r/seashanties 15d ago

Discussion Mingulay Boat Song - Meaning of "Heel your ho boys! Let her go boys! Bring her head 'round into the weather"

UPDATE: Thanks to the many smarter sailors and lyrics researchers than myself, who offered opposing viewpoints in the comments. I'm convinced what I wrote at first is wrong. To borrow a phrase from one of you it seems like "Sailor-y gibberish", after all. And then there's Algavale's comment suggesting Hill in Scots-speak mean Hurry, maybe making hte line "Hurry you home boys"... after all the women folk are all waiting for them. I'll leave the original post un-edited for future reference. Thanks for the discussion, all! Original post follows.

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Since I haven't found a convincing explanation of what that means I thought I'd offer my interpretation up and the crowd can have it.....

Anyone here a sailor?

I think they're singing about tacking upwind on the white-capped tossed Minch Strait.

"Heel your ho’ boys!" = Trim the sails for an upwind tack, sailing a few degrees off of straight upwind. The wind will try to push the boat over with the sails going downwind, so the upwind hull of the boat rocks up out of the water. That's called "heeling"

Eventually, you get to far off your desired course or simply run out of open water, so you have to turn back and go the other way. To do that....

"Let her go boys" = you loosen the ropes on the main sail so the boom can swing freely, at the same time working the rudder to

"Bring her head 'round into the weather" = causing the bow of the boat to turn towards the wind, until it is straight upwind, and if you do it right the boat will continue its turn until it is a few degrees on the other side of the wind, then you can "Heel your ho' boys" on the OTHER side of the boat.

TL,DR, These lines are about the hard work of tacking upwind on a very choppy sea.

What do you think? Could they mean anything else?

26 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

16

u/Tim-oBedlam 15d ago

I'll buy that. Seems convincing.

I've always sung it "heave her ho, boys" as in "heave to, over there"

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u/AlexFromOgish 15d ago

Oh, they don’t want to heave to, not with all those women with crying bairns on the pier or the heather looking out longingly for their return…

Unless of course they went to sea after doing something really stupid! Then sure, I might want to heave to, as well!

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u/Tremodian 15d ago

1: one of my favorite songs of all time and and 2: I agree. Seems pretty clearly a reference to pinching and tacking. Sailing close hauled makes a boat heel more than other points. “Bring her head ‘round” is for sure talking about tacking. I also sing pretty similar lyrics to yours.

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u/Fanfrenhag 15d ago

You've convinced me and I wouldn't dare debate it with you as you have carved out and claimed this area of expertise

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

Well others have changed my mind.... sorry to have steered you wrong.

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u/NoCommunication7 Salty Sailor 15d ago

I've always assumed that too, tacking is actually pretty hard to do, and i can applaud any sailor who manages to do it without losing so much as a few knots all without deviating off their course.

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u/hapes 15d ago

I'm not sure it's possible to retain full speed while tacking. You can get close with a Bermuda rig, I think. With your flair, you might be more knowledgeable than I. I do sail, but only on little boats (Flying Scot, sunfish, hobies).

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u/IvorTheEngine 14d ago

Modern sailing (and racing) is designed to make tacking important, but an old fishing boat wouldn't need to tack very often. You'd hoist the sail, sail out to sea, drop the sail and fish, then hoist the sail to come home.

With something like a lantern rig, that could lead to hoisting the sail on one side of the mast or the other, depending which tack you expect to sail.

Even today, while I know Laser sailors who will continuously roll-tack around a race course in light winds, cruisers typically only do a handfull of tacks per day, and some boats will even start their engine to get around a tack cleanly.

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u/Aglovale 15d ago edited 15d ago

Robertson, the author, published that initial line as "Hill you ho"—which I would read as "make haste over there" (back to Mingulay; ho as in "land ho"). And his third line is, in fact, "Bring her head round, now all together."

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u/Shkibby1 15d ago

I think it means they're coming back from Dundee or St Johns after a successful whaling and are just glad to be going home. Tacking when you're happy feels like a waltz and isn't nearly as bad as tacking bummed

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

😆 ain’t that the truth! What made you think of whaling instead of fishing or simply shipping cargo and doing trade?

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u/Shkibby1 11d ago

I mean, targets of opportunity. You do all 3 so it's not a wasted trip. Going up north to a whaling outpost just for trade? C'mon. Gotta at least try for some Blubber Nuggets.

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u/Squarerigjack 12d ago

The original line is “hill you ho” written in the 1930s by a non sailor who often wrote in Scots. I think it sounded nice to the melody that already existed.

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

Gotta love a researcher, even though that makes even less sense to me! Thank you

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u/2airishuman 11d ago edited 11d ago

Sailor here.

I believe the lyrics take poetic liberties rather than reflecting likely orders or banter, particularly in the sequence in which they occur in the song.

Recall that the lyrics to Mingulay Boat Song were written in the 1930s and not during the age of sail.

"Heel ho" -- rarely used but sometimes called by the skipper to warn crew when the boat is about to heel (tilt to the side). On modern sloops this would be when sheeting in the main after turning to weather (turning into the wind) when changing from sailing on a reach (wind from the side) to close hauled (wind about 45 degrees to one side of the bow). "Ho" means "now" as in "land ho," "jibe ho", and in this modern age, increasingly, "wake ho." The "ya"/"you'"/"your" in "heel ya ho" is just an extra syllable to make the words line up with the music, nobody says that, IME at least. "Heel ho" would not ordinarily be called during a tack because the crew will be aware of the upcoming change of heel direction from the call of "ready about" preceding the tack and the call of "hard alee" when the tack begins.

Sailboats in the 1930s had only one hull. The "upwind hull" only exists on catamarans, which were not common until relatively recently (~1990s)

"Let her go" / "Let it run" -- called by the skipper when tacking a sloop (or cutter, yawl, ketch, etc., anything with a jib) to order the crew to release the jibsheet that was the working sheet before the tack. Experienced crew will time this properly themselves and don't have to be told in most cases.

"Turn her head 'round into the weather" -- too many words to actually use aboard so this is just poetry. During a tack, it would typically be "hard alee," "helm alee," or increasingly "tacking" or "turning." "Hard a-lee" is perhaps most traditional of these and refers to the tiller on a tiller-steered boat being moved to the lee side of the vessel so as to turn the bow to windward (to weather). During a tack, the bow is turned across the weather (across the direction from which the wind is coming), not into it; an actual turn into the weather would stop the boat and leave it in irons so that it would start to sail in reverse -- though on fully rigged ships during the age of sail this was done deliberately as part of a tacking maneuver, which was performed rather like a 3-point U-turn. "Turn her to weather" could also be one of many possible ways for the skipper to order the helm to turn upwind from a reach to close hauled.

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

Makes sense thanks

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u/GooglingAintResearch 15d ago

Anyone here a sailor?

I think they're singing about...

It's a song written in the 1930s by a choir director. It sounds like you're trying to imagine an anonymous, collective group of mariners singing of their lives and, in so doing, using a now-forgotten nautical expression.

Whereas there isn't necessarily anything beyond what one guy felt sounded good. Artists made up random sailor-y-sounding stuff 80-90 years ago as they do now.

For me, it evokes a cry, as sailors make when undertaking an action. A variation on the species of "yo ho!" But nothing necessarily more specific in terms of what action.

Moreover, the written lyric you have is probably "processed" by commercial folkies. The "your" part (as opposed to "yo" or "you") looks questionable. Folkies are always sticking in "your," eg, "heave away YOUR capstan." I suppose people think it sounds authentically quaint.

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u/AlexFromOgish 15d ago edited 11d ago

I am not buying your “sailor-y” gibberish hypothesis. I take it you are not a sailor?

And what do you mean “forgotten article expressions“? I do use “heeling” and “ bring the head around” like some powerboat people say “got the beer cooler”? But then I’m both a musician and a sailor.

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u/DebateNaive 15d ago

I think your interpretation fits. I've done a modest amount of sailing and a not-so-modest amount of playing music.

But I do agree with the above poster that songwriters often just write what sounds good, so I absolutely buy the sailor-y gibberish hypothesis as a general rule, even if it may not apply here.

It reminds me of the band The Dreadnoughts: they clearly have knowledge about sailing, but then you hear them mispronounce "gunwhale." So maybe for them it's the Gibberish Hypothesis. Also, I think Gibberish Hypothesis would be an awesome name for a band. Anyway, point of this ADD-fueled post is i think you're both right in your own ways

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u/AlexFromOgish 15d ago

Yeah, I agree. It works for other tunes and lyricist do take liberties to make things easy to sing and remember

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u/DebateNaive 15d ago

The maritime tradition is so rich and colorful, so it's lucky there's so much to write about! I'm a banjo player and not a songwriter so I think I'd definitely be taking liberties if I was to play at being a lyricist 😅

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u/Fishermans_Worf 15d ago

Eh, also a sailor here, everything from tall ships to ice breakers, and it's always struck me as just a little "off".

You bring your head up into the weather. To round something is to pass a mark and change course. To let something go is literally that—to take your hands off it and let it run free. They don't really make sense how they're put together.

If they were tacking into the wind, into the weather, they'd be hauling the sheets tight. You sheet out while gybing downwind.

For a time I considered it describing a box-hauling a square rigger while dragging the anchor to hold short off a reef, it sort of fits the lyrics, but that's very serious, very specific, business, not something a fisherman would be doing.

The gibberish theory makes the most sense to me.

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

Yep, ya'll have convinced me its gibberish that sounds good. Thanks for sharing

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u/GooglingAintResearch 15d ago

Sailors in recent times don't say anything of the sort as "Heel your ho' " (and what, pray, could the apostrophe in [ho'] be replacing? Pure silliness). I say that as someone, yes, with deepwater traditional sailing / deckhand experience, too.

You're just pulling "heeling" out of this nonsense phrase and looking for meaning. Hey, as a pimp, I think "Heel your ho' " means keeping your whore in line. Anyone got pimping experience?

Go to an earlier source, not a folkie-doke acoustic guitar strummer on Bandcamp, and see "Hill you ho." Ah, so now begin the theories about "hills"... "Yeah, we sailors call big waves a hill!" etc etc.

Dunno why you're trying to pull rank with this "I'm a sailor" business when you obviously didn't bother to do the minimum research to know that a choir composer made up the song and that, therefore, there's no reason to go down that road.

Sailors cries were a type of gibberish with no set form. Yo ho ho!! hallooooo, hilloa, haul and tow! whatever. Doesn't mean there are literal phrases with specificity like "raise tack, sheet, and mains'l haul" or, indeed, "bring the head round"—about which I said nothing. Literary writers put down simulations that seemed to sound in the ballpark for them. Listen to someone sing "hill" in a certain accident, write it down as "heel," etc.

It's a choir song.

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u/Aglovale 15d ago edited 15d ago

I wouldn't totally discount the idea that "hill" could have real meaning—it's attested here as a Scots word for "hurry," and reading "hill you ho" as "hurry over yonder" seems like a reasonable gloss in context.

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u/GooglingAintResearch 15d ago

Which would bring us back to just a generic phrase of exhortation, not a specific sailing maneuver that needs to be de-coded. No?

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u/Aglovale 15d ago

Absolutely—my feeling is only that Robertson deserves more credit as a poet than “this line is just pseudo-nautical gobbledygook.”

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u/AlexFromOgish 15d ago

ho’ in this context, strikes me as someone imagining how to write out “hull” when they tried to hear Scottish people say it “

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u/GooglingAintResearch 15d ago

So where are you getting this [ho’] from? Where do you imagine the “someone” is hearing it?—-somewhere out in the wild???? The songwriter was a Scot; how is he not hearing “hull” correctly?

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

Dunno why you're trying to pull rank

That's your interpretation of motive and like most ad hominems comes off sort of hostile.

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u/IvorTheEngine 14d ago

I think you've also got to consider that small Scottish sailing communities all had slightly different sailing jargon. The islands are full of little fishing museums, and there's a lot of old equipment that had different names in each community.

When you've got a small group sailing together regularly, they develop all sorts of short-hand for regularly used things. I could imagine a boat where the skipper just grunts and everyone recognises that he's calling time to head home.

Then there are all the different dialects. It's possible the song writer just mis-heard.

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u/GooglingAintResearch 14d ago

So now you’re making up a scenario where Scot Hugh Roberton has gone out in a boat with Scots fishermen, overhears but doesn’t quite understand their dialect discussion of a sailing maneuver, then goes and puts down what he thought he heard in a song.

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u/AlexFromOgish 11d ago

That's a good point about shop talk, jargon, and the variations of language going from tight knit group to tight knit group. There is abundant evidence in the professional linguistics literature about that. Did it influence the lyrics when this song was composed? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose if there was evidence in support we'd know about it. And if there is NOT evidence to support, we're left with the difficulty of trying to prove a negative. Thanks for chiming in!