In Amsterdam There Dwelt A Maid
‘Maid of Amsterdam’ is one of the great sing-along shanties, and a firm favourite at our performances. It is also known as ‘A-Roving’, ‘Amsterdam’ or simply ‘The Amsterdam Maid’, and it has been sung in one form or another by sailors for hundreds of years.
The chorus is the part everyone remembers: ‘I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.’ It is a good thing that it is easy to learn, because we expect the audience to sing it with us!
The Story of the Song
The song is a cautionary tale. A sailor ashore in Amsterdam meets a young woman, spends an evening in her company and ends up the worse off for it. Verse by verse, the story gets bolder, and the sailor’s adventure ends in regret, which explains the chorus: he will go no more a-roving.
The original sailors’ versions were very bawdy indeed, and the verses most often heard today have usually been tidied up. Folk song collectors printed cleaner versions for the drawing room and the classroom, and we sing a version that is suitable for all ages. Rest assured that you will not need to cover the children’s ears.
How Old Is It?
The honest answer is that nobody knows. Some people trace the song back to around the year 1600, and have linked it to a song in a play by the Elizabethan writer Thomas Heywood, which has a similar refrain. Other experts are not convinced, and Stan Hugill, the last of the great working shantymen and author of Shanties from the Seven Seas, thought a link was most unlikely.
What we can say is that the song was well established in the age of sail. A version, with the familiar opening line about the maid of Amsterdam, was printed in the American collection Naval Songs in 1883, and the song has since been collected in many forms on both sides of the Atlantic. There is also a Norwegian shanty called ‘Go Roving’ that is closely related, which shows how widely the song and its tune travelled.
A Pump Shanty
Hugill tells us that ‘A-Roving’ was originally sung at the pumps and at the old-fashioned windlass. Wooden ships leaked, and the pumps had to be worked by hand, often for hours at a time, so a song with a steady beat was a great help.
The song follows the ‘Call and Response’ pattern we described on our main history page: the shantyman sings the verse, and the crew come in on the chorus together, pumping in time. Because the chorus is so long and so tuneful, it is also a natural fit for the capstan, and some versions were sung there too.
Many Versions, Many Verses
Hugill printed several different versions of the song, and many more exist. The tune and the chorus stay roughly the same, but the verses vary from ship to ship and from shantyman to shantyman. A good shantyman could keep on adding verses for as long as the work needed to be done, and some versions even end with the sailor aboard a ship bound round Cape Horn.
“A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin, I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.”
Why We Still Sing It
- The chorus is easy to pick up, even if you have never sung a shanty before.
- It has a good story and a bit of cheek, which sailors always enjoyed.
- It is a real working song, as it was sung at the pumps by crews many generations ago.
- It has a long, rolling chorus that sounds even better with a big group of voices.
When we sing ‘Maid of Amsterdam’, we like to think we are keeping alive a song that sailors would have known well, even if we have swapped the pumps for the lifeboat station apron.
Come and hear it for yourself. Have a look at our Performances page to see where we will be next, and don’t forget to sing along. If you know a verse we haven’t heard, drop us an email at contact@theselseyshantymen.co.uk!