<tnew...@rr.nyc.com> wrote in message
news:v6u2kv4291t23nuue...@4ax.com...
I was reading the following web page: http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/jamtwo.html and was surprised at the similaraities to the lyrics to Jack-a-Roe (Calico Jack???) .
Is there a floklorist out there who can confirm or deny that the
lyrics were contrived and changed a bit from this part of history?
HEre is an excerpt from the web page.......
My personal, all-time favorite Irish personality is a woman by the
name of Anne Bonney, the illegitimate daughter of an Irish attorney
from County Cork. He emigrated to Carolina, where Anne married a
sailor named John Bonney. They sailed to New Providence in the
Bahamas, where Annie fell in love with a dashing, handsome freebooter
named Calico Jack Rackham. Jack paid off Anne's husband, but when the governor of the island heard this he would have none of it, ordering
that Anne be publicly flogged and that Jack wield the lash!
The couple's response was to put together a crew of ex-pirates and
steal a sloop. For several years, they were the bane of ships in the Caribbean, using Jamaica as their base. Anne, always in disguise in
men's clothing, took a liking to another young sailor, who, to her amazement, turned out to be another woman. This was Mary Reid, an
English girl who sought adventure as a foot soldier in Flanders and on board a British man-o-war. While en route to the Dutch West Indies,
her ship was captured by Calico Jack, who was so impressed by her
swordplay that he offered her a berth on his ship. History does not
record what she thought of his swordplay!
Wow, your post is from 2003, and it's 2021 now....I was just realizing the lyrical connections between Jack-A-Roe and Handsome Cabin Boy as I download some sick-ass Jerry Garcia Band soundboards, and googled it...sure enough, you and others have noticedIn 1720, Rackham was surprised in Jamaica, at Negril and surrendered without a fight. On the morning of his execution, Anne Bonney visited
him and proclaimed, "I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought
like a man, you would not now be hanged like a dog!" He was hanged at Gallows Point in Palisadoes, and his body billeted at a place now
known as Rackham's Reef, on the way to Lime Cay.
Annie and Mary, though both found guilty of piracy and sentenced toWow, interesting stuff. Check out "Handsome Cabin Boy" on Garcia/Grisman's Shady Grove for more genderbending, cross dressed female, maritime exploits. Jack a Roe is also on this album, as well as some other sea shantys
death, escaped the hangman's noose by "pleading their belly," in other words, they were both pregnant by Calico Jack. Anne returned to
Carolina, but Mary died of yellow fever and is buried in St.
Catherine.
Great stuff and quite risque when you consider when they were written
Scot
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