Scott's Northern Party: The Scott Memorial Lecture

Making music on the march: sledging songs of the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration

“…/ Come! Tauten out that thong [sledging trace] / And heave the load along’ (Priestley 1960, 1974). At this point, the main focus is the friendly rivalry between the two parties, Campbell's and the main base men at Cape Evans, and particularly the Eastern Party's attempts to increase what they saw as their inadequate supplies: ‘There's twenty-four are going West and only six go East / But though in numbers least / We really won't be fleeced.’ Like ‘Summer sledging,’ these verses are full of nicknames and insider knowledge: it is hard to understand the third verse, for example, without knowing that crates destined for the Eastern Party were marked with a green stripe of paint, and those for the Ross Island party with a red stripe (Priestley 1960).…”

“…One example is ‘The Northern Party's sledging song,’ found in the diaries of geologist Raymond Priestley from the British Antarctic (or Terra Nova ) expedition 1910–1913, and subsequently included as an appendix to the 1974 edition of his narrative of the expedition, Antarctic adventure . In a version of the song he transcribed and annotated in 1960, Priestley notes that the lyrics were sung to the tune of a ‘contemporary Music Hall song the first line of which was “Jim O'Shea was cast away upon a desert isle”, and [with a] chorus [beginning] “I've rings on my fingers and bells on my toes”’ (Priestley 1960). This music hall number, which is more commonly known by the title ‘I've got rings on my fingers’ (Fig.…”

“…Tauten out that thong [sledging trace] / And heave the load along’ (Priestley 1960, 1974). At this point, the main focus is the friendly rivalry between the two parties, Campbell's and the main base men at Cape Evans, and particularly the Eastern Party's attempts to increase what they saw as their inadequate supplies: ‘There's twenty-four are going West and only six go East / But though in numbers least / We really won't be fleeced.’ Like ‘Summer sledging,’ these verses are full of nicknames and insider knowledge: it is hard to understand the third verse, for example, without knowing that crates destined for the Eastern Party were marked with a green stripe of paint, and those for the Ross Island party with a red stripe (Priestley 1960). Additional material was written during the time at Cape Adare: Priestley added a verse (about the meeting with Amundsen, the ‘Norski’) in April 1911 (Priestley 1911a [18 April]); and Petty Officer Frank Browning contributed another sixteen lines in October that year (Priestley 1911b [25 October]), although Priestley noted later that these were ‘never sung,’ and did not incorporate them into his version of the song (1960).…”