This is certainly the summer of collaborations for Windborne, and this one has an fascinating story behind it! You might notice that there are more than four voices in this arrangement–this is a piece that we are working on with the legendary David Coffin in preparation for the Rockport Celtic Festival in August in Rockport MA. (More info about the festival is here, and there are virtual tickets available as well–the lineup is incredible!) We’ve multi-tracked Will here as a stand-in for David’s lead voice, but can you spot David’s cameo in the video? 🙂
We had so much fun developing these harmonies and we hope you enjoy this rehearsal video, but the story behind the song is where the intrigue lies:
If you listen to this and say, “Huh, I thought the last line of the chorus was ‘There’s dawn beyond the night,’ but you’re singing ‘Thou must not come tonight.’ Where does that line come from and what does it mean?” you would not be alone!
There is a the widely known (and true) story that this text was found in the logbook of a Nantucket whaling ship (the Three Brothers in 1846). In 1964, Gale Huntington found the poem in the sailor’s log and printed it in his collection, Songs the Whalemen Sang. A few decades later, English musician Tim Laycock set the poem to music and recorded it on his album, Capers & Rhymes (1980) and it seems he changed the final line of the chorus to the text that most singers know. Given that “thou must not come tonight” doesn’t really seem to make sense with the rest of the song, it’s unsurprising that Tim Laycock’s line, with its message of hope, feels so compelling.
However, we were curious about that original line since we hadn’t heard it before, and we did a little digging into the song’s history. It turns out that the poem originally came from a novel published in 1844 in New York by G.P.R James, called Arabella Stuart: A Romance from English History, and in the poem’s context as a plot point in the larger story, so much more comes to light!
Arabella Stuart was a real person and was fourth in line to the throne during Elizabeth I’s reign. She married a man named William Seymour in secret (he was 6th in line for the throne), and the king, fearing that it was a step towards usurping his power, imprisoned William in the Tower of London, and Arabella in a house on the River Thames.
In the novel, they correspond via letters that William’s friend would toss to Arabella’s maid as he casually rowed by on the Thames. In one scene, Arabella is worried that they are being watched, so the maid stands by the river and sings Row On as a coded warning message to William’s friend that it is not safe to carry out their exchange of letters, and he should just “row on.”
So much more of the song makes sense in this setting, like the references to the river in verse 3 (“Oh like river would I glide / to where my heart would be”), as well as the second half of verse 2:
Bear where thou goest the words of love;
Say all that words can say,
Changeless affection’s strength to prove;
But speed upon the way
That line has confused many a singer over the years, particularly as “affection’s strength” (possessive) was miscopied as “affections strength” (plural) in the ship’s log. In the novel, the singer is attesting the strength of her lady’s changeless affections for William asking the boatman to bear Arabella’s words of devotion on to her beloved.
We were fascinated to discover that the poem was not originally about a sailor’s longing for home, but a love song with an interesting and specific history. That said, we still really love Tim Laycock’s line, “There’s dawn beyond the night,” particularly in this moment as we are all hoping to emerge from the dark of a global pandemic. We intend to keep singing Tim’s line, but this story felt too good to not share with you all!
If you want to peruse the source texts, here are online versions of:
G.P.R. James’s Arabella Stuart: A Romance from English History, pg 44-45 (1844) https://archive.org/details/arabellastuartro03jame/page/44/mode/2up
The ship’s log from the Three Brothers, pg 40 (1846) https://archive.org/details/ms220log238/page/n39/mode/2up
Gale Huntington’s Songs the Whalemen Sang, pg 290 (1964) https://archive.org/details/songswhalemensan00hunt/page/290/mode/2up
(each link should take you to the page where Row On is printed)
ROW ON
Melody by Tim Laycock
Clouds are upon the summer sky
There’s thunder in the wind
Pull on, pull on and homeward hie
Nor give one look behind
(Chorus) Row on, row on, another day
May shine with brighter light
Ply, ply the oars and pull away
Thou must not come tonight (or, There’s dawn beyond the night)
Bear where thou goest the words of love;
Say all that words can say,
Changeless affection’s strength to prove;
But speed upon the way
Oh like yon river would I glide
To where my heart would be
My barque should soon outsail the tide
That hurries to the sea
But yet a star shines constant still
Through yonder cloudy sky
And hope as bright my bosom fills
From faith that cannot die
Row on, row on, God speed the way
Thou canst not linger here
Storms hang about the closing day
Tomorrow may be clear
