Traditional: Collected by A. L. (Bert) Lloyd; arr. Stan Kelly.
© 1961 Heathside Music Limited
Tearfully
I was homeward bound one night on the deep,
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep,
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew.
I dreamed we neared the English shore,
I heard a lady weep and deplore,
She wept aloud and she seemed to say:
Alas, that my husband is so long away.
With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May,
To seek the passage around the Pole,
Where we poor seamen do sometimes roll.
Through cruel hardships they vainly strove,
Their ship on mountains of ice was drove,
Where the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only ones that ever came through.
Now my sad burden it gives me pain,
For my long-lost Franklin I'd cross the main.
Ten thousand pounds I would freely give
To say on earth that my Franklin do live.
In Baffin's Bay where the whalefish blow,
The fate of Franklin no man may know, 3+3
The tale of Franklin no tongue can tell,
Lord Franklin along with his sailors do dwell.
Notes
This version was collected from Edward Harper, a whale-factory blacksmith
of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, by Bert Lloyd, who sings the
ballad with nobility and splendour on a Topic record.
The Franklin referred to was Sir John who set off in 1846 with
one hundred and fifty men to try to find the north-west passage
round the North Pole. The disappearance of the expedition is one
of the Arctic's unsolved mysteries. In 1859 one of the many
search parties sent out to look for Franklin found skeletons,
equipment, bibles, sea boots... the pathetic remnants of the
voyagers and their frigates Erebus and Terror. Several ballads
about Franklin found their way on to broadsides. The tune used
here is a close relation of that used for McCaffery and
The Croppy Boy.