Rolling Down to Old Maui
I just loved Ruthanna Emrys’s novel A Half-Built Garden. It has a sort of hard-won optimism that meant a lot to me. By mainstream standards it is pretty “woke”. I mean, if respecting each other and the Earth is woke, then sign me up.
Anyway, at some point the main characters are on a perilous journey with nothing to do but cross their fingers that they make it through. To ward off the fear, they start singing the classic sea shanty Rolling Down to Old Maui. Despite being a fan of folks like Stan Rogers, who recorded a version, I hadn’t heard of this song before this book. After looking up recordings, I realized what the characters sing in the book is slightly different from tradition:
It’s a damn tough life full of toil and strife we sailors undergo
And we don’t give a damn when the gale is done how hard the winds did blow
’Cause we’re homeward bound from the Arctic round on a good ship tall and free
And we won’t give a damn when we drink our rum with our loves in Old MauiRolling down to Old Maui, my child, rolling down to Old Maui
And we’re homeward bound from the Arctic round, rolling down to Old Maui
Compare that to the first verse and chorus from the Stan Rogers version:
It’s a damn tough life full of toil and strife we whalermen undergo
And we don’t give a damn when the gale is done how hard the winds did blow
’Cause we’re homeward bound from the Arctic ground on a good ship taut and free
And we won’t give a damn when we drink our rum with the girls of Old MauiRolling down to Old Maui, me boys, rolling down to Old Maui
We’re homeward bound from the Arctic ground rolling down to Old Maui
The significant differences from tradition are:
- whalermen ➡️ sailors
- the girls of Old Maui ➡️ our loves in Old Maui
- me boys ➡️ my child
What narrative purpose do the differences serve? Is it just the woke brigade?? Well, let’s back up and first ask what narrative purpose the song itself serves. The main character reflects,
I’d sung it often enough — it was a good working song. A good rhythm for planting, or baking, or pacing the floor with a baby. But this was the first time I’d sung it as the original had been sung: in a vehicle in high wind, the hazards and comforts wound through our voices — the same ones that wound through our lives.
The novel is set in 2083, in a society of necessarily high ecological consciousness to weather the storms created by the ecological mismanagement that began the century. In this culture, the idea of hunting whales would sound crazy, and neither hard work, political power, nor social status is organized by gender. The people on the perilous journey are mostly women, and one is not even from Earth, but they are all choosing to undergo toil and strife because of shared, strongly held beliefs.
Singing this song together brings a comfort and solidarity that I imagine is identical to that of the whalermen who might have sung the original. However, the original lyrics would be unable to bring that value to this group of people, since they paint the following picture:
- a group of all men (“boys”)
- women as playthings or prizes — particularly indigenous women
- This is made more explicit later, see below
- killing whales as something necessary and worth celebrating
The first point on its own is not necessarily an impediment, because of course people enjoy songs and stories all the time that are from a different point of view (or at least, women enjoy songs and stories from a man’s point of view — less commonly the other way around). However, the next two points are cultural values which are not only not held by the characters, but seen as having done great harm in the past. In particular, the characters’ lives are defined by the ecological collapse caused by the philosophy of unlimited hunting and extraction that dominated previous centuries.
If those values couldn’t be separated from the core value of the song — comfort and solidarity in the face of peril — then the song would not have survived into this future. It would have faded into irrelevance. The changing of a few words not only preserves the comfort and solidarity for these characters themselves, but allows them to feel a connection with people from the past, despite the difference in values.
The only problem is, although the characters in the story presumably sing a complete version of the song during their voyage, the text of the book only includes an adaptation of the first verse. This book made me fall in love with the song, so I wanted to be able to sing the whole thing. How are the original lyrics?
The second and third verses are almost completely compatible with my values, but the last verse was quite a challenge, as alluded to above. Here’s the Stan Rogers version:
How soft the breeze through the island trees, now the ice is far astern
Them native maids, them tropical glades is awaiting our return
Even now their big, brown eyes look out, hoping some fine day to see
Our baggy sails running ‘fore the gales, rolling down to Old Maui
To some, this may seem harmless, since the language is not explicit, but the meaning seems quite clear, and leaves me quite uncomfortable: basically, the thought is that Maui’s young indigenous girls just can’t wait to hook up with these grown men coming to their island for shoreleave. (Yes I know, technically “maid” can refer to any age, but what age do you think the singers are thinking of?) I don’t actually know what the history is here, but personally I am unable to derive comfort or courage from these thoughts. I also have a son who likes to sing sea shanties, but I don’t feel good exposing him to this view of women. To be honest, if a real whaling crew were ever singing this song together, I doubt these words resonated with every one of them either. They not only presume heterosexuality, but a very particular kind that does not see girls or women as real people.
Those first and last lines though. What true comfort and courage they summon! How universally relatable! This verse is truly a shit sandwich. If only I could adapt them the way Emrys adapted the first verse, I could enjoy this song in my own life, in full.
I came up with this:
How soft the breeze through the island trees, now the ice is far astern
Our husbands and wives, our children, our lives, are awaiting our return
Even now their hopeful eyes look out, that they might one fine day see
Our baggy sails running ‘fore the gales, rolling down to Old Maui
The new lines are a big and historically implausible change to the story of the song. Now instead of stopping at Maui for shoreleave, the sailors are actually from Maui, and Maui is their family and community. It takes literally another of the song’s original lines, from verse 3:
Once more we sail, with a northerly gale, towards our island home
Does this mean the singers are actually Polynesian fishers or something? I have no idea. I fully acknowledge that I have traded off historical accuracy for egalitarian values. That may not always be the right tradeoff in artistic adaptations — but in terms of Emrys’s narrative, it makes sense to me that the song would have morphed into the future in a way that’s more about values than historical accuracy, because that’s just what culture does. After all, the original purpose of the song, like most sea shanties, was the comfort and courage it brings its singers, not the information it encodes. I don’t begrudge anyone for singing the traditional lyrics — I just find myself unable to enjoy them.
Curious George
Speaking of trading off historical sense for values, Curious George is another, interesting example. Most people have heard of Curious George, but I’m not sure if most people know the “original” story of how he came to live with his “friend”, the Man with the Yellow Hat. I myself had no idea until my son found the original books “Curious George” (1941) and “Curious George Take a Job” (1947) at the library. To someone accustomed to the affectionate and idealistic values of more modern Curious George stories, these were a culture shock.
The first book begins with George living happily in “Africa” (country unspecified, no people, just jungle). Suddenly a Man in one of those colonialist safari type outfits shows up, takes a liking to George, and so traps him and loads him on a ship bound for America. George is shown to be only briefly sad about this. The rest of the book is basically a fish-out-of-water farce about George not fitting into the Western industrialized culture of New York City, ending with the Man giving George to the zoo.
In the second book, George escapes the zoo — not because he feels aggrieved at the kidnapping, but just because he is a “curious little monkey” — and is given a job at a hotel washing windows. When he fails to conform to expectations there, he is chased, breaks his leg in a fall, and after a hospital stay during which his leg heals, has a “funny” drug trip from accidental ether exposure. The Man takes him home to live with him, and has a movie made about his life.
The very strange parallel to the African slave trade which is immediately waved away, and the lack of empathy for George in the narrative itself, are in stark contrast to the values of the modern books, and especially the wonderful Curious George TV show from 2006-2015 (which has become a staple in my house lately). In the modern stories, George is a full person, with feelings that matter, who uses his curiosity to learn from mistakes, solve problems, and build community. In the original stories, he is basically a clown. I’m not sure if the original authors were part of this evolution, or if it mostly happened after Curious George became someone else’s IP. But it’s hard to imagine that the modern George and Ted (the Man’s given name) are the same characters who met in “Africa” via kidnapping.
And yet, it’s worth pointing out that if that’s not how they met, it’s pretty random for Ted to always wear his yellow safari outfit. (I mean, it would be pretty random anyway — he literally wears it all the time. To the extent that the TV show really deals with reality, Ted is portrayed as a rich eccentric, so maybe it’s just what he prefers to wear. 🤷) It’s also pretty random for him to have a pet monkey. I’ve never seen a reference to the kidnapping in any of the modern CG stories, because that whole thing is completely at odds with the values of the new stories — just like the original lyrics of “Old Maui” are (for me) at odds with the value I derive from singing it. And like my adapted “Old Maui”, there are elements of modern CG that don’t make a whole lot of sense if you forget about the original stories, but it just doesn’t matter.
If CG hadn’t changed, it would now be irrelevant. I suspect a good number of people did find more value in the original stories than I do now, and that’s why more books were written, and ultimately that’s why someone wanted to adapt it and tell the new stories that do resonate with me, and that I feel good sharing with my son. Change is not erasure; it’s how things survive.