Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Sea Songs, Shanties, & Poetry

Excellent sea shanty resource:

Cape Cod girls ain't got no combs
     Haul away, haul away
They brush their hair with codfish bones
     And we're bound away for Australia

Also came across this retrospective of sea bard George Mackay Brown, including poems of tribute here, here and here.

Whereas, when it blows from the West — which is after all, the airt it loves best — it brings music and magic to us, seal songs and the breath of mermaids and the merry splurge and dance of whales. And more, it brings aromas of the magic isle in the west, that people have known was there for thousands of years. The Gaelic-speakers called it Tir-nan-Og (which means ‘the land of the young’). Once we’re there, believe me, Gypsy, we'll never be old and sick and weary — for pussies there’ll be a silver fish on a plate every day, and a nice stone – emerald or lapis lazuli — to sit on always in the sun, and no dogs and no bad-tempered householders who ‘shoo’ pussies off their doorsteps. There, in Tir-nan-Og, even the East wind is gentle and full of scents and sweet sounds. ---George Mackay Brown

Excerpt from "A Cairn for George Mackay Brown" by A.G. Boobier

5,000 years ago
a stone
HURLED
from Vestafiold

§

it BROKE the upsurge
of the Atlantic breakers

held aloof the raw salt wind
at Skara Brae

dug into black earth
held limpets kelp
became sepulchre and home
to fishermen and farmers...

§

it FELL among brothers sisters
who danced in the round
with the Beltane sun
and the two waters
at Brodgar