The sailor's journal, and Jockey to the fair

One of the songs from Charles Dibdin’s Will-o’-the-Wisp (1795), “The Sailor’s Journal” is an amusingly cold recital of passing events told off by the ship’s bells that mark the half hours in cycles of one to eight over four hours, beginning at midnight. This text was particularly popular among American songster compilers, appearing in twenty-five songsters between 1797 and 1820 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).

Coverly included the full date of October 1810 with these two non-topical English songs. He had just opened his shop on Milk Street and may have been particularly proud of this broadside, one of the first from his new location.

Written in the 1770s, the pastoral English song “Jockey to the Fair” recounts a rustic couple’s elopement. The song became widely popular, first appearing in Vocal Music and then in sheet music, a country dance collection, as a slip ballad, and in broadside form (Vocal Music 26; Roud #3344; Twenty Four Country Dances 1780 3). The text appeared in thirty-four American songsters between 1788 and 1820 (R. Keller, Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources). It is still played for a traditional Morris dance in England (Barrand 123, 127).