OT Advent Calendar Day 17: I Saw Three Ships

Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.

Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.

Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Today’s tune is “I Saw three Ships.”

I have loved this song from childhood. The version I most likely heard fist was that of John Andersen of Yes and if not that then the first Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album, this was the sort of musical formation that I had.

I love the simple chords and melody of the song and its simple faith. And I do mean simple. Let’s just say Bethlehem is not a port.

This sort of thing was par for the course in the middle ages and early modern period. They were not in the least interested in precise accuracy when it came to art and anachronism was the order of the day.

Originating in the 17th century, likely in Derbyshire, England, the song was known early on by its then-first line “As I Sat on a Sandy Bank” and was popular in Cornwall. It is possible that the Three Ships motif is rooted in the three ships which, in the 11th century, brought relics of the gifts of the Magi to Cologne Cathedral or the arms of Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, who was not that King Wenceslaus. Confused? That’s how these things work. The song may have been born of one tradition, the other, neither or both. Folklore defies neat categorization.