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SWING YOUR TAIL Lead: Richard

A capstan shanty collected by Helen Creighton from William H. Smith in Liverpool, August 15, 1948. Smith claimed, when interviewed, that this was "sung in most all the ships. In our port and foreign too … yes, from Liverpool and I've heard it out in the West Indies ships getting underway there or warpin' in …"

I obtained a copy of Sea Songs and Ballads from Nineteenth Century Nova Scotia: The William H. Smith and Fenwick Hatt Manuscripts, edited by Edith Fowke but the section of this book on Smith, titled "Chanties and other Songs of the Sea" recalled by William H. Smith, contains no mention of the song Swing Your Tail but does give some background on Smith: "William Smith (1867-1955) went to sea as a boy in fishing schooners out of Liverpool. At about eighteen he transferred to the brigantine Ihyaline and other windjammers carrying lumber and fish to the Caribbean and South America, and bringing back cargoes of hides, logwood, sugar, molasses and rum. After his marriage he worked ashore as a carpenter and rigger in Liverpool shipyards, and when that work became scarce he learned the diver's job and worked for several years with a salvage steamer on the Nova Scotia coast."

I have contacted the Helen Creighton Folklore Society to try to obtain a cassette copy of her interview with Smith. Swing Your Tail appears on the double cd recording "Songs of the Sea" that was released recently by the Society. According to the liner notes, the interview with Smith is on the following archive tape: AC:2290 - MF NO. 289.344, recorded in Liverpool, August 15, 1948.

The first four verses I sing are from the Helen Creighton recording. The rest of the lyrics are "floating verses" culled from other shanties. A shanty needed to last as long as the work being done and it was typical of a shantyman to keep the song going by either making up verses on the spot or using verses from other shanties.

Despite Smith's claims, this shanty only appears in one other collection that I know of. James M. Carpenter recorded John Middleton singing the Mind How You Swing Your Tail in Leith, 1928 – the song appears on the Folktrax recording FTX-142, The Hog's Eye Man, Archive Shanties and Sea Songs 2. Only one verse and chorus are given to the song with the first line of the verse being "O the people in da Souf dey've all got tails."

James Carpenter was an American College professor who visited Britain with a disk recording machine, 1928-9, and managed to catch 45 of the then surviving shanty-men in Britain.

Alan Lomax collected a different Swing Your Tail sung by a group of men from Andros Island, Bahamas in 1935 that is more related to the shanty Bulldog Don't Bite Me.

LYRICS:

Swing your tail, and a-swing your tail
Chorus: Mind how you swing your tail
Swing last night and the night before
Chorus: Mind how you swing your tail

One day the blackbird said to the crow
"What makes you love your farmer so?"

"That's my trade since I've been born"
Scratching and a-digging up the farmer's corn"

Swing your tail in the afterhold
Swing last night and the night before

And when we gets to the Liverpool docks
Them pretty gals will come in flocks

And one to the other you'll hear 'em say
Here comes Johnny with two year's pay

So now our payday soon will come
Up Paradise Street we'll have good fun

Sing and heave an' heave an' sing
Heave and make them handspikes spring

Breast yer bars an' bend yer backs
Heave an' make yer spare ribs crack

A John he is true to his Sal an' his Sue
So long as he's able to keep 'em in view