The big ship sailed on the alley, alley-oh?

Question

Can anyone tell me te origins of the song:

The big ship sailed on the alley, alley-oh,
the alley, alley-oh,
the alley, alley-oh,
The big ship sailed on the alley, alley-oh,
On the last day of September.

Oh, and please don't just answer to say that you don't know, I know you want the points, but come on, that is a bit lame people.

Extensive Googling has not turned up any origins. A Google search for ["the big ship sailed on the alley" origin] (http://tinyurl.com/gbhl8) turns up no results.

I take it this isn't like Google answers where people actually answer the questions then?

Answer 1

I've followed many links and found a lot of variations on the song, but not a lot of hard information on its origins. Here is the best (I think) of what I found.

One of the most common explanations is that it goes back to one of the main shipyards of England, and esp. to Manchester around the time of the opening of the Ship Canal in 1894, and the "alley" reference being fairly literal.
http://www.manchester.gov.uk/libraries/lsuimage/streetview/burgess.htm

There are a few questions about this notion, however. The most serious one is the possibility that the song predates than the Ship Canal. (If true, though, that may be more of a problem to this particular VERSION of the song. . . but if this is a later VARIANT of the song, connected with that event, there would be less of an issue.)

The other matter is what "alley" means, or whether it is even the original word. Though it seems to be the best known version, there are various other ones out there, e.g., "illy illy-o". Either these others are corruptions of an original reference to an "alley", or the various words are silly (nonsense?) expressions common in children's songs. .. perhaps even a reference to the SEA?

For a discussion of these variations as well as the old (original?) use of this song as a "thread the needle" song, see:
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=15074

Answer 2

A Google search for "ship sailed on the alley-alley" returns about 70 sites. If you're interested enough, you can take it from there.

Edit: Try the search I gave and you'll find about 70 sites. If I knew the answer, I'd give it, but I don't know the answer to the question, and to find it, I'd have to look through those sites and hope they provide more information. You can just as easily look through those sites as I can. At least I took the time to point you in the right direction; I'm sorry if you are actually expected to do some of the work on your own to answer your own question.

Answer 3

'alley' was a small area of sea which stemmed inland to a point of a promintary which was used to disembark the crew for collection of water and sundury items. Oh the oh was just added to make the verse flow. The song writer possibly stuttered thats why it is the Alley Alley oh and not the Alley oh, or simply the Alley

Answer 4

Wow talk about spining me back! We used to sing this song in grammer school. :) Sorry, don't know where it came from though

Answer 5

I am very interested too about the answer to this

Answer 6

This is a very interesting topic

Answer 7

It depends on many factors