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The Banks of the Nile

[ Roud 950 ; Master title: The Banks of the Nile ; Laws N9 ; G/D 1:99 ; Henry H238a ; Ballad Index LN09 ; VWML RVW2/2/95 ; Bodleian Roud 950 ; Wiltshire 550 ; trad.]

The oldest recording of The Banks of the Nile that I have is of an unknown singer on a cylinder recording archived at Cecil Sharp House. It was included in 1986 on the Dambuster LP An Hour With Cecil Sharp and Ashley Hutchings and in 1998 on the EFDSS CD A Century of Song. The first album’s sleeve notes commented:

Very little is known about the cylinder recordings used on this recording. The original cylinders, from which they were taken, were found mostly unlabelled and in a dilapidated condition at Cecil Sharp House. They were made by Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams and date from the very early years of the 20^th century.

Sidney Richards of Curry Rivel, Somerset sang The Banks of the Nile recording made by Peter Kennedy on 2 May 1952 (BBC recording 23622). It was included on the anthology A Soldier’s Life for Me (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 8; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970).

Ewan MacColl, accompanied by Peggy Seeger on guitar, sang The Banks of the Nile in 1956 on their Tradition album Classic Scots Ballads. He noted:

This is one of the best known of the ballads arising out of the campaigns against Napoleon, and it is still sung by country singers in both Scotland and England. It has the mark of the broadside presses which helped to circulate both the hack-scrivener verses with which they are usually associated and traditional material as well. The air is a common one, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, and variants of it are to be found as far away as Australia. I learned this song from my mother and collated her verses with stanzas in John Ord’s The Bothy Songs and Ballads (Paisley, 1930).

The Young Tradition sang The Banks of the Nile in 1968 on their last LP, Galleries. They also sang it on 17 November 1968 at their concert at Oberlin College, Ohio, that was published in 2013 on their Fledg’ling CD Oberlin 1968. Heather Wood noted on the original album:

This is a song that all of us knew, but no specific version was used as the basis for the one recorded here; in fact, much of the arrangement developed as we were in the process of recording it.

She added on Mudcat in 2011: “Sandy Denny learned it from us but put her own inimitable stamp on it.”

LaRena Clark sang The Banks of the Nile in 1969 on their Topic LP of folksongs from the province of Ontario, A Canadian Garland.

Banks of the Nile is the only traditional song on Fotheringay’s self-titled 1970 album, Fotheringay. It was recorded at Basing Street and Sound Techniques Studios in spring 1970 and appeared also on the Sandy Denny anthologies Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1986), The Best of Sandy Denny (1987), No More Sad Refrains (2000), and A Boxful of Treasures (2004), and on the Island Records anthology Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal (2005). An alternate take—actually the very first Fotheringay song, recorded on 18 February 1970— was included in 2015 on Fotheringay’s Universal anthology Nothing More. A live version, recorded at the Holland Pop Festival in Rotterdam on 28 June 1970, was added in 2004 to the Fledg’ling CD reissue of Fotheringay and was included in 2015 on Nothing More.

Sandy Denny’s arrangement of Banks of the Nile was covered in 1994 by Vikki Clayton on It Suits Me Well and in 2003 by Linde Nijland on her album Linde Nijland sings Sandy Denny.

A.L. Lloyd sang The Banks of the Nile on the 1973 LP of songs and ballads of Nelson’s navy, The Valiant Sailor. He was accompanied by Alistair Anderson on concertina and Bobby Campbell on fiddle. This recording was also included in the French compilation album Chants de Marins IV: Ballads, Complaintes et Shanties des Matelots Anglais. Roy Palmer noted on the original album:

In this song a girl wants to go to sea with her man, who prevents her by taking shelter behind naval regulations. Other sailors must have been less persuasive or less obedient, since women were by no means strangers to navy ships in Nelson’s day. At the battle of the Nile itself, women helped with carrying powder to the guns; some were wounded, and one gave birth to a baby. Versions of this song continued popular for a century or more, sometimes being remade to suit other battles and campaigns, or other occupations, including sheep-shearing in Australia, as in the well-known Banks of the Condamine.

Jumbo Brightwell sang The Banks of the Nile between 1975 and 1977 in a recording by Keith Summers that was published in 1978 on the Topic album of traditional songs and music from Suffolk, Sing, Say and Play.

Roy Harris sang The Banks of the Nile on his 1979 Fellside LP of life in the lower ranks 1750-1900 through soldier songs, The Rambling Soldier which accompanied Roy Palmer’s book The Rambling Soldier (Penguin 1977).

Maggie Holland sang The Banks of the Nile in 1983 on her first solo LP Still Pause. This track was also included in 2007 on her anthology CD Bones.

Martin Carthy sang The Banks of the Nile on his 1988 album Right of Passage; this was also included in 1993 on The Collection. A previously unreleased instrumental version of The Banks of the Nile, scheduled for a forthcoming Martin Carthy CD, is on the 2003 anthology The Definitive Collection. Martin Carthy noted on his original recording:

As an avid stamp collector when I was a little boy I was, for some reason, fascinated by the Falkland Islands, and I remember first hearing the name Malvinas during the fifties and then approximately every ten years after that. It still astonishes me that during the 1982 war there was so very little, if any, public questioning of the basic notions which Parliament and the press propagated. The first war that England had watched on TV may have had something to do with it, and certainly I shall not forget the utterly toneless briefings of that MOD official night after night. I’m sure he’s always existed and that the armed forces have always made use of him. I’m equally sure that the laughing, cheering and banging of drums that saw off the task force was replaced in fairly short order by the sort of doubt, misery and torture to be found in The Banks of the Nile. This, like Eggs in Her Basket, is a song from the Cardboard Box, but unlike that song there is no clue to the identity of the singer nor the one who recorded him. Whoever he is, he is a fabulously inventive musician and I for one would love to know his name. I’m indebted to Malcolm Taylor at the Vaughan Williams Library for letting me hear it.

Pete Morton sang The Banks of the Nile on his 1998 Harbourtown album Trespass. He noted:

Someone said learn The Banks of the Nile, you’ll like it. I heard this version from Ewan MacColl; it’s the first version I checked and yes, I liked it. I’ll have to check out all the other versions!

Niamh Parsons sang The Banks of the Nile in 1999 on her Green Linnet album Blackbirds & Thrushes. She noted:

John Moulden told me this song dates back to around 1801 during the Napoleonic Wars and General Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s campaign in Egypt. I first heard Sandy Denny sing it and had a bet on with Fran McPhail from the Voice Squad as to which one of us would learn it first—he won.

Terry Yarnell sang Banks of the Nile in 2001 on his Tradition Bearers CD A Bonny Bunch. He noted:

This song takes its title from the campaign against the French under Sir Ralph Abercrombie in 1801 (who died in the battle). It has become a powerful anti-war song. This particular version comes from the singing of Tom Costelloe, know to his friends as Tom Phaidin Tom, from Spiddal in Co. Galway, who sang the song to me using an Irish air, which he put to the words himself. It would normally be sung in that part of the world to the tune better known as Skibereen. I learned a great deal from this lovely, gentle old man, and I am very happy to be able to pass on one of his songs.

Nancy Kerr and James Fagan sang The Banks of the Nile on the “English” CD of Fellside’s 2003 celebration of English traditional songs and their Australian variants, Song Links (James Fagan and Nancy Kerr also sang The Banks of the Condamine on the “Australian” CD). Paul Adams noted:

This probably derives originally from a ballad whose short title is The Undaunted Seaman published in 1690. This seems to have been also made over into a ballad about a sailor ordered out to Lisbon during the Peninsular War, a little before the Battle of the Nile. Nancy Kerr’s version is one recorded by Ralph Vaughan Williams from a singer named Harriet [Verrall] of Horsham, Sussex, in 1904 [VWML RVW2/2/95] . Roy Palmer in his notes to Vaughan Williams’ collection regards [Mrs Verrall] as an important source with a repertoire of over 50 songs. Her husband, Peter also was a singer. Many versions of the song have been recorded in Britain. Following the Battle of the Nile in 1801 the song was adapted to fit the army. It was further adapted and was used in the American Civil War as Dixie’s Isle. Somewhere in its transition it has acquired an anti-war sentiment. It seems to have been especially popular in the north-east of Scotland, where versions frequently admonish the listener “to remember Abercrombie on the banks of the Nile”. It is worth a look at the entry on Sir Ralph Abercrombie in the Dictionary of National Biography to understand why he should have been a local hero in northeast Scotland, and a man well worthy of remembrance.

Former Witch of Elswick, Fay Hield sang The Banks of the Nile in 2010 on her first solo CD, Looking Glass. Her source is Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Roy Palmer (ed.), 1983. This video shows Fay Hield singing The Banks of the Nile at the Bullingdon Arms, Oxford, in January 2011:

Jon Boden sang Banks of the Nile as the 28 January 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.

Dave Townsend and Gill Redmond sang The Banks of the Nile in 2012 on their WildGoose CD New Road to Alston. They noted:

The soldier goes away and leaves the one he loves behind, hoping for the time when they will be reunited and all wars will be ended. The story and the hope are as true today as when it was first written. From Keith Summers’ recording of Suffolk singer Jumbo Brightwell.

Andy Turner sang The Banks of the Nile as the 11 November 2012 entry of his project A Folk Song a Week. He commented in his blog:

British forces formed part of a military alliance which drove Napoleon’s French out of Egypt in 1801, and I imagine this song dates from that period. But in fact British soldiers fought many more campaigns in Egypt and Sudan over the next century and a half, so it’s a song which would not have lost its currency. And of course, on Remembrance Sunday, it is worth remarking that British troops continue to fight—and die—in a variety of “sandy desert places” to this day.

I first came across this song in the late seventies, in Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl’s book, The Singing Island, although it was several years before I learned it properly. It’s a version from Betsy Henry, of Auchterarder in Perthshire—actually, MacColl’s mother. I have anglicised it slightly, although that didn’t amount to much more than substituting ‘England’ for ‘Scotland’ in the last verse.

Faustus sang Banks of the Nile on their 2013 CD Broken Down Gentlemen. They noted:

We think we have used the version of this song found in Palmer, Roy (ed.), The Rambling Soldier (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977) as the basis for our arrangement.

Bryony Holden sang The Banks of the Nile in 2013 on her Sandy Denny tribute album Across the Purple Sky.

Hannah Martin sang The Banks of the Nile at the Gigspanner Big Band’s concert at Nettlebed Folk Club in January 2017. This recording was released in the same year on their CD Gigspanner Big Band Live.

Finn Collinson and Emma Beach sang Banks of the Nile in 2019 on Finn’s album Call to Mind. He noted:

A popular traditional song; I first heard this version sung by Benji Kirkpatrick with Faustus. It carries a strong anti-war sentiment, which to me is as relevant today as it was during the Napoleonic Wars, from which time the song is thought to originate. There’s a real defiance in the attitude of the characters, yet also a sense of fragility, longing and futile loss.

Lucy Cooper sang Banks of the Nile in 2023 on David Carroll’s Talking Elephant CD Bold Reynold. He noted:

Dating back to 1801 and General Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s campaign in Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars, one of the great anti-war songs.

The Sandy Denny Project sang Banks of the Nile on their 2024 CD SDP Vol Two.

Lyrics

Sidney Richards sings The Banks of the Nile

“Farewell, my dearest Nancy, farewell I must away,
I hear the drums a-beating and no longer I can stay.
For we’re orders out of Portsmouth Town and for many a long mile
For to fight the blacks and heathens on the banks of the Nile.

“Oh, I’ll cut off my curly locks and along with you I’ll go;
I’ll dress myself in velveteen and go and see Egypt, too.
I’ll fight and bear thy banners well, kind fortune upon thee smile
And we’ll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile.”

“Oh, your waist it is too slender, love, and your waist it is too small;
I’m afraid that you won’t answer me, if l should on you call.
Your delicate constitution will not stand the unwholesome soil
Nor the dark, nor the sandy climate on the banks of the Nile.”

“Oh Willie, dearest William. don’t leave me here to mourn,
You’ll make me curse and rue the day for whenever I’d been born.
For the parting of my own true love and the parting of my life—
Now stay at home, dear William, and I will be thee wife.”

“Oh now the war is over and back I’ll then return
Until my wife and family I’ve leave behind to mourn.
We’ll call them in around, my boys, and there’s no end of toil.
And no more we’ll go a-roving on the banks of the Nile.”

The Young Tradition sing The Banks of the Nile

“Oh hark! the drums are beating and I must haste away,
The bugles sweetly sound and I can no longer stay.
We are going up to Portsmouth, and it’s many a weary mile
To fight the blacks and heathens on the banks of the Nile.”

“Oh Willie, dearest Willie, don’t leave me here to mourn,
Don’t make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born.
For parting from you, Willie, is like parting from my life.
Oh stay at home, dear William, and I will be thee wife.”

“Oh, I’ll cut off my yellow hair and go along with you.
I’ll dress myself in velveteen and go and see Egypt too.
I’ll fight and hold thee banner, love, and fortune it may smile,
And we’ll gather love and honour on the banks of the Nile.”

“Your waist it is too slender, your features are too fine.
Your body is to weak, my love, to spend a long campaign.
The sultry suns of Egypt your precious self may spoil
And the sandy desert wastes on the banks of the Nile.”

“Oh, cursed, cursed be the day that ever wars began,
For they’ve taken out of England for may a fine young men.
Our lads are going to perish on that unwholesome soil
And they never will return from the banks of the Nile.”

Fotheringay’s Banks of the Nile

“Oh hark! the drums do beat, my love, no longer can we stay.
The bugle-horns are sounding clear, and we must march away.
We’re ordered down to Portsmouth, and it’s many is the weary mile
To join the British Army on the banks of the Nile.”

“Oh Willie, dearest Willie, don’t leave me here to mourn,
Don’t make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born.
For the parting of our love would be like parting with my life.
So stay at home, my dearest love, and I will be your wife.”

“Oh my Nancy, dearest Nancy, sure that will never do.
The government has ordered, and we are bound to go.
The government has ordered, and the Queen she gives command.
And I am bound on oath, my love, to serve in a foreign land.”

“Oh, but I’ll cut off my yellow hair, and I’ll go along with you.
I’ll dress myself in uniform, and I’ll see Egypt too.
I’ll march beneath your banner while fortune it do smile,
And we’ll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile.”

“But your waist it is too slender, and your fingers they are too small.
In the sultry suns of Egypt your rosy cheeks would spoil.
Where the cannons they do rattle, when the bullets they do fly,
And the silver trumpets sound so loud to hide the dismal cries.”

“Oh, cursed be those cruel wars, that ever they began,
For they have robbed our country of manys the handsome men.
They’ve robbed us of our sweethearts while their bodies they feed the lions,
On the dry and sandy deserts which are the banks of the Nile.”

A.L. Lloyd sings The Banks of the Nile

It was on a Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of May,
Our ship she slipped her cable and we were ready for sea.
The wind blew from the South-Sou’-West, to Egypt we were bound,
And the Portsmouth hills were garnished with pretty girls all round.

There I beheld a handsome maid all in her bloom of years,
A-making lamentation and her eyes were full of tears.
“Oh, I’ll cut off my yellow hair and sail along with you,
And I’ll dress myself in sailor’s clothes and I’ll see Egypt too.”

“Oh no, my dearest Nancy, sure that will never do.
Lord Nelson have commanded no women there may go.
We must stand to our colours, love, and hope that fortune smiles,
As we fight with bold Lord Nelson on the banks of the Nile.”

“Your waist is too slender and your fingers are too fine,
Your delicate constitution couldn’t stand the hot campaign.
And the sultry suns of Egypt your complexion they would spoil,
If you fought with bold Lord Nelson on the banks of the Nile.”

“The cannons they do rattle so and the cannon balls do fly,
And the silver whistles they sound out to drown our dismal cries.
But let a hundred days be brightened, love, and then you’ll give a smile
And remember Nelson’s victory on the banks of the Nile.”

Martin Carthy sings The Banks of the Nile

“Hark I hear the drum a-beating, no longer can I stay.
I hear the bugle sounding, my love, I must away.
We are called out for orders and it’s many’s a long mile
To go fight with all those heejuns on the banks of the Nile.”

“O Willy, dearest Willy, don’t leave me here to mourn,
You’ll make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born.
For the parting of my own true love is the parting of my life,
Stay at home, dear Willy, and I will be your wife.

“I will cut off those yellow locks and I’ll go along with you,
I’ll dress myself in velveteen and go and see Egypt too.
I’ll fight and bear your banner while kind fortune upon my smile
And we’ll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile.”

“O Nancy, dearest Nancy, with me you cannot go.
For our colonel has give orders that no women there can go.
You will forget your own true love when you are on the shore
And you’ll think of things that please your mind and new loves will please you more.”

Cursed be those cruel bloody wars that took my love from me,
And cursed be the order that put his boat to sea.
I fear the burning sun will shine his beauty to destroy
And his blood will seep in the grass that’s deep on the banks of the Nile.

Nancy Kerr sings The Banks of the Nile

“O hark the drums are beating I can no longer stay,
The bugle it is sounding, good love, I must away.
We’re ordered out from Portsmouth, it’s many a weary mile
To join the British army on the banks of the Nile.”

“O Willie, dearest Willie, don’t leave me here to mourn,
You’ll make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born.
I will cut off my yellow locks and go along with you,
I will dress meself in velveteen and fight in Egypt too.”

“O my Nancy, lovely Nancy, you know you cannot go.
Our colonel’s given the order no woman shall do so.
We must forsake our own sweethearts upon their native isle
For to fight for fame and glory on the banks of the Nile.”

Then cursed be these cruel wars and how the wars began
For they have robbed our country of many’s the fine young man.
They’ve taken them from their own sweethearts upon their native isle
And their bodies lie a-mouldering on the banks of the Nile.

“O but when the wars are over it’s home we will return
Unto our wives and sweethearts we left behind to mourn.
We’ll roll them in our arms, my love, until the end of time
And go no more to battle on the banks of the Nile.”

Fay Hield sings The Banks of the Nile

“Hark, I hear the drums a-beating and love I must away,
I hear the bugles calling me, I can no longer stay.
We are bound down to Portsmouth town, it’s many’s a weary mile,
To join the British army on the banks of the Nile.”

“William, dearest William, don’t leave me here to mourn,
You’ll make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born.
I will cut off my curly locks and come along with you,
I’ll dress myself in velveteen and go to Egypt too.”

“Nancy, lovely Nancy, with me you cannot go,
Our colonel’s given orders: no women are to go.
We must forget our own sweethearts all on our native isle
And fight for King and Country on the banks of the Nile.”

“Cursed be the wars, my love, and how they first began,
For they have robbed old Ireland of many’s a brave young man.
They’ve taken our own sweethearts all from our native isle
And their bodies lie a-mouldering on the banks of the Nile.”

“When the wars are over, it’s home we will return,
Back to our wives and our sweethearts we left behind at home.
We’ll roll them in our arms all for a little while
And go no more to battle on the banks of the Nile.”

Music Transcription of Fotheringay’s Banks of the Nile

Transcribed by No’am Newman

Intro: Am D Am⁷ D

* one could play the Am shape shifted up two frets (without barre) for variation

Acknowledgements

Martin Carthy’s version transcribed by Garry Gillard.