now called topical, and often not particularly chaste. Little incidents occurring on board ship that attracted the shantier's attention were very apt to be woven into his song, and sometimes these were of a character to cause much annoyance to the officers, whose little idiosyncrasies were thus made public. One of their songs, I remember, ran something like this ? "Oh, the captain's gone ashore, For to see the stevedore. Chorus : Hie bonnie laddie, and we'll all go ashore. The improvised and topical nature of the songs is consistent with what we have read of Black American work-songs, though we know from earlier that non-Blacks were also involved in this work by this time. "Hieland Laddie" as a lyrical theme is here again, but it appears to be a different song (i.e. different "framework") than in the other references. This one has the phrase "captain's gone ashore," which had been cited by Dana. It was also a phrase in "Grog time of Day," and the lyrical structure of this "Hie bonnie laddie" is similar to "Grog Time": Here's another reference to "The Captain's gone ashore"/ "Grog time of day" that I don't think has been mentioned. It is from THE EVERGREEN, OR GEMS OF LITERATURE FOR MDCCL (1850), ed. by Rev. Edward A. Rice. The first "gem" is entitled "Quarter-Deck Yarns; or, Memorandums From My Log Book", by "An Old Salt". The setting is the "clipper-brig Curlew" in the New York Harbor, ready to sail for Hamburgh. During the