A SURPRISE FOR NELSON

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 246, 11 July 1919, Page 8

A SURPRISE FOR NELSON

. _ < -'' SEA-SONGS IN TEAFALGAE SQUARE It nearly knock'd the stuffin' From the good ship Eagainuffin, And wo thought to the bottom we 6hould go, AVe should i-'o. Old Nelson in Trafalgar Square, London, heard something on evening that was really after his own heart. For thero rose above the roar'of traffic, to the wonder of all passing through the square, -the breezy, rollicking cadences of the old sea chanties that las merry men used to sing as they wound the capstan i or hauled the bowline. A more completo contrast to the tiresome waves of political; and domestic oratory that have beat against his pedestal with almost ceaseless monotony ever since be oajne to live in the square could hardly have been imagined (says the "Daily News"). - By way of celebrating Lifeboat . Day a choir of 300 voices, trained by the League of Arts, spent- an hour or two at dusk yesterday chanting theso old ballads, which date back to Elizabethan days, and even 'beyond. The, choristers, men and women, terraced themselves at the foot of' the statue, above the heads of the Grenadier Guards' Band, with the Dungenese lifeboat, manned, at one corner, and the Chapel lifeboat at }ho other.

You could almost imagine Nolson pricking up his ears at the sound of these old fnmilinr chanties. Fnmiliar to him. but to hardly anyone else in the square. Bus conductors, wholly mystified, were struck dumb with astonishment. Taxi-drivers eame to a halt and listened with awe to the jaunty airs that came floating over the heads of the crowd.' The story of "Captain Nipper," an old favourite, was sung with a nautical owing that set a bluejacket in the crowd dancing a hornpipe. The chanty begins:

'Twas the fifteenth of September, How well do 1, remember. A I nearly broke my poor old mother's heart, For I shipp'd with Captain Nipper, in a bir four-inn sted clipper, Bound amy down -Soutli for foreign parts. Then we histed up our anchor, and set out jib and spanker, And the pilot took us to the harbour's month; Then from the boat we parted, and en our voyage started With .the compos heading East-North-Kast by South '< Chorus : And. the -wind began to blow, and tho ship began to roll, And the devil of a hurricane did blow, Aye-oh! It nearly knocked the sluflin' from the good ship ltagamuffin, And wc thought-to the bottom we should go, we should go! Hardly a ilinn or wonwn in the audience realised what it was the choir was singing. They recognised old favourites like "The Bay of Biscay'' and "The Lass that Loves a Sailor," but when it came to "Captain Nipper" they were quits staggered. Some said it was a new kind of patriotic song, soino that the Bolsheviks had broken Iposo and were trying to rouse London with a new call to arms. London, to its shame, knows nothing of sea ulianties. Down AVnpping way yon might lind an ancient mariner whoso grandfather sailed" the, Spanish main in a clipper and who. can repeat tho words of a sea chanty from memory. But the modem Londoner' has never heard the story of bow Bobby Shafto went to sea "with silver buckles on Lis knee." These ballads of a departed age began to die when men went to sea in steamships,