Blow the Man Down

rdf:langString Blow the Man Down

rdf:langString Tune for Blow the Man Down

rdf:langString Blow the Man Down.ogg

rdf:langString Blow the Man Down

rdf:langString "Blow the Man Down" is an English sea shanty, listed as 2624 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The lyric "Blow the man down" can be interpreted in a number of ways. Some see it as a reference to a sailor being struck with a fist. Given the shanty's theme of being essentially "Shanghaied" by an attractive young woman, the phrase could refer to finishing one's beer before sailing—a reading supported by verses which imply that many who worked on the "Black Ball" did so reluctantly and had little experience as sailors. A third, somewhat implausible reading is that this phrase refers to blowing the ship (man-o'-war) over in a gale. However, this interpretation doesn't match well with the entire phrase: "Give me some time to blow the man down" since it is unlikely that a sailor would ask for additional time to have his ship capsized. This reading also reads "man" as a shortened version of "man o' war," and there are no other references to the phrase referring to a man-of-war, nor was any one of the ships in the Black Ball line a man o' war.