“When the Stormy Winds Do Blow”

“When the Stormy Winds Do Blow” is a sailor’s song heard at a fireside gathering in Daniel Peggotty’s boat-house. Its repeated refrain joins the company in a moment of ease, while the real wind outside lends the performance a deeper resonance against the hardships and separations that surround the Peggotty family’s story.

The Refrain and Its Setting

The song appears on the evening when Ham and Emily’s engagement is celebrated. James Steerforth has helped draw the shy Emily into the gathering; after conversation and stories, he asks Daniel Peggotty to sing, or rather roar, “When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow.” The comic description conveys the hearty, communal character of the performance: this is not a polished recital but a familiar sailor’s refrain shared among people at home together.

Music as a Shared Performance

The song is part of a wider evening of storytelling and music. Steerforth first tells a dismal shipwreck story, then balances it with a merry adventure of his own; Emily listens intently, laughs, and gradually grows more at ease. Daniel’s vigorous song belongs to this exchange, in which attention moves among storyteller, singer, and listeners rather than resting with one performer. Steerforth then sings a sailor’s song himself, with a pathos that moves David Copperfield. The two performances give the gathering contrasting registers: Daniel’s robust refrain and Steerforth’s more affecting song.

The Wind Outside

The refrain’s weather imagery gains force from its setting. As Steerforth sings, David imagines the actual wind creeping sorrowfully around the boat-house and murmuring through the gathering’s brief silence, as though it too were listening. Music and weather thus meet without becoming the same thing: the song belongs to the company’s shared life, while the wind supplies a surrounding note of sadness. The scene holds convivial warmth and unease together in a single soundscape.

Meaning in Retrospect

The song belongs to a rare, unguarded evening in the boat-house, when Emily can laugh among the people who love her and Mrs. Gummidge is temporarily lifted out of her habitual despondency. Later, Daniel’s fierce grief at Emily’s disappearance and his resolve to find and bring her home reveal how much suffering lies beyond that brief happiness. The refrain is not shown recurring in those later scenes; its significance rests instead in the contrast between the family’s present closeness around the fire and the separation and sorrow that follow.