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Thank you! š
That was absolutely beautiful. She and the Whales have beautiful voices
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O/t but seen elsewhere. Wish I’d seen it yesterday 25th Jan –
Address to a Boris
Awaā wiā yer lyinā, pudgy face
Chief conman o the Tory race
Aw silver spuin, a waste o space
Aw tripe, nae guts.
Yeāre soon tae pay fur the disgrace
Of yer cruel cuts.
Yer groaninā trencher there ye fill
Yer hurdies like twa dimpled hills
Yer plate wad hulp to feed a million
Weans in need.
While thro yer press whores lies still spill
Like choukie feed.
Yer lies gie Covid patients fright
We mind yer evāry glaikit slight
When trenchinā breathless corpses tight
In unmarked ditch.
And ye? O whit a hideous sight
Cake-reekin, rich.
In hi-viz jaikit, coupon buffed
Hard hat, hair-net, a mop, chest puffed
Ye dinnae care yer countryās stuffed
By old schuil chums.
Fuid rots in docks yet yeāve enough
Tae glut yer gums.
While ye trough thro yer French ragout
Or olio that wad burst a coo
Itās neeps and tatties in oor stew
Weāre keepinā thinner.
Yet ye sit sneerinā, scornfuā too
Wiā ten course dinner.
Poor āBorisā thocht heād be World King
Wiā peasants kissinā his gowd ring
But noo he lives oan a shoestring
Heās charged fur fuid!
And maintenance fur his offspring!
Nae bluidy guid!
Pure feart o lassies, men and boys
Yon Tories plot tae droun the noise
Of true control, of fair free choice
Fur independence.
Oor sovārinty yields not oor vyce
Tae yer āacceptanceā.
Conmen, wha mak free folk thair slave
Unite us mair oor land tae save
New Scotlandās soon tae rule her wave
Tae reach new glories.
Be safe, oor southern pals, be brave:
Just ditch the Tories.
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Sorry to be o/t again but most of you know of Bruce from GrumpyScottishman blog; he comments here too. He’s blogged he has Covid 19 and his wife’s in hospital for observation with it.
Get well soon both.
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Oh, I’m truly sorry to hear that.
I’ll get in touch.
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The New England whaling industry was originally centered on Nantucket. As the New England whalers had to sail farther and farther out into the Atlantic for whales, they rounded Cape Horn in the 1790’s and first entered the Pacific. That was where the whale ship Essex was sunk in 1820. Herman Melville wrote his book after hearing the grisly story of the sinking, and this article recounts Melville’s visit to Nantucket in 1852 where he first met the man who had captained the Essex.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/
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Oh dear heavens, Danny.
What an awful story.
I can’t blame the whales for hating these ships that came to kill them, but people drawing lots to see who would kill another of their crew…
Jeez.
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Oh yea……They didn’t tell us the story of the Essex in school when we read Melville’s book. He was working on a whaling ship in the Pacific in 1841 when he heard the story.
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The 1956 Warner Bros. film “Moby Dick” starred Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. There’s a story that a movie trailer for the film advertised Peck in the TITLE role.
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Ha ha ha ha ha
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Danny,
You might find this of interest:
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-art-of-whaling
( the “art” word in the link refers to pictures and illustrations in the logs and journals of the whale boats)
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Thanks Jake. I enjoyed that. Nantucket whaling is a fascinating part of the history of New England.
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Danny, It is as annoying as get out. However, https://youtu.be/auI9Cx8SGX4?list=RDUgsurPg9Ckw seems to me to speak to something wrong about being human. What say you?
Best wishes.
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Douglas…..It was a nasty business for sure. Whaling was banned in the United States in the early 1970’s except for certain exemptions for indigenous peoples. Apparently, Norway and Japan still haven’t gotten the message.
Whale oil was big business in its time, and it lubricated the machines of the industrial age. It was used in automotive transmission fluid as late as the 1970’s, and presumably has properties superior to the alternatives. I’ve read that it’s debated as to the extent to which the decline of whaling and the reduced availability of whale oil for lighting was instrumental in the rise of the petroleum industry and the use of kerosene for lighting oil. I was surprised as a kid to learn that John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil monopoly and built the greatest fortune of his time on the manufacture of kerosene for lighting, many years before gasoline and the rise of the automobile.
Whale oil lamps were relatively crude technology and didn’t really give very good light compared with later kerosene lamps, which burned with a brighter, less smelly flame.
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The Faroes, Iceland and Greenland still do a little whaling too, I think.
One of the few things about the Nordic nations that I don’t like.
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