She Wants the Hog-Eye Man
Thursday, September 19, 2024 (updated straightaway)
Comments: 4 (latest straightaway)
Tagged: music, hog-eye, shanties, language, vance randolph, stan hugill, gershon legman
A couple of months ago, I posted this on the sociality:
Every once in a while I listen to “Hog-Eye Man”, a fine sea shanty. Lots of versions online:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfMhy-Er-_Y [Martin Carthy]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCIM_shahkI [The Longest Johns]
But... it’s noted as one of the filthiest shanties ever collected.
Of course, every published and recorded version is cleaned up! Ass-cheeks and bit of double entendre are all that remain. (Maybe the N-word if you go back to 1960.)
https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/hogeyeman.html
I have been curious about the truly filthy original version for years. Never found it.
[@zarfeblong, Mastodon post, July 14, 2024]
If you follow that Mainly Norfolk link, you'll see an amazing number of quotes about how unprintable the original was, but nothing about what the unprintable lyrics actually were. Such a folk-tease!
This is one of the Shanties where authors seem to be obsessed about obscenity. Whall: “much of this shanty is unprintable”; Terry: “Of the infinite number of verses to this fine tune hardly one is printable”; Colcord: “None of the versions can be printed in anything like their entirety”; Hugill: “Many other shanties were just as obscene, and even worse.”
[Quoted from the notes to an album called Short Sharp Shanties Vol. 3, 2012. Performance on that album sung by Jackie Oates.]
So, cutting to the chase, I've found some of the original "unprintable" text. But not all.
Obvious content warning! The rest of this post will have lots of crude language. Mostly genitalia slang. Racial slurs. The F-word will be deployed.
Now, I know this is mostly a gaming blog. I sometimes go freewheeling off into folk songs and other topics as may grab my interest. I hope you're along for that ride! But a blast of sailors' language may be more than you signed up for. Furthermore, I'm syndicated on Planet-IF (an IF news aggregator) and going blue there would really be bad manners.
Therefore, just this once, the full text of this post will not appear in my RSS feed. (I had to tweak my blog software to allow this! Yay writing your own tools.)
If you're reading this on Planet-IF or your RSS reader, please continue to my web site for the full post.