The Eddystone Light
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!One night as I was trimming the glim And singing a verse from the evening hymn A voice from the starboard shouted "Ahoy!" And there was me mother, sitting on a buoy!
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!"Oh what has become of me children three?" Me mother then she asked of me "One was exhibited as a talking fish The other was served on a chafing dish!"
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!Then the phosphorus flashed in her seaweed hair I looked again and me mother wasn't there But her voice came echoing back from the night "To Hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light!"
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!
The song originated as a British music hall piece called “The Man at the Nore,” credited to James London and performed by Arthur Lloyd, one of the biggest stars of the early music hall. It first appeared in publisher announcements in 1866. The Nore was a lightship at the mouth of the Thames Estuary, but American versions shifted the setting to the more dramatic Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth. The Eddystone Rocks were the site of the first offshore lighthouse ever constructed, built in 1698, and the lighthouse there became the most famous in the British Isles.
The song was largely forgotten until the 1950s folk revival, when it was taken up by the Weavers and Burl Ives, whose recordings established the “Eddystone Light” version as the standard. Cyril Tawney assembled his version from two traditional West Country variants and recorded it in 1963.
A Wikipedia article on this song likely exists at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eddystone_Light.