We left our sweethearts and our wives A-weeping on the pier. Cheer up, my dears, we soon shall return For it's only half a year. With tarry dress we reached Stromness Where we do go ashore. With whalermen so scarce and the water even less, We'll have to take on more. Now dark and dreary grows the night And the stars begin to burn, With the chasing of the whale and the trying of the oil, And it seems like we'll never return. Our six-month being done, we tie up again, And the lads all go ashore, With plenty of brass and a bonny bonny lass For to make them ravers roar. To Greenland's coast we'll drink a toast, And to them we love so dear, And across the icy main to the whaling grounds again We'll take a trip next year.

A.L. Lloyd‘s liner notes to Leviathan! Ballads and Songs of the Whaling Trade explain this song about the 1840s Greenland whaling season:

When the ships left London, Hull, Dundee for the northern grounds, the yards would be decorated with ribbons snatched from any pretty girls venturing near the quay, and the men would sing on the maindeck till the harbour bar was passed. They would put in at the Orkneys or Shetlands to take on fresh provisions and water, and perhaps a man or two to complete the crew, and then off to the cold coast of Greenland. This tender farewell song was a favourite of Fred Clausen, a meat-cutter aboard the Southern Express, and native of Stoneferry, Hull. Its elegiac tone suggests it was made by a Scottish whalerman (English whale balladeers generally inclined to rough adventure or outspoken complaint). John Ord, folk song collector and superintendent of police, heard the melody, or something very like it, sung by fisher girls in north-east Scotland in the 1880s.

16 variants are included in the Greig-Duncan collection, demonstrating the song’s popularity within Scotland.