The song "There was a warship", a Dutch folk song and children's song, is a lieutenant in which strange and unbelievable people, business and habits are being addressed.
The oldest hits of this song in the Dutch Song Bank of the Meertens Institute date back to the end of the nineteenth century. The Friesian Songbook In Doaze Foldede Snypsnaren, Compiled by Waling Dykstra and T.G. Van der Meulen (Franeker, 1882) mentioned as incipit: 'I arrived in a city last, / I came to sleep in a city / Alwaer I'm soaking miracles sach'. The handwritten collection of Nynke van Hichtum, collected in the period 1904-1938, contains five variants of the song, including the starting lines: 'There was a warship (bis) / That was in the clouds'; "I arrived last in a city (a) / where I saw so many wounds'; and 'There was a warship (bis) / That was already on a slump after sunk on a stone (bis)'.
The repeats make it possible to sing with a group as a hymn: one person sings a line, the rest of the group sings it. A single source indicates that the song was used in the game forecasting game (where everyone returns an item as collateral; to get it back requires a small assignment). In turn, everyone has to invent a lie that can be sung by the group, to get his property back. Wikisource
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