The Handsome Cabin Boy

[pmramey@ix.netcom.com (Paul M. Ramey )]

There's a thread on alt.fan.frank-zappa regarding "The Handsome Cabin
Boy" (an instrumental version of which is on the new posthumous Zappa
album THE LOST EPISODES). Kate's version is discussed, so I thought I'd
forward bits of the discussion to gaffa - Paul (PMRamey@ix.netcom.com)
 
*****

GimpoMan <gimpoman@atl.mindspring.com> pooted forth:

FZ quoted in the LE book: "'Handsome Cabin Boy' is a song about the
bogus certification of sailors. A girl goes on a boat dressed as a boy,
and gets pregnant. The lyrics are all about who done it."

Does anyone out there know what these lyrics are, by any chance?

*****
Biffyshrew@aol.com replied:

I don't quite agree with Zappa's spin on the lyrics: there's not much
question of who done it.  The question is, did the old salt know the
chick WAS a chick when he first proposed that she "eat his biscuit"???

Anyway, these are the lyrics as recorded by Ewan MacColl:

It's of a pretty female as you may understand
Her mind being bent for rambling unto some foreign land
She dressed herself in sailor's clothes, or so it does appear
And she hired with a captain to serve him for a year

The captain's wife, she being on board, she seemed in great joy
To think her husband had engaged such a handsome cabin boy
And now and then she'd slip him a kiss and she would have liked to toy
But it was the captain found out the secret of the handsome cabin boy.

Her cheeks they were like roses and her hair rolled in a curl
The sailors often smiled and said he looked just like a girl
But eating of the captain's biscuit her color did destroy
And the waist did swell of pretty Nell, the handsome cabin boy.

It was in the Bay of Biscay our gallant ship did prowl
One night among the sailors was a fearful flurry and row
They tumbled from their hammocks for their sleep it did destroy
And they swore above the groaning of the handsome cabin boy.

"Oh doctor, dear old doctor," the cabin boy did cry,
"Me time is come, I am undone, and I shall surely die!"
The doctor come a-running and smiling at the fun
To think a sailor lad should have a daughter or a son!

The sailors, when they saw the joke, they all did stand and stare
The child belonged to none of them, they solemnly did swear.
And the captain's wife, she says to him, "My dear, I wish you joy:
For it's either you or me has betrayed the handsome cabin boy!"

So each man took his tot of rum and he drank success of trade
And likewise to the cabin boy who was neither man nor maid
Here's hoping the wars don't rise again, our sailors to destroy
And here's hoping for a whole lot more like the handsome cabin boy!

Zappa played MacColl's rendition during the interview he did with Tom
Donahue on KSAN (San Francisco) in 1968.  The song was been recorded by
Kate Bush (B-side of "The Hounds Of Love," 1985), who not only claimed
composer credit, but also left out the crucial second verse (which lets
you know that the captain's wife, as well as the captain, was hot for
the cabin boy), the less essential final verse.

*****
sandell@sparky.parmly.luc.edu (Gregory J. Sandell) wrote:

I've always found those last two lines (of Kate's version) delightfully
ambiguous.  The idea that the wife was also hot for the cabin boy is
not a bad theory,although, like about any other interpretation, isn't
borne out by any other supporting evidence in the song. 

*****
And jhenley@mail.utexas.edu says:

This is evidently the conclusion one would draw from Kate
Bush's version of the song.  See Biffyshrew's post in which he
quotes the entire song as sung by Ewan MacColl, including 
two verses cut from Bush's. Methinks that Kate's version isn't giving
the whole story.