Roll the Cotton Down (song)

Stan Hugill provides the following information in Shanties from the Seven Seas:

This hoosier version probably stemmed from the Negro one. The white cotton-stowers used it for screwing the huge bales of cotton into place down in the dark holds of the cotton droghers, heaving at the levers of the screws…Once the cotton season was over these men would ship "foreign," taking these "cotton chants" with them for use at halyard and capstan, hence a new infusion of shanty blood – coloured blood – entered into the field, which perhaps up till then had been dominated mainly by Irish-shaped work-songs.

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Come roll the cotton down, my boys
Ch: Roll the cotton down;
Come roll the cotton down, my boys
Ch: O roll the cotton down!

Come hither, all you negro boys,
Come hither, all you negro boys

A dollar a day is a white man's pay,
A dollar a day is a white man's pay

Ten dollars a day is a black man's pay
Ten dollars a day is a black man's pay

The white man's pay is rather high,
The white man's pay is rather high

The black man's pay is rather low,
The black man's pay is rather low

Around Cape Horn we're bound to go,
Around Cape Horn we're bound to go

So stretch it aft and start a song,
So stretch it aft and start a song

From A Sailor's Garland by John Masefield (1906)

Metadata

Roud Index: 2627

DT Index: 5041, 5042

Hauling shanty, Halyard shanty

Selected recordings:

Foc'sle Songs and Shanties Paul Clayton and The Foc'sle Singers

External links:

Royston Clifford recorded by Grainger (1908)

D. M. Kerr recorded by Grainger (1908)

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