Blow the Man Down
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-11-25

Day 252 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

What do poets/writers do when they congregate? Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, and Padraic Colum sang folk songs. One cold winter night Robert Frost sang this song. 

Sandburg writes: "Robert Frost as a boy in San Francisco learned shanties from listening to sailors and dock-wallopers along the water front. He saved these tunes and verses in his heart. 

"A favorite with him is "Blow the Man Down". It has the lurch of ships, tough sea legs, a capacity for taking punishment and rising defiant of oppression and tyranny."

The American Songbag's version (via Robert Frost) makes more sense to me lyrically than other versions, yet the musical notation is lacking. I've used Pete Seeger's notation and Sandburg's lyrics, slightly adapted.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: 
Although a peaceful man, the singer's pent-up energy is released like a violent gale upon the city in which the ship docks. Trouble ensues.

Black Ballers were fast packet ships of the American Black Ball Line that sailed between New York and Liverpool towards the end of the 19th century.