"Greenland Whale Fisheries" is a traditional sea song. In most of the versions collected from oral sources, the song opens up giving a date for the events that it describes (usually between 1823 and 1853). However, the song is actually older than this and a form of it was published as a ballad before 1725. In the version popularized by The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary, a shanty recorded by Alan Lomax from a Barbadian fisherman is appended, which begins, "When the whale gets strike, and the line run down, and the whale makes a flounder with her tail..."