Paddy, Lay Back

(Paddy, Get Back; Mainsail Haul)

Doerflinger collected his version from Richard Maitland, who was also recorded by Alan Lomax at Sailor's Snug Harbor, New York, in 1939. Maitland sang the song aboard ship in 1877 and heard it sung by Mobile Bay cotton-stowers around the same time. Another American-centric fragment exists in Captain Felix Reisenberg's Under Sail, 1919.

Doerflinger gives two related songs in Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman under the forebitter title Mainsail Haul. The performers are Capt. Patrick Tayleur and William Laurie at Snug Harbor, NY. These versions each tell very different stories about ill-fated enlistments. Doerflinger also points us to Baltzer, Bone, and Sampson for further reference. There are at least three notable distinctions between the forebitter Mainsail Haul variants and the capstan shanty Paddy Lay Back:

  1. The forebitter ship is usually the Oxford rather than the Hotspur.
  2. Paddy is not included in the chorus of Mainsail Haul, though the rest is similar.
  3. The singers of the forebitter add additional syllables at will, making the song difficult to work to.

The version by Jim Mageean and Johnny Collins on Coming of Age seems to have served as a model for other musicians. In their liner notes, they refer to the song as a British capstan shanty which began life as the Western Ocean packet ship forebitter Mainsail Haul.

Versions that mention the Chinchas are referring to the guano trade based out of the three Chinchas Islands, off the southwest coast of Peru. Peru began exporting guano from the islands in 1840, and the Chincha Islands War (Spanish-South American War) was fought as Spain attempted to re-established control over former colonies.