Lady Franklins Lament We were homeward bound one night on the deep Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep I dreamed a dream and I thought it true Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew With a hundred seamen he sailed away To the frozen ocean in the month of May To seek a passage around the pole Where we poor sailors do sometimes go Through cruel hardships they vainly strove Their ships on mountains of ice were drove Only the Eskimo with his skin canoe Was the only one that ever came through In Baffins Bay where the whale fish blow The fate of Franklin no man may know The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell Lord Franklin alone with his sailors do dwell And now my burden it gives me pain For my long-lost Franklin I would cross the main Ten thousand pounds I would freely give To know on earth, that my Franklin do live Lady Franklins Lament first appeared as a broadside ballad around 1850. Found in Canada, Scotland, and Ireland, the song was first published in 1878 in Eighteen Months on a Greenland Whaler by Joseph P. Faulkner. The song may have been inspired by the traditional Irish ballad The Croppy Boy, which is set during the 1798 rising. Versions of that ballad first appeared shortly after the rising sung by street peddlars. Several broadside versions of the ballad were printed. These typically include the phrase 500 Guineas or one thousand pounds, and are also sung to the melody of the traditional Irish air Cailín Óg a Stór. These versions of The Croppy Boy may have been the basis for the later ballad, Lady Franklins Lament. The song consists of five verses using the AABB rhyme scheme. The song is told from the perspective of a sailor onboard a ship. He tells of a dream he had of Lady Jane Franklin speaking of the loss of her husband, Lord John Franklin, who disappeared in Baffin Bay during his 1845 expedition through the Arctic Ocean in search of a Northwest Passage sea route to the Pacific ocean. Following his disappearance, Lady Franklin sponsored seven expeditions to find some trace of her husband. Through her sponsorship, influence, and offering of sizeable rewards, she supported numerous other searches. Her efforts brought great publicity to the expeditions fate. In 1854, Scottish explorer Dr. John Rae discovered evidence through talking to Inuit hunters that the expedition wintered in 1845–46 on Beechey Island. His ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus, became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and never sailed again. According to a note later found on that island, Franklin died there on 11 June 1847. The exact location of his grave remains unknown. cbc.ca/news/politics/lost-franklin-expedition-ship-found-in-the-arctic-1.2760311
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:36:09 +0000
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