Annotation:Jack at Greenwich

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JACK AT GREENWICH. English, Air (whole time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The song "Jack at Greenwich" was written by Charles Dibdin [1] (1745–1814), a popular and prolific songwriter renowned for his sea songs. The first stanza of the song (which tells of Jack's gradual disablements) goes:

We tars are all for fun and glee,—
A hornpipe was my notion;
Time was I'd dance with any he
That sails the salt sea ocean:
I'd tip the roll, the slide, the reel,
Back, forward, in the middle;
And roast the pig, and toe and heel,
All going with the fiddle.
But one day told a shot to ram,
To chase for foe advancing,
A splinter queer'd my larboard gam,
And, damme! spoil'd my dancing.

The song was written for Dibdin's three act entertainment The Cake-House, produced in 1800.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Dibdin & Hogarth (The Songs of Charles Dibdin), 1848; pp. 253–255. Manson (Hamilton's Universal Tune-Book, vol. 2), 1846; p. 15.

Recorded sources: Tundra – "Songs from Greenwich."