Here is a thing nobody warns you about The Mermaid. It is, on paper, a SCHOLARLY BALLAD. A proper Child ballad, numbered and catalogued and studied by serious bearded men in libraries. And it is also, in actual practice, the song where forty people in a pub wave their arms up and down going "and the waves go o-ver" and laughing like absolute eejits. Both things are true. That's the joy of it.
It's a sea song about a ship that is DEFINITELY going to sink. We know it's going to sink. The sailors know it's going to sink. The whole thing is doom from the first verse — they spot a mermaid, and a mermaid, see, means you're done for. And then the song proceeds to drown everybody on board in the most cheerful manner imaginable.
I taught this one to a whole roomful of kids at a session in Lahinch once and they did not care one bit about the drowning. They cared about the hand actions. The waves going up and down. That's the hook for the little ones, and honestly it's the hook for the big ones too, just with more pints involved.
A Bit of History
Right, let me be straight with you, because I won't dress up guesses as facts.
This one is OLD and the honest answer to "how old" is: nobody really knows. It's catalogued by Francis James Child in his big collection of English and Scottish ballads as number 289 — that's where the fancy "Child 289" tag comes from, and it's why you'll see folk people call it that. Child gathered his versions in the back half of the 1800s. But the song itself was already knocking about long before he wrote it down, on broadsides and in sailors' mouths, and you'll find printed versions going back into the 1700s under one title or another.
And that's the murky bit — it goes by HALF A DOZEN names depending on who you ask. The Mermaid. Waves on the Sea. The Stormy Winds. Sometimes it gets folded in with other "doomed ship" songs and the verses get swapped around. Folk songs do that. They breed. A sailor in Bristol sings it one way, a fella in Newfoundland sings it another, somebody's granny in Clare has a verse nobody else has ever heard, and they're all "the same song" and also none of them quite match.
The mermaid-as-bad-omen thing is genuinely old sailor superstition, mind. Spotting a mermaid (or a woman comb-in-hand on the rocks) meant a storm was coming and the ship was in trouble. So the song isn't being random with its doom — it's built on a real belief that sailors actually held. I find that lovely. The daftest singalong on the sea is sitting on top of a real fear.
Who WROTE it? No one person. It came up out of the working sea the way the Rattlin' Bog came up out of the working land — no author, just generations of voices wearing it smooth.
Lyrics
'Twas Friday morn when we set sail, And we were not far from the land, When the captain, he spied a lovely mermaid, With a comb and a glass in her hand.
Oh the ocean waves may roll, And the stormy winds may blow, While we poor sailors go skipping to the top And the landlubbers lie down below, below, below, And the landlubbers lie down below.
Then up spoke the captain of our gallant ship, And a well-spoken man was he, "I have married a wife in fair London town, And this night she a widow will be."
Then up spoke the cook of our gallant ship, And a greasy old cook was he, "I care more for my kettles and my pots, Than I do for the roaring of the sea."
Then up spoke the cabin-boy of our gallant ship, And a brave little lad was he, "I have a father and mother in fair Portsmouth town, And this night they will weep for me."
Then three times round went our gallant ship, And three times round went she, Then three times round went our gallant ship, And she sank to the bottom of the sea.
How to Sing It
The chorus is everything. "Oh the ocean waves may roll" — that's where the room comes in, every single time, so make sure you land it big and let everybody have it.
The hand actions, since the kids will demand them: on "the ocean waves may roll" you rock your hands like waves. On "skipping to the top" your hands go UP. On "lie down below, below, below" your hands sink DOWN, down, down, lower each time, and you can drop your voice with them if you fancy. That's the whole choreography. Three-year-olds get it in one go, and so does a fella four pints in.
Sing the verses with a bit of drama. Each character gets a moment — the captain thinking of his widow, the cook only caring about his pots (the cook is the comic relief, give him a gruff voice, get a laugh), the cabin-boy and his poor parents. Then BANG, three times round and down she goes. The contrast between the doom and the bouncy tune is the entire gag. Lean into it.
It pairs a treat with Drunken Sailor for a run of sea songs — do the rowdy "what shall we do" first to get the arms moving, then The Mermaid. And when the night's done and everyone's sung out, bring it back to land with something gentle like The Parting Glass.
Full words and singing notes for the Bog itself live over on the lyrics page, where most nights here start.
Don't think too hard about the drowning. Wave your arms.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin the cat sat on the windowsill the whole time I was working out the hand actions for this, watching my arms go up and down like I'd lost the run of myself entirely. Fair enough, cat. Fair enough.