The Female Cabin Boy

‘The Female Cabin Boy’ is a ballad that circulated in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century. Printed versions were, for instance, published by Nugent & Co. in Dublin in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is a relatively well-known song and there are quite a few different versions of it with varying titles (e.g. ‘The Handsome Cabin Boy’, ‘A Maid That’s Deep in Love’, ‘The Rakish Female Sailor’, ‘Short Jacket and White Trousers’). The version performed on this record clearly circulated among Irish singers – a recorded version of the song by Maddy Prior, from 1968, with broadly similar lyrics, was taken from the singing of Lal Smith, a ‘Belfast tinker’. Mikey Kelleher of Quilty Co. Clare, and living in London in 1977, was recorded singing the song at that time and he stated that it was ‘over a hundred and fifty years old’. He knew it since he was a child, noting: ‘My old Mam she sung it and I only a baby’. The sea, in this song, holds out the promise of finding the narrator’s lost lover and also becomes a place where the female narrator can (quite contently it seems) take on a new identity as a ‘cabin boy’. This superb new version by Eileen Gogan with Neil Farrell re-interprets the narrative with a stunning vocal performance and sumptuous musical backing that evokes themes of the sea, desire, love, gender identity and cross dressing! Enjoy!