1. Masefield disapproved of the setting because of its slow tempo, but Ireland, though he hated being known as ‘the composer of “Sea Fever”, told Gerald Moore that he considered it his finest song (Singer and Accompanist, 1953). The poem, from Salt-Water Ballads, was inspired by Masefield’s love of Jersey. According to a poll carried out in the 1930s by the BBC, it was the most popular song of any description heard on the wireless. Masefield loathed it, despite the royalties it earned him, because of the dirge-like performances it received. Marked Lento, it is characterized by the sort of rich chordal accompaniment that Ireland loved. The melody of ‘Sea Fever’ arches across the top of his memorial window in London’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the musicians’ church.

2. The word ‘go’, present in Ballads and Poems (Elkin Matthews, 1910), Selected Poems (William Heinemann, 1922) and Poems (William Heinemann, 1946), is omitted in an early edition of 1902 and also from Collected Poems (William Heinemann, 1923). Questioned in 1927 about the opening line of the poem, Masefield replied: ‘I notice that in the early edition, 1902, I print the line “I must down”. That was as I wrote the line in the first instance. Somehow the word “go” seems to have crept in. When I am reciting the poem I usually insert the word “go” [as he does in the recordings made in 1941 and 1960]. When the poem is spoken I feel the need of the word but in print “go” is unnecessary and looks ill’ (see Journal of the John Masefield Society, Vol. 2 (John Masefield Society, 1993), pp. 11–14). The working manuscript of the poem in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library, features the line both with and without ‘go’.

1. possibly a mythical seaport, possibly the area around Cádiz, which is flanked by the ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other, with the town of El Puerto de Santa María at the far side of the bay.

2. bringing luck or good fortune, attractive to look at. The word derives from the Gaelic ‘sonas’, meaning ‘good fortune’.

3. to tug, pull.

1. It is known that Ivor Gurney composed five songs in the trenches during the First World War, and ‘By a bierside’ is dated Laventie, August 1916. The text is a setting of the words of the Chief Centurions from Masefield’s play Pompey the Great (1910). In September 1916 Gurney wrote to Marion Scott: ‘That setting of Masefield was written in two sittings, almost without effort.’ He also observed that the accompaniment ‘is really orchestral’, and the song was indeed soon to be orchestrated by Herbert Howells. Particularly memorable is the unusual sequence of chords that punctuate the vocal line at ‘Death makes the lovely soul to wander’. Gurney, while setting the poem from memory in the trenches, misremembered some fourteen of Masefield’s words.

1. Masefield thought little of this poem and in a letter, dated 19 November 1901, wrote to his sister, Norah, that he wished he could burn it. ‘It is a limp attempt’, he wrote, ‘and the last stanza is hateful to me. The “sough” in “soughing” rhymes with the feminine of “boar”. Is pronounced the same […] It derives from a Norse word signifying to murmur.’

1. Composed, according to Herbert’s note, while she was still at college.

1. containers made from animal skin and holding liquid.

2. ‘small ropes fastened to the edges of sails to truss them up before furling’ (OED).

1. The ‘Mydath’ of the title has stumped all the critics, and Masefield himself wrote with some obfuscation to John D. Gordon around March 1953: ‘Mydath was the name of a place in an early poem: it was supposed to be near the sea somewhere: but is now mercifully just about extinct.’ It could perhaps be a rendering of ‘My Death’.

2. sea spray blown along the surface of the water.

1. This was the only song of Warlock’s to be recorded during his lifetime – by Peter Dawson and Gerald Moore.

2. Welsh pirate captain (c.1635–88) who was later Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.

3. tea.

4. a large cask for liquids.

5. a great quantity of.

1. Martin Shaw (1875–1958) was a prolific composer of ballads – see E. Routley’s Martin Shaw: A Centenary Appreciation, published in 1975.

1. The passage comes from the last page of ‘The Seal Man’, a supernatural story from the collection A Mainsail Haul (1905). The tale is told by an old woman who looks back on her life by the sea. Her father attended the wake of an O’Donnell, a bad man. During the wake O’Donnell’s corpse ‘got up with the sheet knotted on it’, and went down to the sea, where it was welcomed by ‘all the seals, and all the merrows [mermaids], and all them that’s under the tides […] They called out to the corpse and laughed; and the corpse laughed back, and fell on to the sand. My father and the other men saw the wraith pass from it […]’ O’Donnell’s wraith turned into a bull seal, who fell in love with young Norah O’Hara. They had a little son who became a seal-man, and he fell in love with young Kate O’Keefe. They loved one another passionately, and to protect Kate from the supernatural seal-man, ‘they shut her up at home, to keep her from seeing him’. Masefield’s narrative, chosen by Rebecca Clarke, finishes the story.