Ballad dump

[igenlode]

Archiving in their current form the verses that I've got so far, mainly because I've been carrying them around so much that the pencilled translations are starting to wear off (and for some irrational reason I find myself still reluctant to write over the various versions in ink...)

Our captain said time and again that all women were blighted --
Let just one set foot on your vessel, and woe would betide.
And Luck was the Lady to whom his allegiance was plighted;
Small chance he would ever consider another his bride.

Fair ladies and sweet signorinas all swooned with emotion --
Both handsome and strong, he could bend gold doubloons in one hand --
But dearer than all the world's women to him was the ocean;
No sooner repaired than our ship sailed away far from land.

But Nature will out, as it happens, one way or another--
Our cabin-boy jumped ship and ran, for he'd fallen in love.
So scarcely an hour before leaving we took on another,
Then sailed off on duty: "Fair winds and God with us above!"

(Chorus)
He was slender as a reed, and though not tall, his voice indeed
Could tug your heart with song, the way we hauled the braces --
Though he might not know the ropes, he had a sailor's dreams and hopes,
So we helped him learn the ropes, their names and places.


Two whole months of boredom, then fog where some unknown sail glided,
And see! on their flag there, a skull and two bones that are crossed.
"Oho," cried our captain, "again Lady Luck has provided --
"They're pirates, by ten thousand devils! Now all hands aloft!"

(Chorus)
But there the captain had it wrong: two days and nights we followed long,
In silent stealth just like the panther when she dallies,
And then we brought them down at last, held face to face and grappled fast --
That meant a fight, and so a sentence to the galleys.

Comments

[watervole]

Gosh, that's a complex scansion.

[igenlode]

The verse is pretty much straight ballad metre:
-v--v--v--v--v-
-v--v--v--v--v

But the chorus is something else, and I had to go through marking every single stressed syllable to fit them into the existing tune. The result of which is that I've ended up slavishly matching every irregularity in the original lyric because I just wasn't confident enough of the intended scansion; I'm sort of getting the hang of it now....

Был ТОЛок он, как колоСОК,
-v-- / ---v
И невыСОК, а голоСОК
---v / ---v
Вам ПЕСней швы серДЕЦ, как швы борТОВ проМАжет.
-v---v / ---v / -v-
Пусть плохо ЗНАЛ он такеЛАЖ,
---v / ---v
Душой морЯК, а значит — НАШ!
---v / ---v
И экиПАЖ ему поМОжет с такеЛАжем.
---v-- / -v- / --v-

(Writing it out like that I can see that the first couple of lines in each triplet are pretty regular -- the initial misplaced foot is clearly an irregularity, and moreover it doesn't happen on the next repeat of the 'chorus' -- but the third line is the massively complex/irregular one. The melody for that basically consists of a very long first half with unpredictable stresses in it, then a couple of short phrases always ending in a feminine rhyme.)