Pirate Jenny

"Pirate Jenny" is a well-known song from the first act of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. In the original German it is called "Seeräuberjenny".

Jenny is jealous because Mackie ("Mack the Knife") who used to love her, has a new woman, Polly Peachum. The police are out to catch him, so Mackie has gone into hiding, but the police think that he will probably be unable to resist the temptation to visit his favorite brothel, where Jenny works, and they ask her to tip them off if he does. She is tempted. She still loves him, but in a possessive, jealous way. If she enables the police to catch him, he will hang. Her song suggests that she likes the idea of having Mackie’s fate in her hands.

In her song, she scrubs the floor at a crummy old hotel, and is treated contemptuously by the hotels patrons. A pirate ship, which she has been expecting, enters the harbor. "And the ship with eight sails, and with 50 cannons, will fire on the city." ("Und das Schiff mit acht Segeln und mit fünfzig Kanonen wird beschießen die Stadt.") Its cannons, flatten every building except hers. The pirates come ashore, chain up people, and present them to Jenny, asking her “Kill them now, or later?” She says “now”. She sails away with the pirates.

It is probably the second most famous song in the opera, after "Mack the Knife". In some versions of the opera it is sung by Polly, not Jenny.

There is a problem translating this song. In the original German, the ship is described as "mit acht Segeln" (with eight sails). Because a literal translation has fewer syllables, in English the ship is usually described as "the black freighter".

Many notable artists have covered this song independent of the stage show: Steeleye Span, Ute Lemper, Charlotte Rae, The Dresden Dolls, Judy Collins and Bea Arthur.

It has been famously covered by singer and activist Nina Simone on 1964's Nina Simone in Concert. She gave the song a grim civil rights undertone, with the "black freighter" symbolizing the coming black revolution.

Comic-book writer Alan Moore cited this song as one of the inspirations for the Black Freighter pirate material in Watchmen . In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he also reimagines Jenny's revenge fantasy as a literal event in which Jenny, who is Captain Nemo's daughter, is raped and signals the crew of the Nautilus to slaughter them all.