Nancy Lee

First Published1876

Writer/composerFred Weatherley / Stephen AdamsRoudRN5014

Music Hall PerformersMarie Compton, Peter Dawson, John McCormack, Michael Maybrick
Folk performancesCollected from the singing of:
Surber, Miss Elsie ; USA : Florida : nd
Bustow, Henry ; England : Sussex : nd
Surber, Elsie ; USA : Florida ; 1949
Pardon, Walter ; England : Norfolk ; 1978

Of all the wives as e'er you know,
Yeo ho! lads! ho! Yeo ho! yeo ho!
There's none like Nancy Lee I trow,
Yeo ho! lads! ho! yeo ho!
See there she stands an' waves her hand upon the quay,
An' ev'ry day when I'm away
She'll watch for me,
An whisper low when tempests blow, for Jack at sea;
Yeo ho! lads! ho! yeo ho!

The sailor's wife, the sailors' star shall be,
Yeo ho! we go across the sea,
The sailor's wife, the sailor's star shall be,
The sailor's wife his star shall be.

The harbor's past, the breezes blow,
Yeo ho! lads! etc!
Tis long ere we come back I know;
Yeo ho! etc
But true an bright from morn till night my home will be,
An' all so neat an sung an' sweet, for Jack at sea,
An' Nancy's face to bless the place, an' welcome me;
Yeo ho! lads! ho! yeo ho!

The sailor's wife, etc

The Boa's'n pipes the watch below;
Yeo ho! lads! etc! 
Then here's a health afore we go,
Yeo ho! etc
A long, long, life to my sweet wife, and mates at sea,
An' keep our bones from Davy Jones where'er we be,
An' may you meet a mate as sweet as Nancy Lee;
Yeo ho! lads! ho! yeo ho!

The sailor's wife, etc

A hugely popular song from the mid-1870s, heard in formal ballad concerts, theatres, Music Halls and blackface minstrel shows – 70,ooo copies of the sheet music were sold within 18 months of its publication in England alone. Its composer was Stephen Adams, the lyricist Fred Weatherly (1848-1929) . Weatherly described how he came to write the song in an interview some years later: ‘Nancy Lee’ was written at Oxford, because a pupil failed to keep an appointment. I wrote the song in an hour. The idea of the piece came suddenly to me while I was wondering why my pupil did not come, and it was written off there and then.

Stephen Adams (1844-1913) also sang and composed using the pseudonym Michael Maybrick – though under either name he was more likely to be found performing in respectable Ballad Concerts than in the Halls. As a singer he specialised in sea songs, as a composer he specialized in producing “songs for the drawing room” (what we would now call Parlour Ballads).

It was widely reproduced in both official and unofficial publications: broadsides, songsters, collections of sailor songs and so on.

As sung by the Edison Quartet in 1908:

Sources:

  • Entries in the Roud Indexes at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library: https://archives.vwml.org/search/all:single[folksong-broadside-books]/0_50/all/score_desc/extended-roudNo_tr%3A5014
  • Ballad Index
  • Kilgarrif Sing Us
  • Lyrics: Turner & Miall, Parlour Song Book (1972) pp.107-110
  • Weatherly Interview: TWENTY YEARS’ SONG WRITING, June 18, 1889, Pall Mall Gazette (London, England) Issue: 7566
  • Sheet Music: Archive.com

Last Updated on August 30, 2024 by John Baxter | Published: August 30, 2024

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