On the Zuyder Zee

AKA Down by the Zuyder Zee
The Zuyder Zee
First Published 1889
Writer/composer Fred E Weatherly /Joseph L Roeckel Roud RN29879

Music Hall Performers Ada Lee
Folk performances Collected from the singing of:
Jones, Frank; 

The Palace Journal
VOL. III.No 75, APRIL 17, 1889. 

There was once an English maiden, 
She stood upon the strand, 
When there came a merry Dutchman, 
A sailing to the land. 
And he cried, "My tear, I love you, 
My brite O vill you be? 
Vill you come To de Zuyder Zee?" 

But the maiden she was prudent, 
And she curtsied low and said, 
"I should like to know a little more 
About you ere I wed" 
And he cried, "I am a Dutchman, 
And de bravest dat can be! 
And he was on de Zuyder Zee. 

"But what about your people?
Are the husbands brave and true? 
Do they love their wives and work for them, 
As husbands ought to do?
"Vat you mean?" the Dutchman answered, 
"Dey've no time for dat, you see! 
Dey must smoke On de Zuyder Zee." 

"And while the men are smoking, 
What do the women there, 
Do they dance and sing, and drive about, 
And pretty dresses wear?" 
"Ach Himmel!" cried the Dutchman, 
"Vat vill a vife you be! 
Dey must vork on de Zuyder Zee" 

"And are the wives content to work?" 
The little maid went on, 
"Do they never shake their husbands, 
And tell them to begone?" 
"Shake deir husbands," cried the Dutchman, 
"Vat vould creation be? 
No, dey don't on de Zuyder Zee." 

"Then good-bye, you little Dutchman, 
If ever I should wed, I must be my husband's lover, 
And not his slave," she said. 
"You may wed some little Dutchee, 
But as for wedding me, 
You may go to the Zuyder Zee."

In the late 19th and early 20th century a number of songs were written about Dutch or “Deitcher” girls and men who lived by the Zuyder Zee. The most famous of these, in the Halls at least, was By the side of the Zuyder Zee written by AJ Mills and Bennett Scott, but that song does not seem to have passed into the traditional repertoire.

The song On the Zuyder Zee was collected under the title Down by the Old Zuyder Zee, by Roy Palmer from the singing of Frank Jones. You can hear it 23 minutes into this recording in the British Library Sound Archive.

On the Zuyder Zee was originally published in 1889 as a “song for the drawing room” (what we would now call a Parlour Ballad). I can find no record of it being sung in the Halls, though there are several contemporary reports of it being sung at concerts – eg at a Llandudno Pier Concert in June 1893 Ada Lee sang several operatic songs to orchestral accompaniment and “pleasing little ditties like On the Zuyder Zee [were] given in response to loud recalls. (North Wales Chronicle , 24 June 1893).

The lyricist Fred Weatherly (1848-1929) wrote literally thousands of these “songs for the drawing-room” in his spare time – his day job was first as a tutor at Oxford University and later as a barrister. His most lasting song is probably Danny Boy.

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