"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. History Written history Contemporary publications and the memories of individuals, in later publications, put the existence of this shanty by the 1860s. The Syracuse Daily Courier, July 1867, quoted a lyric from the song, which was said to be used for hauling halyards on a steamship bound from New York to Glasgow. In 1879, George Haswell was passenger aboard another steamship, from London to Sydney, at which time he noted some of the shanties of the crew. These were published in the ship's own fortnightly newspaper, The Parramatta Sun, and they included a full set of lyrics for "Blow the Man Down." The lyrics take up the theme of a ship of the Black Ball Line, and include the refrains, "Wae! Hae! Blow the man down / Give me some time to blow the man down." Although Haswell's article did not receive wide circulation, it did find its way into the hands of Laura Alexandrine Smith, whose own large collection of sailors' songs, The Music of the Waters (1888), was one of the first to be widely available. Smith reprinted the lyrics gathered by Haswell. She also presented a different version of the song that she herself presumably collected, and which was said to be used for hoisting topsail yards. Its