Farewell and Adieu to You, Spanish Ladies
‘Spanish Ladies’, also known as ‘Farewell and Adieu’, is one of the oldest songs in our repertoire, and one of the most stirring. When the chorus arrives, with its ‘rant and roar’, there is nothing for it but to sing as loudly as you can.
It is also a song with a very clear sense of place, because it follows a real route up the English Channel, past landmarks that many of us can see from our own coast.
The Story of the Song
The song is sung from the point of view of Royal Navy sailors on a voyage home from Spain. In the first verse they bid farewell to the Spanish ladies they are leaving behind, because they have received orders to sail for England.
The rest of the song is a navigator’s tale. The crew sail north until they ‘strike soundings’ in the Channel, which means that a lead weight lowered on a line touches the seabed. The depth and the sand or shell on the bottom told the navigator exactly where they were, long before there were any electronic aids. The song gives the distance from Ushant, the French island off Brittany, to the Isles of Scilly as thirty-five leagues.
The ship then makes her way up the Channel, and the song becomes a roll-call of landmarks: the Dead Man, Ramshead off Plymouth, the Start, Portland and the Isle of Wight, followed by Beachy Head, Fairlight, Dover and the South Foreland. The sailors are almost home.
A Song With a Selsey Link
Selsey is not named in the song, but look at the order of the landmarks. After Portland and the Isle of Wight, the ship passes our stretch of coast on her way to Beachy Head. Selsey Bill juts out into the Channel right on that route, and generations of ships would have sailed past it on their way home.
As we mentioned on our main history page, Selsey is also named twice a day in the Shipping Forecast. So when we sing about navigating the Channel, we are singing about waters we know very well.
How Old Is It?
The song is thought to date from the late 18th century. The earliest record is usually said to be a mention in a ship’s log of 1796, during the years when Britain and Spain were allies against Revolutionary France, which would fit a Royal Navy crew leaving Spain for home. A ballad of the same title was recorded in 1624, but experts are not certain that it is the same song.
By 1840, the writer Captain Frederick Marryat described the song as once very popular but ‘almost forgotten’, and printed the whole of it in his novel Poor Jack to save it from being lost. Luckily, it was not forgotten, and it has been sung ever since.
Is It a Shanty?
Not in the strictest sense. As we explain on our main history page, a work shanty was a song to keep a crew pulling together. ‘Spanish Ladies’ is a naval song that was probably sung for pleasure, and it is said to be older than the shanties that were used on merchant ships.
That is also worth remembering for another reason. The Royal Navy did not encourage shanties, whereas merchant ships often relied on them. From the navy, the song later passed to merchant and whaling ships, where it was sometimes adopted as a shanty. It is now sung as one by almost every shanty group.
“We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors…”
Why We Still Sing It
- The chorus is rousing and easy to sing, so the whole crowd can join in.
- It takes you on a real voyage, with real places along the way.
- It is more than two hundred years old, and is still going strong.
- The route runs right past our own coast.
Every time we sing it on the lifeboat station apron, with the Channel just behind us, it feels as though the song has come home.
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 have a favourite verse or a different version of the song, drop us an email at contact@theselseyshantymen.co.uk!