Primary Focus - Autumn 1999 - Canals

 
WORKSHEET 1

Come all ye dry-land sailors and listen to my song
It's only forty verses so I won't delay you long
It's all about the adventures of this old Lisburn tar,
Who sailed as man before the mast aboard the Callabar.

The Callabar was a clipper ship, well-fastened fore and aft.
Her stern stuck out behind her and her helm was a great big shaft.
With half a gale to swell the sail she made one knot per hour.
She was the fastest ship on the Lagan Canal and only one horse power.

The captain he was a strapping lad, he stood full four foot two.
His eyes were red, his face was green and his nose was a Prussian blue.
He wore a leather medal that he won in the Crimea War,
And his wife was steward and passenger cook aboard the Callabar.

One day the captain came to me, he says my lad, says he,
Would you like to be a sailor and roam the raging sea,
Would you like to be a sailor on foreign seas to roll,
For we're under orders for Aghalee with half a ton of coal.

On leaving the Abercorn Basin the weather it was sublime,
And passing under the old Queen's Bridge we heard the Albert chime,
But going up the gasworks straight, a very dangerous part,
We ran aground on a lump of coal that wasn't marked on the chart.

Then all became confusion and stormy winds did blow.
The bosun slipped on an orange peel and fell into the hold below,
More steam more steam the captain cried, for we are sorely pressed,
But the engineer from the bank replied, the old horse is doing its best.

A farmer on his way to work he heard us loudly roar,
And he threw us the end of his gallusses and pulled us all ashore,
I'm done with ocean rambling and roaming the raging main,
And the next time I'll go to Lisburn, bejabbers I'll take the train.