There are now three of us living at ‘chez Sowash.’ Jo, myself and Billy Bones. The latter is a new arrival. He is not a mutt. He is a composite Shih Tzu / Yorkshire terrier.

Jo gave him his name, evoking the canine love of bones while citing despicable minor character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s best loved novel. He dies in chapter one but not before passing a certain map to young Jim Hawkins along with sobering words of caution about a certain one-legged man.

Stevenson’s tale comes marvelously to life in Disney’s 1950 film, “Treasure Island” starring the incomparable Robert Newton as you-know-who. Most of the film was shot on the cheap in a Hollywood studio but it doesn’t matter because the fever-eye’d, lip-licking Newton gives us the greatest pirate depiction ever. His exaggerated West Country British accent and guttural baritone popularized the stereotypical “pirate voice” which boys and boys-at-heart imitate to this day. “Arrrgh!”

I love the classic pirate movies. Erroll Flynn’s “Captain Blood” and “The Sea Hawk,” with splendid scores by Korngold. And Burt Lancaster’s “The Crimson Pirate.”

Mind you, I know that piracy is despicable. I saw that Tom Hanks movie, “Captain Phillips,” and it scared the bejeezus out of me. (I love that word though I’d be hard pressed to define it.)

And I love pirate novels. Robert Louis Stevenson’s is the best. RLS gave us virtually all of the pirate clichés: the parrot on the shoulder, the Black Spot, the Treasure map. He invented out of whole cloth what we think of as the pirate culture. And the great American illustrator/painters Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth showed us what pirates look like.

Rafael Sabatini’s pirate novels are almost as much fun. Not only “Captain Blood” but also the two sequels and “The Sea Hawk.” If you are in the mood to read something for the fun of it, I recommend them. Oh, and “Scaramouche” is good, too, probably Sabatini’s masterpiece.

Vicious as they are, 18th-century Caribbean pirates seem sufficiently distant from contemporary Cincinnati to render them non-threatening, even charming. The notion of pirates makes me smile, speaks to the little boy in me, nurtures the fantasy that, at heart, even at 72, I’m could still cut something of a figure as a Sowash-buckler. I even have a model pirate ship, complete with a crew of miniature figures I painted myself, on display in my second-floor cubbyhole.

Be assured, I am almost certain that I will never engage in piracy, write a pirate novel or land a role in a pirate movie. All the same, I contributed my own two-cents worth to piratical lore when I set to music Abbie Farwell Brown’s delightful story-poem, “Pirate Treasure.”

I’ll include the poem at the bottom of this message. It’s deftly done. Devising a story-poem in a series of THREE rhymed lines is easy if you’re writing in Italian. See Dante’s Divine Comedy. But in English, a tongue in which rhymes are scarce, it’s a virtuoso feat.

I admire this poem; it offers just enough detail to bring the scenes and characters to life. And the final stanza is a delightful surprise.

Since every verse ends the same way, I decided to give this piece a theme-and-variations structure. That form is usually reserved for instrumental music; indeed, the piece I shared with you last week was a theme-and-variations for four instruments.

That particular form is rarely employed in choral music. Yet each verse seemed to ask for a uniquely expressive treatment, a variation for each mini-chapter of the story, musically ‘painting the text,’ i.e. writing so that the music reflects the images and feelings described in the lyrics. It ends with a grand return of the opening theme.

In case you miss it ... When the poems states that the pirate “sets ashore” his lady love with “a little treasure,” it’s not a wooden chest filled with doubloons and pieces of eight. Psst! The “little treasure” is … A BABY!

Thus the title, “Pirate Treasure,” refers, not to ill-gotten plunderage, but to the patrimony of the narrator. (Not being the sharpest marble in the bag, I missed that, the first time I read it.)

I intended the piece to be sung a cappella but when my choir director friend Kevin Kelly wanted to feature the piece on a concert with his Athens Chamber Singers (of Athens, GA), he asked permission to write a piano accompaniment. Why not? Kevin created a very effective piano accompaniment and now I prefer the piece in the accompanied version.

Just before presenting the piece in concert, the singers quickly donned earrings, pirate hats and red ‘dew rags.' Two or three even sported black eye-patches (a challenge for singers trying to read music). The audience loved it.

To hear "Pirate Treasure” lustily unfurled by the Cincinnati Camerata under the enthusiastic direction of my dear friend Chris Miller, who looks a lot like a pirate himself, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

I'd love to know what you think about this music; reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people should email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means. To unsubscribe, reply “unsubscribe.”

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
May 1, 2022

PIRATE TREASURE by Abbie Farwell Brown

A Lady loved a swaggering rover.
The seven salt seas he voyaged over.
Bragged of a hoard none could discover,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

She bloomed in a mansion dull and stately.
And as to Meeting she walked sedately.
From the tail of her eye she liked him greatly.
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Rings in his ears and a red sash wore he.
He sang her a song and told her a story;
“I'll make ye Queen of the Ocean!" swore he,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

She crept from bed by her sleeping sister;
By the old gray mill he met and kissed her.
Blue day dawned before they missed her,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

And while they prayed her out of Meeting,
Her wild little heart with bliss was beating,
As seaward went the lugger fleeting,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Choose in haste and repent at leisure;
A buccaneer life is not all pleasure.
He set her ashore with a little treasure,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Off he went where waves were dashing.
Knives were gleaming, cutlasses clashing;
And a ship on jagged rocks went crashing.
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Over his bones the tides are sweeping;
The only trace of the pirate sleeping
Is what he left in the lady's keeping,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Two hundred years is his name unspoken.
The secret of his hoard unbroken.
But a black-browed race wears the rover's token,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.

Sea-blue eyes that gleam and glisten.
Lips that sing — and you like to listen —
A swaggering song; it might be this one,
Hey! Jolly Roger, O.