Here's Martin's answer to the Sailor's Alphabet... perhaps we should adopt it as a club anthem alongside Rick's notorious Washing Up Song....

place tongue in cheek before reading!

History and folk songs

Have you ever wondered how many "traditional" songs (i.e. those with no songwriter/poet accredited) are based on actual historical events?

Because my first acquaintance with the song "Sir Patrick Spens" was through Nic Jones's version, which was fairly short, I hadn't realised that it was a Childe Ballad. In this version, Sir P. was sent to sea at a time of rough weather, for no apparent reason and he was drowned. Last Christmas I was given a secondhand copy of an old poetry anthology, first published in 1900, which had a longer version and indicated that there was good reason for Sir P.'s journey, to fetch the king's daughter back to Scotland from Norway. I sang this version of the song at the club in January, after which Patrick told me that he remembered an even longer version, where Sir P. had encountered much resistance by the Norwegians to him taking the king's daughter. I became more convinced that it must refer to an historical event, even though a Scottish friend told me that no evidence had been discovered that Sir Patrick Spens had ever existed.

I then decided to search the internet and researchers have tied the story to the king being Alexander III of Scotland, the date being 1281. His daughter was 8 years old and he'd sent several ships to fetch her, but all had foundered. He therefore built a new ship and tried to find the best sailor in Scotland. Unfortunately, the child had died on the retum joumey (but not as in the song). When Alexander died suddenly in 1293, Robert the Bruce had tried to seize the throne, but the king had one living relative - his granddaughter Margaret, daughter of Eric II (king of Norway), known as "The Maid of Norway". It was suggested that the 1281 event either referred to Margaret's mother or Margaret herself, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to the researcher that it can't have been either - after all Margaret went on to reign as Queen of Scotland 1293-1306. Robert the Bruce then took the throne, and reigned until his death from leprosy in 1329. Leprosy? In Scotland?

However, none of the above really tied in to who the child was who died at sea - if Margaret's mother, she couldn't have given birth to Margaret and if it was Margaret, how could she have gone on to reign from 1293 to 1306? Graham encouraged me to search further and it was then I discovered just how unreliable the internet was for searching. Using a combination of Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Encyclopedia Britannica and Collier's Enclopedia, I found that Alexander III had actually died in 1286 (his horse fell over a cliff). He had ascended the throne in 1249, aged 8 and was married at aged 10 to Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England. She was the Maid of Norway's mother, but she had died in 1283, the year the Maid was born. The Maid herself ascended the throne in 1286 (aged 3!) and in 1289 was betrothed to Prince Edward, son of Edward I of England. In 1290, Margaret fell ill and died in the Orkneys on her way from Norway. At last, we seemed to have pinned it down, even if the dates don't tally with the information given on the internet. When she died, Edward I proclaimed himself overlord of Scotland and awarded the crown to John de Balliol. Edward deposed him in 1296 and was endeavouring to subjugate the land to his own rule; he seems to have succeeded, as it wasn't until Robert the Bruce seized the throne in 1306, after stabbing John Comyn, a rival, to death in a church in Dumfries.

Sir Patrick Spens was thought to have been a misspelling of Sir Patrick Vens, who was a sailor. It's been a fascinating journey, finding more and more facts and an exciting way to learn history. I'm sure that many of the Childe ballads, in particular, have an historical basis, so has anyone else tried to research them?

Di Smurthwaite