Yea Ho, Little Fish
Come all ye bold fishermen, listen to me;
I'll sing you a song of the fish in the sea.
Yea ho, little fish, don't cry, don't cry;
Yea ho, little fish, you be a whale by and by.
You go to fish school and can learn from a book
How not to get caught on the fisherman's hook.
Watch out, little fish, we're out after you,
But you can escape away deep in the blue.
You just swim around the fisherman's bait
And you won't end up on the fisherman's plate.
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Recorded by Ed Trickett on "The Telling Takes Me Home", FSI-46.
"I learned this lullaby of warning from Mike Cohen in 1963. He
mentioned that the song, or one similar to it, could be heard in
the 1930's movie "Captains Courageous," which starred Spencer
Tracy. I could not find the words from the movie version, but it
was called "Manuel's love song" in the film and was written by
Gus Kahn and Franz Waxman. The words I song are, I believe, a
combination of traditional and written ones, with the tune and
the chorus being very similar to that found in Meredith and
Anderson's "Folksongs of Australia" in their song "The Little
Fish." They report the song to be Portuguese in origin, but
fairly widely known in North Queensland, Australia."
sung by Ed Trickett on Telling Takes Me Home
DC
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!