Unfortunately, you can’t here me sing it, but you know it well.
doo da-DOO doo-doo
doo da-DOO da-DOO da-DOO. . .
I think a snippet might even be used as the intro to Popeye’s theme in some of the cartoons.
Where did it come from, and are there any lyrics?
I think it was written by Stephen Foster.
I can’t think of the name of the song.
Kevin
When I was in the Royal Navy I was assigned for a year to a Display Team which would go around the country carrying out gymnastic displays and the like.
We also got roped in for a few unusual things like the ceremonial mast climbing excercise, cutlass drill which is very like swinging around Indian clubs except for the obvious differance, we did a display of wooden ships style cannon drill, and even got to fire replica cannon on HMS Victory for a documentary, yup I can really say I fired those cannon, not many matelots can say that.
Now where was I, ah yes, another of those odd things we did was learn how to do the sailors hornpipe which is a dance/excercise that was used in sailing ship days to keep the men fit when away for long periods at sea.
Each section of the dance represents an action that the ordinary sailor would do during his working day, such as heaving on a rope, climbing the masts, coiling rope down.
You can find a MIDI in this page:
http://members.tripod.com/~Winch_2/music/sailor.html