These have always been welcome among English singers, and our nation has a plenitude of fine ones. In folk-song they generally take a narrative form and treat of adventures with pirates, and the like. Examples of this type are “Paul Jones,” “Ward the pirate,” “Henry Martin,” “The bold Princess Royal,” and some others. The pressgang songs might, in a sense, go under the heading “sailor songs,” and, certainly, the Chanty, but these are dealt with separately. “The Golden Vanity” is popular, so is “The Mermaid,” and both are well known to modern singers. “The Greenland Whale Fishery” is a fine example of a genuine whaling ditty (see _A Garland of Country Songs_), and “All on Spurn Point” is a narrative of a wreck. The charming song “Stowbrow,” or the “Drowned Sailor,” is chiefly known on the Yorkshire coast. “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter” is a story of a murder and a ghost, which follows the murderer to sea and denounces him. “William Taylor” (of which a parody exists) is fairly well known. “The Coasts of Barbary” is a fine sea song, and “The Indian Lass,” “Just as the tide was flowing,” “On board a man-of-war,” “Outward bound,” and “The bold privateers” are sea songs that are commonly known but can boast no great degree of antiquity. “Fair Phœbe and her dark-ey’d sailor,” and “The broken token”—the one being a variation of the other—are songs that fall under the heading “Love Songs.” XVII. PRESSGANG SONGS These have a greater dramatic effect than any other type before dealt with. In the eighteenth century, when the constant war with France demanded a supply of men to man the navy, the pressgang was a very vital thing in the lives of the humbler classes. The law empowered (under a press warrant) officers of the King’s Navy to seize any man, with few exceptions, and then and there remove him to a King’s ship to serve as a common sailor. Violence was freely used, and at dead of night whole villages were cleared of their male inhabitants, and husbands and bread-winners dragged away, never, in most cases, to return. Such occurrences were well within the memory of those only just passed away. With such happenings in their midst, the folk-song makers had no lack of thrilling and appealing material. The romantic element was not absent, for it was quite possible, as the folk-song generally makes it, for an irate father to bribe the pressgang for the removal of an undesirable young ploughman, and so put an end to the love passages that existed between his daughter and him, thus leaving the ground clear for a wealthier or more favoured suitor. Poetic justice is almost always satisfied in the song by the lady seeking her true love on shipboard, and, by the production of “gold,” reclaiming him. “The Banks of Sweet Dundee,” which is widespread and a universal favourite, affords an excellent example of the pressgang song. The beautiful song beginning— “’Twas early, early in the Spring My love was pressed to serve the King,”