Annotation:Tom Bowling
X: 1 T: TOM BOWLING Q: "Andante" %R: march, reel B: "Edinburgh Repository of Music" v.1 p.78 #2 F: http://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/pageturner.cfm?id=87776133 Z: 2015 John Chambers <jc:trillian.mit.edu> N: The next-to-last bar has 3 beats rather than 2. M: 2/4 L: 1/16 K: F c2 |\ f2f2 B2(dc) | c3d/B/ (BA) (GF) |B2A2 (d2cd/B/) | A3B/A/ G2c2 | f2f2 B2d>c | (c3d/B/) (BA) GF |B2A2 G3A | F4 z2F2 |c3c d2e2 | f2{a}g2 (fe)(dc) |f3f {e}d2 c2dB | A3B/A/ G2c2 |f2f2 B3d/c/ | c2dB BA GF |B2A2G2A2 | B3c/d/ c2 zB |(Ac) (fa) {a}g4 {f}e4 | {e}f4 z2 |]
TOM BOWLING. English, Air (whole time). A song composed by Wikipedia:Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), a very popular English musical dramatist of his era, in memory of his older brother Thomas Dibdin. Charles was the 18th son of a silver-maker, understandably driven to poverty, and Tom was some 29 years older and something of a father-figure to Charles. The elder brother had been an East India trade sea-captain, killed when his ship was struck by lightning. The song (also called “The Sailor’s Epitaph”) first appeared in The Oddities, performed at The Lyceum Theatre in 1789. The words to the song begin:
Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of the crew;
No more he’ll hear the tempest howling
For death has broach’d him to.
His form was of the maliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft,
Faithful, below he did his duty,
But now he’s gone aloft.
It is well-recorded that the song was American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s favourite song.
