Paul Davenport 2011
Melrose Quartet: “Ganseys are intricately knitted fishermen’s sweaters. Mary Cross of Flamborough told Paul in 1980 ‘There was a boy in the village when I was a girl, whom all the girls thought very good looking. To add to this, his mother was the best gansey knitter in the village…. That beautiful knitting was how they identified his body when he was lost at sea.'”
The Melrose Quartet: https://melrosequartet.bandcamp.com/track/davy-cross
https://melrosequartet.bandcamp.com/track/davy-cross
The Widow Cross had but one son and indeed he was his mother’s pride and joy So she knitted him a gansey, Cable stitched both fine and fancy And it looked like royal robes upon the boy Chorus: How we knew his bright blue eyes How we knew his golden hair And that gansey that his mother made was fine beyond compare Tall and bright was Davy Cross, with a shining face that never bore a frown How the lasses smiled and sighed at his strong and manly stride On a Friday when the fishing fleet left town At the dance on Saturday the lasses fairly swooned to dance with him As he held them in his arms, how they fluttered at his charms, And their hearts beat faster at his boyish grin Then one dark October day there came a storm which drove us hard to lea And our fishing fleet was tossed, yet just one single craft was lost Leaving Widow Cross a-gazing out to sea When just ten weeks were passed and gone, they finally brought us news about the loss Seemed a body had been found of a sailor lost and drowned And in our hearts we knew ’twas Davy Cross But it wasn’t eyes of blue, nor that hair as pale as foam It was the gansey that his mother made that brought young Davy home