“Mother Carey's”
Description
Capstan shanty. "The brave west wind it filled our top-s'ls and bore us out-ward bound... for Frisco Town.... Sheet it home- that big main top-s'l, sheet it home- boys, good and true, For we're bound to Mother Carey's, where she feeds her chicks at sea."
Long description
Capstan shanty. "The brave west wind it filled our top-s'ls and bore us out-ward bound, out-ward bound across the Western, out-ward bound for Frisco Town. Chorus: Sheet it home- that big main top-s'l, sheet it home- boys, good and true, For we're bound to Mother Carey's, where she feeds her chicks at sea."
Notes
Hugill: "'Mother Carey's chickens' was a sailor name for stormy petrels, seabirds found flying close to the crests of the great seas of the high latitudes." - SL
The origin and use of this name is the subject of some dispute. Numerous sources agree that Mother Carey's chickens are stormy petrels. Benet's _Reader's Encyclopedia_, in the article on mothers, adds that Mother Carey's goose is "the great black petrel or fulmar of the pacific." (Interestingly, the centennial edition of _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable_, edited by Ivor H Evans, has these definitions almost verbatim. I don't know who stole from whom, though.) Both sources also agree that the phrase "Mother Carey is plucking her goose" means that it is snowing.
Eric Partridge's _A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_ (combined fifth edition with dictionary and supplement, Macmillan, 1961) dates the use of Mother Carey's Chickens as a name for snowflakes to 1861, citing Hotten's slang dictionary. This usage is also supported by the Simpson/Roud _Dictionary of English Folklore_. Partridge also cites a usage, "faring alike and paying the same, ca. 1820-1850," an lastly notes that Bowen's _Sea Slang_ applies it to "a small gun."
But who is Mother Carey? Barbara G. Walker, in _The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets_, states that the name is an "English sailor's version of Mater Cara, 'BelovedMother' [or 'Dear Mother'], the Latin Sea-goddess." She notes that the French call the petrels the "Birds of Our Lady." Similarly, Benet notes that the French call them "oiseaux de Notre Dame" or "aves Sanctae Mariae."
Walker's equivalence is wrong, I checked four classical dictionaries, and not one mentions "Mater Cara" as a Latin goddess. There is a "[Mater] Matuta," identified in J. E. Zimmerman's _Dictionary of Classical Mythology_ as a "goddess of sea travel," or perhaps of harbors, but Lucretius (_De Rerum Natura_, B. 656) credits Matuta with bringing the dawn; she is also associated with childbirth. In any case, it's obviously a different name.
Of course, Mater Cara as a name for the Virgin Mary -- frequently addressed as the Mother of God in Catholic tradition, and often invoked as an intercessor -- is quote common. But would nineteenth century English sailors be addressing Mary for help? (Indeed, if we're trying Latin for a goddess of sailors, how about "Mater Carina," which can mean "Mother of hulls/keels." I don't believe it, though.)
The real problem with the Mother Carey=Mater Cara equivalence, though, is noted by the Simpson/Roud _Dictionary__: It has no support. We nowhere find references to Mother Carey without her birds.
The Simpson/Roud _Dictionary_ mentions that the name "Mother Carey's chickens" also refers to snowflakes. They speculate that Mother Carey is the Old Woman of the Storms -- the hag who brings foul weather. This strikes me as quite reasonable but beyond proof.
The phrase is certainly famous, though. Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923), best known for writing _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_, also wrote a book called _Mother Carey's Chickens_, which was made into a movie in 1938. As best I can tell from reading excerpts, though, it's just a book about chickens. - RBW
References
- Hugill, p. 192, "Mother Carey's" (1 text, 1 tune)
- BI, Hugi192