Dobbyn, Miss Anne

Singer

Collection date: Jul 1914

Area: Bristol

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Miss Anne Dobbyn at Bristol (1864-1956): age 50, 1 sea shanty 'Yeave Ho' FT3009 (Roud 13257) on 13 July 1914: This shanty was sung by Miss Dobbyn and her brother Michael. They could not remember the song very well and it does not seem to match any shanty in the mainstream repertoire. Their father (also Michael Dobbyn) apparently sang this song. He was a solicitor in Waterford and died 4/9/1868 aged 53 (Irish register of deaths vol 19 p553).

Anne Dobbyn was born in 1864, so may hardly remember her father singing it but perhaps her mother Margaret kept the song alive within the family. Anne and Michael said that in their youth ‘they were constantly among sailors’ in Waterford. Michael Jr’s birth (1868) was recorded at ‘Passage East Company, Waterford’, so his father may have worked for that trading company.

Michael Jr trained as a doctor in Constantinople (British Medical Directory 1905 p578). In 1911 census he was aged 42, FRCS and was living at 85a Redland Rd Bristol with his wife Frances and young family (RG14/15074 schedule 148). In 1911 his spinster sister Anne, 44, was living with her mother Margaret in Waterford but probably moved to Bristol when mother died in October 1913. Michael died in 1933 and Anne in 1956.