Sung By Women Too: Patrick Tayluer and “The Leaving of Liverpool,” Part 2

This is part of a series of posts about the retired sailor and shanty singer Patrick Tayluer (1856-1948).   Find the entire series at this link! This post is part two of an essay about Tayluer’s rendition of “The Leaving of Liverpool.” We continue to examine the importance of “The Leaving of Liverpool,” and reveal a fascinating new discovery: a fragmentary version of the song sung by a woman in 1942. Read on for more!

“The Leaving of Liverpool” in the Folk Revival

When William Main Doerflinger published “The Leaving of Liverpool” in 1951, he was already convinced the song was special, but he couldn’t have predicted how popular it would become. In the 1960s and 1970s, during the flowering of the folk revival, everyone knew “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Not only was it recorded by many of the important revival groups in Britain, Ireland, Australia, and the U.S., but the melody was adapted as a banjo instrumental by Randy Scruggs, while the melody and some of the lyrics were borrowed by Bob Dylan. In short, it was one of the most influential folksongs of the 1960s.

Doerflinger published the song in Shantymen and Shantyboys, a 1951 book of sailors’ and lumberjacks’ songs that is now considered a classic in the field. He published the version of the song he had collected from Richard Maitland, a retired sailor who lived at Sailors Snug Harbor, a retirement home in Staten Island, New York. (We heard a shanty from “Loveable Dick Maitland” in our previous post.) No other traditional version of this song has ever been published, so all folk revival performances of the song derive ultimately from this one publication.

The early progress of this song in the folk revival was described years ago by singer Louisa Jo Killen in an email to Derek Schofield, who kindly passed it on to me. In 1962, Killen (then known as Louis Killen) was asked to provide vocal harmonies for an LP record of sailors’ songs by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. The LP, entitled A Sailor’s Garland, was produced by American folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein for the Prestige International label. One of the songs MacColl sang was “The Leaving of Liverpool,” which he had adapted from Doerflinger’s book. This was the first revival recording of the song to be released, and the first recording of any kind since the second time Doerflinger collected it from Tayluer in August, 1942. Killen dutifully learned it for the recording session.

Killen soon began performing “The Leaving of Liverpool” on his own, and recorded his own version of the song in 1963, adding a concertina accompaniment. Soon after that, he taught it to Luke Kelly, an Irish singer living in England. Kelly taught the song to members of The Dubliners, one of the most popular folk groups in Ireland. (Kelly later achieved great fame as a member of The Dubliners, but at that time he was a solo performer.) Killen also taught it to his friend, Liam Clancy, a member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, the most popular Irish folk group in America. In 1964, both the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers released recordings of “The Leaving of Liverpool.” In 1965, Australia’s leading folk group, The Seekers, followed suit. By 1966, when a popular English version was recorded by The Spinners, the song could be considered a folk revival standard in Britain, Ireland, Australia, and America.

A final indication of the song’s popularity is the fact that it was adapted by Bob Dylan in 1963, and became the basis for Dylan’s own song, entitled simply “Farewell.” “Farewell” was not released at the time on an official Bob Dylan album, but Dylan recorded it several times, and it eventually appeared on The Witmark Demos. It was also covered by other folk artists, including the Kingston Trio. Opinions are divided as to Dylan’s direct source for “The Leaving of Liverpool;” the Clancy Brothers, Nigel Denver, and Louis Killen have all been suggested. In fact, Dylan probably heard it from all these singers, and all of them might have influenced his understanding of the song. Whichever direct source he used, however, the traditional version on which his song was based was certainly Richard Maitland’s—until then, the only traditional version to be published.

The Lost Recording: Richard Maitland’s “The Leaving of Liverpool”

Sadly, Richard Maitland’s recording of “The Leaving of Liverpool,” on which all the folk revival versions are based, has never been accessible to the public for listening, and the Library of Congress doesn’t have it. Of Doerflinger’s original recordings, only those that documented Patrick Tayluer originally belonged to the Library of Congress, because they were recorded with the Library’s equipment and on the Library’s blank discs. Doerflinger made the rest of his recordings between 1938 and 1940, on equipment he borrowed elsewhere, and they remained a private collection for over forty years. Meanwhile, at Doerflinger’s suggestion, Alan Lomax separately recorded Richard Maitland in 1939. Since this was years before Doerflinger published his book, almost no one knew of “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Lomax did not know to ask for it, and Maitland did not sing it for him.

The Archive did finally acquire copies of Doerflinger’s recordings of Maitland. In 1983, Doerflinger generously loaned most of his collection of field recordings to the Archive, which made reel-to-reel preservation copies for the Archive’s collections, as well as reference tapes to serve to researchers. Sadly though, there is one (and only one) Maitland recording that we know Doerflinger had, but did not include in this 1983 loan: the disc containing Richard Maitland’s performance of “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Why Doerflinger did not send that one disc remains a mystery. It’s likely that Doerflinger felt, since it was an extremely popular song that could be conclusively traced to his field recording, there might be some commercial advantage in having the only copy.

We know that before he died, Doerflinger did intend to lend this recording to the Library. While working here in the early 1990s, Joe Hickerson met with Doerflinger, and wrote an account of the meeting. “He told me he had one more disc recording he wanted the Library to have,” Hickerson wrote. “‘The Leaving of Liverpool’ sung by Richard Maitland.”

It’s not entirely clear why the loan Joe described never occurred before Doerflinger’s death in 2000, but AFC would love to find out. To have both recordings here, so that researchers could hear both for comparative purposes, would be an ideal arrangement.

A Newly Discovered Fragment of “The Leaving of Liverpool”

To recap a little of the story from part 1, in 1942, when William Doerflinger hired a shipping company to ship his May 1942 recordings of Patrick Tayluer from New York to the Library of Congress, the company broke several discs and lost one. The missing disc was number 18, and included “The Leaving of Liverpool.” When archival assistant Josephine Schwartz at the Library of Congress reported to Doerflinger that disc 18 was missing, Doerflinger asked: “Could you let me know whether a record of [“The Leaving of Liverpool”] is on any of the other records. There’s a possibility of a mistake in numbering, though it was carefully done.” Schwartz responded that there was no mistake, and Doerflinger re-recorded the song on the cylinder now held in the AFC Archive.

What neither of them realized was that there was in fact a very fragmentary version of “The Leaving of Liverpool” on one of the discs, just before Tayluer’s version of “Sacramento.” Most intriguingly, it’s sung by a woman. After Tayluer’s shanty, the woman’s voice returns, this time singing a fragment of “The Little Fish.” Listen in the player below, and follow along in the transcript.

Woman’s Voice:

“Farewell to Prince’s Landing Stage, River Mersey fare thee well,
I am bound for California, a land I know right well.”

Patrick Tayluer:

It was in the year eighteen hundred and forty nine, With me hoodah, and me hoodah,
It was in the year eighteen hundred and forty nine, A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!

Chorus: Blow, boys, blow
For Californ-eye-ay!
Ah, there is lots of gold, oh, so I’ve been told,
Upon the banks of the Sacramento

We’re going around the Horn and home again! With me hoodah, and me hoodah,
We’re going around the Horn and home again! A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!
Chorus

We sailed away one day in May, With me hoodah, and me hoodah,
And when we came out into the bay, A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!
Chorus

We got into the bay and then did sail! With me hoodah, and me hoodah,
We got into the Bay and then did sail! A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!
Chorus

Into the Forties soon we did arrive, With me hoodah, with me hoodah,
Oh, into the Forties soon a-we did bail, A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!
Chorus

Now we came to the edge of the Trades and there did sail, A with me hoodah, hoodah ay,
We came to the edge of the Trades and there did sail, A with me hoodah, hoodah ay!
Chorus

Woman’s Voice:

Spoken: Yell when you want me to stop.

Sung: There’s a place in my heart for the one I love best
And I still have…ok?
And I still have her picture tattooed on my chest
Hi-Ho….

Remembering that Doerflinger specifically asked Josephine Schwartz if there was any trace of “The Leaving of Liverpool” on the discs, one might wonder: why didn’t Schwartz mention this fragment to Doerflinger in her reply? Of course, it’s very possible she never listened to the discs at all. But assuming she did, she had another problem: no one but the Doerflingers had ever heard the Maitland recording, which until then was the only known version of the song, and the song had never been published. Thus, the only way she could have known she was hearing “The Leaving of Liverpool” would be to hear the telltale line “it’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me.” But, of course, the mystery woman didn’t sing that line, so Schwartz had no way to identify the song.

Another intriguing question is, of course, who is the mystery singer? Looking back at Doerflinger’s correspondence with Lomax, there was some talk that Bess Lomax, Alan’s sister, might come to the sessions to help operate the disc recorder. At the time, Bess Lomax (later Bess Lomax Hawes) lived in New York where she sang and played with the Almanac Singers, so she is certainly one candidate. Subjectively, the voice doesn’t sound that much like Bess, but I didn’t know her until almost 50 years later.

Still, there are other reasons to think it’s not Bess Lomax. For one, if Bess WAS at the session, she was presumably running the recording machine, since that’s why she was invited. The woman who sang, then, would naturally be talking and singing TO Bess to help Bess set the recording levels. Another reason is that it would be extremely unlikely for Bess to know “The Leaving of Liverpool,” since Doerflinger hadn’t yet transcribed or published it—it existed on only one field recording owned by Doerflinger.

Given these facts, there is, I think, one candidate more likely than Bess Lomax to be the mystery singer: Joy Homer Doerflinger, Bill Doerflinger’s wife. These recordings were made in the Doerflingers’ home in Staten Island, so Joy would naturally be there. Joy was very interested in folksong and worked closely with her husband on many projects, including his collecting. Joy was the daughter of Sidney and Louise Homer, respectively a composer and a famous operatic contralto, and the sister of Louise Homer Stires, an acclaimed soprano; her upbringing included singing and music training. On this recording we have a woman who was a strong singer, who knew traditional folksongs, and who specifically knew “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Moreover, she was in the house where Joy Doerflinger lived helping Joy’s husband in the way Joy habitually did. It certainly seems likely this woman was Joy.

Born Helen Joy Homer, Joy Doerflinger is an underappreciated figure in folklore and in American history. As an editor at Dutton, working under her husband Bill, she shaped and organized Woody Guthrie’s rambling manuscript called Boomchasers into the classic novel Bound for Glory, working closely with Guthrie and his wife Marjorie. Before that, she was an accomplished writer, traveler, and humanitarian. In 1938 and 1939 she spent more than a year in China, delivering aid to victims of Japanese aggression and natural disasters. According to the New York Times:

“She traveled some 15,000 miles through embattled China, going into the interior by running the Japanese coastal blockade and passing between the northern and southern Japanese lines. To fulfill her mission she used planes, trains, box-cars, river steamers and donkeys and, on occasion, traveled on foot. Once she drove a truck the 1,150 miles from Chungking to Sian, over steep narrow mountain roads, carrying medical supplies for mission hospitals. She slept in inns, on boards, in the backs of trucks, in sampans, in native huts and in caves.”

On her return, Joy published a book about her experiences, Dawn Watch in China.

After the recording sessions with Patrick Tayluer and her work with Woody Guthrie, Joy served in World War II. In 1943 she underwent training, and in 1944 she went to the China-Burma-India theater, ostensibly on another humanitarian mission. In fact, she was serving in the OSS, the precursor of today’s INR and CIA. During her time there, she was injured in what was reported as an accident. She returned to the United States in 1945 but died in 1946; the New York Times stated that the injuries she sustained in India contributed to her death at only 31 years old. For all these reasons, I’d like to believe the archive has preserved Joy’s voice.

What Can We Learn from Patrick Tayluer’s “The Leaving of Liverpool?”

In Shantymen and Shantyboys, the 1951 book that Bill Doerflinger dedicated to his late wife Joy, the collector did a good job of representing Richard Maitland’s ideas about “The Leaving of Liverpool,” and of his own research into the song’s background. But he never published Patrick Tayluer’s version of the song, or Tayluer’s fascinating opinions about it. By attending to Tayluer’s statements, we realize that many of the things we think we know about this song are true of only one of the two known traditional versions. In other words, decades of discussion and opinion about this song, in both the revivalist and scholarly communities, have led to conclusions that are, at most, only half right.

Let’s listen again to Tayluer’s rendition of the song. You can follow along in the transcript below the audio player.

(Spoken): This is the song that was sung by the men, when they were leaving the landing stage in Liverpool. The landing stage was about half a mile long, and it would hold anything from two to three ships. And every ship that was leaving there, both with emigrants and with passengers, they all had to land on the landing stage before they went on board of a ship.

Now, this song, it originated in the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine, and it was sung with gusto by the men as they were leaving Liverpool. It was made up by a man who was leaving his sweetheart behind him, and going out to ’Frisco in search of gold maybe, and maybe to come back with the ship.

(Sung): Now I’m leaving Liverpool, bound out for ’Frisco Bay
I’m leaving my sweetheart behind me, but I’ll come back and marry you someday
Oh, when I’m far away at sea, I’ll always think of you
And today I’m leaving Liverpool and the landing stage for sea

Chorus: Singing fare you well, my own true love
When I return, united we will be
For it ain’t the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me,
But, me darling, when I thinks of you

Now I know I’ll be a long time away on this voyage to ’Frisco Bay,
We’re off to California, where there’s lots of gold today,
I’ll bring you back silk dresses, and lots of finery
I’ll bring you presents of all sorts, and my money I’ll get from the sea

Chorus

Well, I wrote a note and dropped it on the landing stage for her
Telling her that I would pray for her, God knows, when I was at sea
I’ll go about my duties, always thinking about you
And when I do return, I’ll marry you, my Sue

Chorus

And when I’m homeward bound, I’ll write you a letter and let you know that I’m coming home
And I’ll let you know what I’ve done at sea, when I am bound to you
I’ll gather all my strings in, and I hope you’ll do the same
When I’m bound back to Liverpool, you know just what I mean

Chorus

Now, a strong westerly wind, it blows us home around Cape Horn for land
We’re coming back for Liverpool, and we’ll soon be hand in hand
When I pass the light ship, oh, this prayer I’ll say for you
May God bless the two of us and our happy union prove.

Chorus

(Spoken:) Now, these warps and ropes that we used to pull in, sometimes the warps were sixteen inches thick. They were known as “grass warps” to sailors, and they were heavy. And the sailors used to lead a rope along there to the afterdeck, and back to the forecastle head through a snatch block, and that is the song they would sing.

And when the ship was clear of the wharf, that was still known as the landing stage, the tug would take hold of the ship, and take her down the river, as far as Seaforth. There the tug would let her go, and she would set all her sails, and beat on, sail on, for Holyhead. And from Holyhead, there she would make the Irish Channel, and out to sea. Which sometimes was very hard, because mostly in the Irish Channel, the winds were always easterly, so therefore, you see, it made it a lot of passes, out beating and tacking the ship, as she get down towards the Mull of Galloway. Thank you.

The first thing that Tayluer’s version encourages us to revise is our view of the song’s function. Maitland’s version occupies a prominent position as the first song in chapter five of Shantymen and Shantyboys; this is a chapter dedicated to “forebitters,” or sailors’ songs that were not used to coordinate labor. “The songs in this section,” Doerflinger wrote, “were sung not for work, like shanties, but for entertainment.” “The Leaving of Liverpool” has thus come to be known as a forebitter rather than a shanty, an off-duty song rather than a work song.

Tayluer, on the other hand, describes in great detail the work that was done while the song was sung. The task was warping the ship, and Tayluer’s vivid description of the method and the ropes used for the task leaves little doubt that he was thoroughly familiar with the work. This description also identifies the song as a capstan shanty. Doerflinger was well aware of this, and considered it a significant distinction; on the original handwritten notes that he made to accompany the ill-fated disc 18, he entitled the song “‘The Leaving of Liverpool’ (A capstan shanty version).” Thus, one thing we learn from Tayluer is that “The Leaving of Liverpool” was, in fact, a sea shanty, at least part of the time.

This fact may also help to explain some of the differences between the two versions of the song. One striking thing about Tayluer’s “Leaving of Liverpool” is the fact that the verses seem, to some degree, extemporized. This contrasts with Maitland’s version, whose verses seem more fixed. In particular, some of Tayluer’s lines, such as “you know just what I mean” and “my money I’ll get from the sea,” are typical of the formulae found in songs composed in performance; they do not relate closely to the context in which they appear in the song, but each supplies a half-line of the song’s meter along with a common end-rhyme. By all accounts, sea shanties typically employed a good deal of improvisation; Frederick Pease Harlow, Stan Hugill, and other sailors who wrote about shantying agree with Doerflinger on this point, and we’ve seen it in some of Tayluer’s previous songs. Therefore, Tayluer’s free-form lyrics may be a reflection of the song’s function as a shanty.

It is also interesting that these lines that seem like free-floating filler both occur as the fourth line of a four-line stanza. Some folksong scholars believe that there is a relationship between “The Leaving of Liverpool” and a rarely collected Irish song called “The Leaving of Limerick.” One verse of the latter song runs as follows:

In the morning when I am going, I will take you by the lily white hand
And I’ll wave it oer my shoulder saying adieu to the Limerick strand
So farewell to the boys of Thomond Gate, It’s to them I’ll bid Adieu
Its not the leaving of Limerick that grieves me, but my darling, leaving you

Compare the last line of that verse with the end of the chorus of “The Leaving of Liverpool”:

“So fare thee well, my own true love, when I return united we will be
It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me, but my darling when I think of you”

The last lines are almost identical, which is largely what suggests the songs are related. The full song also mentions specific places in Limerick, Limerick Strand, Thomond Gate, the Assembly Mall, and Gabbott’s Grove, much as Maitland’s version of “The Leaving of Liverpool” mentions Prince’s Landing Stage, Lower Frederick Street, Anson Terrace, and Park Lane.

However, in “The Leaving of Limerick” “you” rhymes with “adieu,” while in “The Leaving of Liverpool” “you” conspicuously doesn’t rhyme with “we will be.” Also, in “The Leaving of Limerick,” there is no chorus, and the line about the leaving of Limerick is repeated as the fourth line of every four-line verse, while in “The Leaving of Liverpool” each verse has four unique lines, and this line serves to end the chorus. If one song was indeed based on the other, at some point a chorus was added which appropriated that fourth line, at which point the three-line verses of a song derived from “The Leaving of Limerick” must have been expanded to four lines. In this case, we would expect to find four-line verses whose last lines seem like filler, and this is exactly what we hear in Tayluer’s song. This all might suggest that “The Leaving of Limerick” is closer to the way the song was written and “The Leaving of Liverpool” retains traces of the process of oral adaptation.

Tayluer’s version may also cause us to rethink the song’s relation to history. His version does not mention Burgess, the David Crockett, or indeed any of the events recounted in Maitland’s version. It is far more general, and Tayluer’s own dating of the song to 1849 seems to be little more than a guess. However, the absence of the verses about Burgess does tell us one thing: versions of the song may well have existed in the oral tradition without any specific historical grounding. It is thus possible that the Burgess verses are an accretion onto an older song, which lends support to the idea that “The Leaving of Liverpool” could have developed from a song like “The Leaving of Limerick.”

Finally, the leaving-and-returning motif in the plot of Tayluer’s song, which is shared with “The Leaving of Limerick,” also has parallels in other songs he sang. Specifically, Tayluer gave Doerflinger a version of the shanty “Swansea Town.” Like his version of “The Leaving of Liverpool,” Tayluer’s “Swansea Town” is a textually loose song about leaving a town, missing a girl, and hoping to return to her. Let’s hear it in the player below. (In the transcription that follows, I haven’t written out every chorus, but Tayluer varies it slightly: the second time he sings the three lines, “You’re the one that I do adore” is sometimes replaced by “Old Swansea town one more.” The number of “old girls” sometimes varies as well. Finally, he sometimes sings completely different lines but uses the chorus melody, so I’ve indicated the chorus melody with italics.)

Ah, this song was created by a Welshman known as Captain Evans aboard of one of the most famous ships of the Hall line, the Eaton Hall. The captain, he was a great seafaring man, always writing and one thing and another, and making up songs. Being a Welshman, of course, it has been a great favorite amongst the Welsh Seaman of the world. And it is grown throughout the world, this song. It is sung by seamen of all nationalities since it was first originated. It was originated at the thought that he was getting married to a young lady whose father then happened to be the Mayor of Swansea. So you can quite see what the song is like as he sings it.

Now the Lord, made the bee,
And the bee did make the honey,
Oh the Devil sent the girls for to spend the sailors’ money.
And around Cape Horn we’ll go!
And when me money’s all spent old girl,
Then I’ll go round Cape Horn for more old girl old girl!

Chorus:
You’re the one that I do adore.
And all I’m living in hopes to see,
Is old Swansea Town once more old girl old girl! (2X)

Now I’m outward bound around Cape Horn
For ‘Frisco and afar
I’ll write you letters when I land there,
An’ you’ll know when I’m homeward bound old girl, old girl!

Chorus

Now when we’re homeward bound, old girl
I’ll buy you dresses of silk,
And I’ll buy you silk lingerie by the score,
So that you won’t reverie no more.

Chorus

Now the day we’re leavin’ the Farallones,
Bound home for Swansea town
I know ye’ll pull the string, old girl
And be makin’ shore for me, old girl, old girl!

Chorus

Now when I’m leaving ‘Frisco Town,
Outside of the Farallones,
I’ll write my last letter to you, old girl
And you’ll know that I’m homeward bound old girl, old girl

You’ll know that I’m homeward bound
And when I wander into the bay
You will pray for me day by day, old girl, old girl!

Chorus

Now when that we’re nearing the Channel old girl,
I’ll pray that you’ll be there to see,
My fine old ship a-laden with
A cargo of curiosity, old girl, old girl!

Chorus

Now we’re off of Swansea now, we are,
I can see the lights quite plain,
And I know that’s Ginny down by the beach
With her white apron all aspray, old girl, old girl!

It’s you Ginny, I’ll swear it is!
And all I’ve lived in hopes to see,
Is dear old Swansea Town once more, old girl!
It’s old Swansea Town once more
So take my ropes and make me fast
I’m in old Swansea Town once more, old girl!

The song was really sung by the captain, him being a Welshman, and he sung it in the feeling that he was coming back to Swansea to marry his so called mayor’s daughter and [she would] become his wife, so that he would be a married man. He had had games enough with the girls, and had spent all his money. Was never rich, not til afterwards. He became a very wealthy man, and he done a lot of good deeds for sailors, and especially in Frisco. When I tell some of you people that Captain Evans, he was the real man who stopped Shanghai Brown in Frisco, and he stopped a lot more slave traffic that was going on amongst the seamen by crimping. And we have men like that all over the world, but none so popular as Captain John Dennis Evans. He is known by every sailor on the sea. And today. His name is just as much thought of as it was the days, 18 hundred and 39, when he first wrote that song.

As we’ve seen before with Tayluer’s stories, the details don’t quite fit with history or logic. The famous Eaton Hall of the Hall line was built in 1870, so John Evans could not have written a song aboard her in 1839 as Tayluer says. The Eaton Hall had many Captains but never one named Evans, and I can’t locate a historical “John Dennis Evans” who did any of the things Tayluer credits him with. Finally, conventions may have changed, but repeatedly referring to your sweetheart as “old girl” and saying that “the Devil made the girls for to spend the sailors’ money” seems like a questionable courtship strategy!

More importantly for our purposes, though, Tayluer’s version of “Swansea Town” has several direct textual parallels to his version of “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Compare, for example, the following sets of lines:

I’ll write you letters when I land there,
And you’ll know then that I am homeward bound, old girl, old girl (“Swansea Town”)
And when I’m homeward bound, I’ll write you a letter and let you know that I’m coming home (“The Leaving of Liverpool”)

I’ll buy you dresses of silk (“Swansea Town”)
I’ll bring you back silk dresses, and lots of finery (“The Leaving of Liverpool”)

I know you’ll pull the string, old girl (“Swansea Town”)
I’ll gather all my strings in, and I hope you’ll do the same (“The Leaving of Liverpool”)

These make it clear that there is a relationship between Tayluer’s versions of these two songs. One might explain this relationship by saying that, in the manner of all shantymen, he was extending the length of “The Leaving of Liverpool” by importing verses or ideas that properly belonged to “Swansea Town.” Alternatively, scholars might say that the couplets about silk dresses, strings, and letters exist as “floating verses,” or “commonplaces,” that are shared by both songs; this is a phenomenon very common in the lyric song tradition, so it would not be surprising to find it here. A scholar versed in oral-formulaic theory might say that Tayluer, like a seafaring “singer of tales,” was composing in performance, filling out his lines extemporaneously, using formulae familiar to him. To determine which of these is the most accurate explanation is a research project in itself, which alone points to the value of Tayluer’s recording, and his full recorded oeuvre, for understanding the sea shanty tradition.

Patrick Tayluer’s version of the “The Leaving of Liverpool” survived through the resourcefulness and determination of William Main Doerflinger, and his conviction that it was an important recording of an unusual song. But it also survived due to the American Folklife Center’s commitment to preserving field recordings and serving them to researchers. Someday, we would love to present Richard Maitland’s version of “The Leaving of Liverpool” along with Tayluer’s. Until that time, we’re glad to present a few of our recordings of Patrick Tayluer here on Folklife Today. We’ll have more about Patrick Tayluer’s songs and stories in future posts—stay tuned!