Good Ship Venus

Friggin' in the Riggin audio|Friggin' in the Riggin__Ron_and_the_rud_boys_volume_2_track_6.ogg| , also known as Good Ship Venus, is a bawdy drinking song devised to shock with ever increasingly lewd and debauched sexual descriptions of the eponymous ship's loose moralled crew. The tune usually used (especially for the chorus) is "In and Out the Windows". The lyrics, as with all folksongs, show variations -- sometimes vast changes from performance to performance and from singer to singer. The usual opening verse is the following:

:" 'Twas on the good ship Venus,":"By Christ you should have seen us,":"The figurehead":"Was a whore in bed,":"And the mast a rampant penis." [ Cray, Ed. "The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs" (University of Illinois, 1992). pg 316.]

The usual rhyming structure for this song is the limerick AABBA structure. The sexual lexis used throughout the poem is limited in its depravity only by the respective singer's gratuitous imagination.

British punk band The Sex Pistols recorded a version which appears on their "Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" album. The American Thrash metal band Anthrax covered the Sex Pistols' version. In 2007 Loudon Wainwright III recorded it on .

References

* Cray, Ed. "The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs" (University of Illinois, 1992).
* Legman, Gershon. "The Horn Book". (New York: University Press, 1964).
* Roud Folk Song Index 4836

External links

* Loudon Wainwright III's lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/good-ship-venus-lyrics-wainwright-loudon.html