Tony:
Yes, the song was first sung in Garrick’s pantomime ‘Harlequin’s Invasion’ in 1759 – the Year of Victories’ but unless you can get hold of Garrick’s holograph manuscript, I don’t think you’ll get a definitive answer to this one as all the variants you quote are common! However, I think Garrick probably wrote ‘Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men’. Three authoritative sources are:
The Oxford Dictionary of Musical Works by Alison Latham (OUP 2004). She gives ‘Heart of Oak’ as the opening phrase and observes that ‘the title is sometimes incorrectly given as ‘Hearts of Oak.’
William Chappell’s ‘Popular Music of the Olden Time’, printed in the 1850s, also gives ‘Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men.’ As does Elizabeth Hale Winkler in an essay entitled ‘The Function of Song in Contemporary British Drama’ (University of Delaware Press – undated)
(My score of ‘Francis & Day’s ‘Popular and Community Song Book’ gives ‘Hearts of Oak’ as the title (and we know that’s wrong!) but ‘Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men’ as the first line of the chorus.)
The variant ‘jolly tars’ may have been appropriated from another, similar song, as often happens in popular and folk music. Chappell observes that ‘many songs have been written to the air, among them two in the Burney Collection including ‘The First Keppell’s Triumph’ which has the lines: ‘Bear a hand, jolly tars, for bold Keppell appear/In spite of each charge for Sir Hugh Palliser.’
Is anyone is old enough to remember ‘Singing Together’ from the BBC Schools Broadcasting Service in the 1950s? No, I thought not. Well, anyway, Miss Avis, a very bossy lady who used to sing the tunes for us little kids said very specifically, that it was 'heart of oak'. I remember it as if it were yesterday, my dear. But we sang, ‘jolly tars are our men’.
Just to cause even more confusion there are also several versions of the line ‘We always are ready…’ I’ve heard ‘We always are ready, ready, boys, ready’; also ‘We always are ready, steady, boys, steady’, and ‘We always are ready, ready, aye ready.’ Take your pick!
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