I thought it was a Newfoundland tune….

I’ve known the tune We’ll rant and we’ll roar for some time, and when I was playing a lot of button accordion, I played this one quite a bit. It’s been repopularized by Great Big Sea.

I just assumed it was a Newfoundland folk tune, and I suppose it is, since folk tunes evolve and get adapted from place to place. What I hadn’t realized is that it is also a whaling tune called Spanish Ladies – really the same tune with a different location. Here is Paul Clayton, whose recordings of sailing and whaling tunes are just fantastic.  Clayton was a Greenwich village folky in the 50s and 60s, part of the great folk music scare. Sadly he took his own life in 1967