... her course was true, for he was an able seaman through and through ...

In a recent blog entry, "Singing Madrigals", my sister-in-law (Alison Hobbs) mentions the double-entendres  sometimes to be found in madrigals.  Our current usage of the expression double-entendre  tends to be a derogatory one, often applied to short, smutty sexual allusions of the: If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? kind. 

I wonder if the term does justice to what are often, in madrigals and folk songs at least, considerably well-crafted extended metaphors.

I don't have anything more than a passing acquaintance with the texts of madrigals (Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore than I, when I sang madrigals no more), but I am on friendlier terms with English folk songs,. 

A great number of folk-songs are about a man gaining sexual conquest over a woman, where the "hero" of the song is frequently a soldier (I drilled her into the sentry-box, wrapped up in a soldier's cloak) or a sailor (So Jack became master of that craft-o, and she was well-found both fore and aft-o). 

Just recently, I have been listening to a song called I will put my ship in order.  The story line runs: a sailor tries to persuade a girl to come down from her bed and let him in so that they can lie together; the girl is hesitant and, by the time she has plucked up courage to go downstairs, the sailor has lost patience and gone to find another conquest. 

At first listening, the song seems to be in the typical "sailor seduces girl" mould, a variant of a song that I know well  Jack the Jolly Tar. A little odd perhaps that, in this version, he does not get her maidenhead, but maybe it's a warning to all those girls out there that they should not delay in acquiescing to a lusty lover, or they may die old maids ...

... but wait. 

Part of the song is clearly metaphor. The sailor didn't just walk up to his girl's house, he drew his ship across the harbour, close to her bedroom window to hear what she would say. 

What, then, if we assume that there's more to the song than meets the eye, and that, perhaps, the presumed narrative text, is not what it seems to be at all:

O who is that at my bower window, 

That raps so loudly and would be in? 

It is your true love that loves you dearly, 

So rise, dear love, and let him in.

Then slowly, slowly rose she up, 

And slowly, slowly came she down, 

But before she had the door unlocked 

Her true love had both come and gone.

Come back, come back my own true love,

Come back, come back, come, ease my pain.

The fish shall fly love, the seas run dry, love

Before that I'll return again. 

 The imagery is clear; we are not 

witnessing a maiden jilted by a petulant 

seducer, but a woman disappointed 

at the hand of a prematurely spent fumbler. 

This is not double-entendre but 

poetic complaint.