The Bootymen’s Air

There is, it’s said, a pirate ship
That haunts the Caribbean.
Or does she sail the Orient,
Or pilot the Aegean ?
Was ever there a stranger craft
On which men went to sea on ?

No-one seems to know her name,
For all she rides the swell.
Some say she’s The Banshee,
Some The Siren, some The Belle,
Perhaps there’s plenty meet with her,
But none who live to tell.

Yet one fact all agree on,
Is you hear her when she nears,
By a slow and lonely singing
That the ozone brings our ears –
And a world away from the racket
Of the usual pirate jeers.

They claim that it’s her figurehead
Who keens upon the waves –
That is, it is the ship herself
And not her crew of knaves,
As she bares down on the helpless souls
And sings them to their graves.

But eerier yet, her voice, they say,
Will echo off the sea,
And bounce upon the clouds and back
While the breeze blows in her key,
She sounds from all directions,
And in perfect harmony.

So if you ever catch a snatch
Of ghostly murmurings,
And if your hold is full of coin
And fingers full of rings –
Then pray it’s just the whistling wind,
And not the ship who sings.