Sea shanty

“ The ropes are manned by as many hands as their length will admit. A 'shantyman' mounts the roof of the hut and sits astride it. He sings a song which has a chorus, and is an exact musical parallel of a seaman's 'pull-and-haul' shanty. The crowd below sings the chorus, giving a pull on the rope at the required points in the music, just as sailors did when hauling at sea. Each pull on the rope draws the hut a short distance forward, and the process is continued till its final resting-place is reached, when the shantyman descends from the roof. ”

“ It was well known to every sailor down to the time of the China Clippers. My version is that of Capt. John Runciman, who belonged to that period. I have seldom found it known to sailors who took to the sea after the early seventies. The tune was sung in very free time and with great solemnity. It is almost impossible to reproduce in print the elusive subtlety of this haunting melody. In North-country ships the shantyman used to make much of the theme of a dead lover appearing in the night. There were seldom any rhymes, and the air was indescribably touching when humoured by a good hand. ”

“ Before the days of factories and machinery, all forms of work were literally manual labour, and all the world over the labourer, obeying a primitive instinct, sang at his toil: the harvester with his sickle, the weaver at the loom, the spinner at the wheel. Long after machinery had driven the labour-song from the land it survived at sea in the form of shanties, since all work aboard a sailing vessel was performed by hand.
The advent of screw steamers sounded the death-knell of the shanty. ”

“ He not only wants to explain to me as a landsman the exact meaning (which I know already) of terms which the old type of sailor, with his natural delicacy, avoided discussing, but he tries where possible to work them into his shanty, a thing the sailor of old time never did. So that when one sees in print expressions which sailors did not use, it is presumptive evidence that the collector has been imposed upon by a salt of the 'sea lawyer' type.
Perhaps I ought to make this point clearer. Folk-song collecting was once an artistic pursuit. ”

“ Their weatherwise skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.
A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:
O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log? Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog. ”

“ By the end of the seventies steam had driven the sailing ship from the seas. A number of sailing vessels lingered on through the eighties, but they retained little of the corporate pride and splendour that was once theirs. The old spirit was gone never to return.
When the sailing ship ruled the waters and the shanty was a living thing no one appears to have paid heed to it. To the landsman of those days—before folk-song hunting had begun—the haunting beauty of the tunes would appear to have made no appeal. ”

“ We had very prim notions of propriety in those days, and were apt to overlook the beauty of the melodies, and to speak of shanties in bulk as 'low vulgar songs.' Be that as it may, it was not until the late eighties—when the shanty was beginning to die out with the sailing ship—that any attempt was made to form a collection. ”

“ Whenever I find a sailor willing to declaim shanties in the style of a song I begin to be a little suspicious of his seamanship. In one of the journals of the Folk-Song Society there is an account of a sailor who formed a little party of seafaring men to give public performances of shanties on the concert platform. No doubt this was an interesting experience for the listeners, but that a self-conscious performance such as this could represent the old shanty singing I find it difficult to believe. ”

“ As an old sailor once said to me: 'You can make anything into a shanty.'
Like all traditional tunes, some shanties are in the ancient modes, and others in the modern major and minor keys. It is the habit of the 'folk-songer' (I am not alluding to our recognized folk-song experts) to find 'modes' in every traditional tune. It will suffice, therefore, to say that shanties follow the course of all other traditional music. Many are modern, and easily recognizable as such. Others are modal in character, such as 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?' No. 14, and 'The Hog's-Eye Man,' No. ”

“ In my then ignorance I naturally asked: 'Why couldn't you have sung shanties without hoisting the topsail?' and the reply was: 'How could we sing a shanty without having our hands on the rope?' Here we have the whole psychology of the labour-song: the old woman could not keen without the 'body,' and the young apprentices could not sing shanties apart from the work to which they belonged. The only truly satisfactory results which I ever get nowadays from an old sailor are when he has been stimulated by conversation to become reminiscent, and croons his shanties almost subconsciously. ”

“ The ordinary methods which he would apply to [Pg x] a folk-song break down in the case of a labour-song. Manual actions were the soul of the shanty; eliminate these and you have only the skeleton of what was once a living thing. It is quite possible, I know, to push this line of argument too far, but every one who knows anything about seamanship must feel that a shanty nowadays cannot be other than a pale reflection of what it once was.
That is why I deprecate the spurious authenticity conferred by print upon isolated versions of shanties sung by individual old men. ”

“ I used to hear this tune constantly on the Tyne. It is one of the few shanties which preserved a definite narrative, but each port seems to have offered variants on the names of the ships that were 'bound for Amerikee.' 'Mr. Tapscott' was the head of a famous line of emigrant ships. The last word in verse 5 was always pronounced male. This has led to many shantymen treating it not as meal, but as the mail which the ship carried. As the shanty is full of Irish allusions, the probabilities are that the word was meal, to which the sailor gave what he considered to be the Irish pronunciation. ”

“ Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Nos. 12, 18, and 20, contain articles on shanties, with musical examples (melodies only) , which, from the academic point of view, are not without interest.
1920. The Motherland Song Book (Vols. III and IV, edited by R. Vaughan Williams) contains seven shanties. It is worthy of note that Dr. Vaughan Williams, Mr. Clive Carey, and Mrs. Clifford Beckett all spell the word 'shanty' as sailors pronounced it.
1920. Sailor Shanties arranged for Solo and Chorus of Men's Voices by the present editor; two selections (Curwen Edition 50571 and 50572) . ”

“ It is doubtless interesting to the folk-songer to see in print shanties taken down from an individual sailor with his individual melodic twirls and twiddles. But since no two sailors ever sing the same shanty quite in the same manner, there must necessarily be some means of getting at the tune, unhampered by these individual idiosyncrasies, which are quite a different thing from what folk-song students recognize as 'variants.' The power to discriminate can only be acquired by familiarity with the shanty as it was in its palmy days. ”

“ In addition to hearing them in West Indian seaports, aboard Yankee sailing ships and sugar droghers, I also heard them sung constantly on shore in Antigua under rather curious conditions. West Indian negro shanties are movable wooden huts, and when a family wishes to change its venue it does so in the following manner: The shanty is levered up on to a low platform on wheels, to which two very long ropes are attached. ”

“ FOREWORD By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN
IT is sometimes difficult for old sailors like myself to realize that these fine shanty tunes—so fascinating to the musician, and which no sailor can hear without emotion—died out with the sailing vessel, and now belong to a chapter of maritime history that is definitely closed. They will never more be heard on the face of the waters, but it is well that they should be preserved with reverent care, as befits a legacy from the generation of seamen that came to an end with the stately vessels they manned with such skill and resource. ”

“ When the wind sets from the south across the land of Saxons of mighty shields,
The wave strikes the Isle of Scit, it surges up to the summit of Caladnet,
And pounds the grey-green mouth of the Shannon.
The ocean is in flood, the sea is full, delightful is the home of ships,
The wind whirls the sand around the estuary,
Swiftly the rudder cleaves the broad sea. ”

“ But the statement that the music is 'composed and arranged on traditional sailor airs' rules it out of court in the eyes of seamen, since (a) a sailor song is not a shanty, and (b) to 'compose and arrange on traditional airs' is to destroy the traditional form. ”

“ Half a mile below the shanty rolls the river, broad and blue, while the wooded shore opposite seems scarcely a stone's throw distant. The smoke curls lazily up from the fire within the shanty, where men are breakfasting and girding themselves for the fray. ”

“ Down the center of the way led the shanty-boat. Now the roar became furious and tumultuous. The light had been passed. The girl in the canoe made no motion and uttered no sound.
Suddenly, a light flashed-in the shanty-boat—it flickered a moment, and then burned steadily. The front door opened and a beam of light—yellow lamp light—shot out into the night. It struck against the gray fog-bank above the leaping water. Then the shadow of a human form was thrown against the gray mist, with the arms raised in astonishment. ”

“ It must suffice, however, for me to say that the term 'Hog's-eye' or 'Hog-eye' had nothing whatever to do with the optic of the 'man' who was sung about. I could multiply instances, but this one is typical and must suffice.
We hear a great deal of the coarseness and [Pg xii] even lewdness of the shanty, but I could wish a little more stress were laid on the sailor's natural delicacy. Jack was always a gentleman in feeling. ”

“ With Booge on the shore dragging at the rope end, and Peter breaking the ice with his pike-pole from the deck, and pushing with the pole, the shanty-boat moved slowly out of the current of the slough and into the quiet water where, as the river fell, it would be stranded with its hull in the mud, as safe from danger as if on top of one of the hills two miles back from the slough. ”

“ He was rambling about the port, reflecting on his unfortunate situation, when he heard mention made of a ship ready to set sail at high tide, and which needed a reinforcement of cabin-boys and sailors. This was for him an inspiration; he did not hesitate, he hastened to engage. That very evening he had gained the open sea, beyond the Isle of May, and, with his eyes turned towards the Bay of St. Andrew, was attempting, in vain, to recognize among the lights which were yet burning in the city, the fortunate lantern which decorated the sacred door of the Royal Salmon. ”

“ It seemed strange to feel the Snark tumbling and rolling with the wash of the sea. Sometimes it seemed as if she were tugging at her moorings, longing to be off on the long, long cruise. Because of her smallness, she responded to the heave and lunge of the ocean much more freely than would the ordinary ship. Even a tug-boat, passing many feet away, would jostle the Snark with its wash. Lying in my bunk, I could look up through a skylight and see the masts, and, higher yet, the scintillating stars. ”

“ I was sitting under the recess of the poop deck, when suddenly cries of astonishment, if not of fear, burst from the seamen; then their voices were lost in a stupendous sound, like the roaring of a mighty cataract, mingled with the rolling of thunder, while a wondrous gleam of red and ghastly light overspread the sea, revealing every crested wave that rolled in long and watery ridges towards us, and every spar, rope, and block of the vessel's rigging in a glare as from a mighty conflagration. ”

“ For 'pull-and-haul' shanties the shantyman took up his position near the workers and announced the shanty, sometimes by singing the first line. This established the tune to which they were to supply the chorus. For capstan shanties he usually did the same. He frequently sat on the capstan, but so far as I can learn he more usually took up his position on or against the knightheads. The importance of the shantyman could not be overestimated. A good shantyman with a pretty wit was worth his weight in gold. He was a privileged person, and was excused all work save light or odd jobs. ”

“ Voices faint, though audible, indulged in allusions more or less profane, and with a success which would be considered highly improper in any latitude.
Thus sinking into an unquiet sleep, with a dream of canoe-cruising in a coral sea, whose pellucid waves sang sadly upon the remote shores of an ideal sphere, across the window loomed the gigantic shadow of some brown beauty, whose vast proportions suggested nothing more lovely than a new Sphinx, with a cabbage in either ear. ”