Murder Ballad MondayThe Golden Vanity (Child 286) - Page 4
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The Golden Vanity (Child 286) — 4 Comments

  1. Pingback:The Ballad & The Requiem « Walter Bitner

  2. I should also add that in almost every version, the cabin boy’s promised betrothal to the captain’s daughter is pretty much a property transaction. It has implications for the cabin boy’s class status, but it is likely not a romantic scheme by the cabin boy and the daughter. The song’s audiences through much of its history would have understood it at some level as a property transaction. As I mention in the post, in a very few versions, the cabin boy refrains from sinking the ‘Golden Vanity’ in spite because of the love he bears for the captain’s daughter (as well as the crew), but she is effectively a symbol and a non-character in this story. You could even suppose that she is an invention of the captain for bargaining purposes.

    Regardless of how much credence you want to devote to the cabin boy’s declaration of love, if it’s there at all, the song fully embodies the patriarchy of its day (and many days that followed), and we’re well advised to keep that point in view.

  3. An auger would not have done the job but scratching out the oakum and caulk between planks would have accomplished the desired result before the crew would have discovered and dispatched to he offending cabin boy.

    • Agreed, John. Good point. Other sources I’ve seen point out that ships of the era would have had carpenters and pumps that would have made such an assault ineffective. The song seems to require some suspension of disbelief on this point. In some versions, the songwriters address this issue by alleging that the crew of the galley (be they Turkish, Spanish, pirates, or otherwise) were distracted by various unwholesome diversions. Most pointed in this regard is probably Paul Joines’s: “some were at cards and others at dice, while still others were taking the Devil’s own advice.”