I heard, I heard the Old Man say,
(ch: John Kanaka-naka, tulai-e!)
Today, today is a holiday,
(ch: John Kanaka-naka, tulai-e!)
Tulai-e, Ooh! tulai-e!
(ch: John Kanaka-naka, tulai-e!)

We'll work termorrer, but no work terday,
We'll work termorrer, but no work terday.

We're bound away for 'Frisco Bay,
We're bound away at the break o' day.

We're bound away around Cape Horn,
We wish to Christ we'd niver bin born.

A Yankee ship wid a Yankee crew,
Oh, we're the buckos fer ter push 'er through.

A Yankee ship wid a Yankee mate,
If yer stop ter walk he'll change yer gait.

Oh, haul away, oh!, haul away!
Oh, haul away, an' make yer pay!


abc | midi | pdf

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Source: Hugill, Stan, (1969), Shanties and Sailors Songs, London, Herbert Jenkins

Notes:
SBN 257-65768-1

Stan Hugill wrote:

This halyard song is the only known representative of a sizeable group of Anglicized Polynesian work-songs popular at one time among seamen in the various Pacific Islands trades. Dana, in his Two Years before the Mast, refers to such songs and the singing of them by Mahana, an Hawaiian shantyman in the hide carriers of the Pacific Slope of America in the 1830s

He also says "The writer collected this version from a coloured seaman from Barbados, in the West Indies."


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