Note Note — No 103 I’LL BUILD MYSELF A GALLANT SHIP

103. I'll Build Myself a Gallant Ship. The words are a cento from a long ballad. The complete song was taken down from J. Watts, quarryman, Thrushleton. The entire ballad is in Logan's "Pedlar's Pack," p. 23. There are several Broadside versions. A Scottish version in Herd, "Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs," 1776, ii. p. 2. The air to which this is sung in Scotland is that to which Burns composed "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw." Joyce gives an Irish version in his "Ancient Irish Music," No. 68. Besides Watts' ballad, we had the fragment we give to the same air from Richard Cleave, since dead, at the "Forest Inn," Huckaby Bridge. Never shall I forget the occasion. Mr. Bussell and I drove across Dartmoor in winter in a furious gale of wind and rain to Huckaby in quest of an old man who, we had been informed, was a singer. We found the fellow, but he yielded nothing, and our long journey would have been fruitless, had we not caught Richard Cleave and obtained from him this air, which drive cost me a bronchitis attack that held me a prisoner for six weeks.