• Anyone know the roots of "jack-a-roe"???

    From Eric Nelson@21:1/5 to volkfolk on Wed Mar 31 10:13:40 2021
    On Monday, August 18, 2003 at 7:20:06 PM UTC-7, volkfolk wrote:
    <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!



    In 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 to
    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.
    Wow, 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
    Great stuff and quite risque when you consider when they were written
    Scot
    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 noticed
    it too. : )

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)