To enable young readers to understand the technical words necessarily used in the text only popular definitions are given.

Abdomen: the part of an insect lying behind the thorax.

Acid: a chemical name given to many sour substances. Vinegar and lemon juice owe their sour taste to the acid in them.

Adult: a person, animal, or plant grown to full size and strength.

Ammonia (ammonium): a compound of nitrogen readily usable as a plant food. It is one of the products of decay.

Annual: a plant that bears seed during the first year of its existence and then dies.

Anther: the part of a stamen that bears the pollen.

Atmospheric nitrogen: nitrogen in the air. Great quantities of this valuable plant food are in the air; but, strange to say, most plants cannot use it directly from the air, but must take it in other forms, as nitrates, etc. The legumes are an exception, as they can use atmospheric nitrogen.

Available plant food: food in such condition that plants can use it.

Bacteria: a name applied to a number of kinds of very small living beings, some beneficial, some harmful, some disease-producing. They average about one twenty-thousandth of an inch in length.

Balanced ration: a ration made up of the proper amounts of carbohydrates, fats, and protein, as explained in text. Such a ration avoids all waste of food.

Biennial: a plant that produces seed during the second year of its existence and then dies.

Blight: a diseased condition in plants in which the whole or a part of a plant withers or dries up.

Bluestone: a chemical; copper sulphate. It is used to kill fungi, etc.

Bordeaux Mixture: a mixture invented in Bordeaux, France, to destroy disease-producing fungi.

Bud (noun): an undeveloped branch.

Bud (verb): to insert a bud from the scion upon the stock to insure better fruit.

Bud variation: occasionally one bud on a plant will produce a branch differing in some ways from the rest of the branches; this is bud variation. The shoot that is produced by bud variation is called a sport.

Calyx: the outermost row of leaves in a flower.

Cambium: the growing layer lying between the wood and the bark.

Canon: the shank bone above the fetlock in the fore and hind legs of a horse.

Carbohydrates: carbohydrates are foods free from nitrogen. They make up the largest part of all vegetables. Examples are sugar, starch, and cellulose.

Carbolic acid: a chemical often used to kill or prevent the growth of germs, bacteria, fungi, etc.

Carbon: a chemical element. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon.

Carbon disulphide: a chemical used to kill insects.

Carbonic acid gas: a gas consisting of carbon and oxygen. It is produced by breathing, and whenever carbon is burned. It is the source of the carbon in plants.

Cereal: the name given to grasses that are raised for the food contained in their seeds, such as corn, wheat, rice.

Cobalt: a poisonous chemical used to kill insects.

Cocoon: the case made by an insect to contain its larva or pupa.

Commercial fertilizer: an enriching plant food bought to improve soil.

Compact: a soil is said to be compact when the particles are closely packed.

Concentrated: when applied to food the word means that it contains much feeding value in small bulk.

Contagious: a disease is said to be contagious when it can be spread or carried from one individual to another.

Cross: the result of breeding two varieties of plant together.

Cross pollination: the pollination of a flower by pollen brought from a flower on some other plant.

Croup: the top of the hips.

Culture: the art of preparing ground for seed and raising crops by tillage.

Curb disease: a swelling on the back part of the hind leg of a horse just behind the lowest part of the hock joint. It generally causes lameness.

Curculio: a kind of beetle or weevil.

Dendrolene: a patented substance used for catching cankerworms.

Digestion: the act by which food is prepared by the juices of the body to be used by the blood.

Dormant: a word used to describe sleeping or resting bodies,—bodies not in a state of activity.

Drainage: the process by which an excess of water is removed from the land by ditches, terraces, or tiles.

Element: a substance that cannot be divided into simpler substances.

Ensilage: green foods preserved in a silo.

Evaporate: to pass off in vapor, as a fluid often does; to change from a solid or liquid state into vapor, usually by heat.

Exhaustion: the state in which strength, power, and force have been lost. When applied to land, the word means that land has lost its power to produce well.

Fermentation: a chemical change produced by bacteria, yeast, etc. A common example of fermentation is the change of cider into vinegar.

Fertility: the state of being fruitful. Land is said to be fertile when it produces well.

Fertilization: the act which follows pollination and enables a flower to produce seed.

Fetlock: the long-haired cushion on the back side of a horse's leg just above the hoof.

Fiber: any fine, slender thread or threadlike substance, as the rootlets of plants or the lint of cotton.

Filter: to purify a liquid, as water, by causing it to pass through some substance, as paper, cloth, screens, etc.

Formalin: a forty per cent solution of a chemical known as formaldehyde. Formalin is used to kill fungi, bacteria, etc.

Formula: a recipe for the making of a compound; for example, fertilizer or spraying compounds.

Fungicide: a substance used to kill or prevent the growth of fungi; for example, Bordeaux Mixture or copper sulphate.

Fungous: belonging to or caused by fungi.

Fungus (plural fungi): a low kind of plant life lacking in green color. Molds and toadstools are examples.

Germ: that from which anything springs. The term is often applied to any very small organism or living thing, particularly if it causes great effects such as disease, fermentation, etc.

Germinate: to sprout. A seed germinates when it begins to grow.

Girdle: to make a cut or groove around a limb or tree.

Glacier: an immense field or stream of ice formed in the region of constant snow and moving slowly down a slope or valley.

Globule: a small particle of matter shaped like a globe.

Glucose: a kind of sugar very common in plants. The sugar from grapes, honey, etc. is glucose. That from the sugar cane is not.

Gluten: a vegetable form of protein found in cereals.

Graft: to place a living branch or stem on another living stem so that it may grow there. It insures the growth of the desired kind of plant.

Granule: a little grain.

Gypsum: land plaster.

"Head back": to cut or prune a tree so as to form its head, that is, the place where the main trunk first gives off its branches.

Heredity: the resemblance of offspring to parent.

Hibernating: to pass the winter in a torpid or inactive state in close quarters.

Hock: the joint in the hind leg of quadrupeds between the leg and the shank. It corresponds to the ankle in man.

Host: the plant upon which a fungus or insect is preying.

Humus: the portion of the soil caused by the decay of animal or vegetable matter.

Hybrid: the result of breeding two different kinds of plants together.

Hydrogen: a chemical element. It is present in water and in all living things.

Individual: a single person, plant, animal, or thing of any kind.

Inoculate: to give a disease by inserting the germ that causes it in a healthy being.

Insectivorous: anything that eats insects.

Kainit: salts of potash used in making fertilizers.

Kernel: a single seed or grain, as a kernel of corn.

Kerosene emulsion: see Appendix.

Larva (plural larvÆ): the young or immature form of an insect.

Larval: belonging to larva.

Layer: to propagate plants by a method similar to cutting, but differing from cutting in that the young plant takes root before it is separated from the parent plant.

Legume: a plant belonging to the family of the pea, clover, and bean; that is, having a flower of similar structure.

Lichen: a kind of flowerless plant that grows on stones, trees, boards, etc.

Loam: an earthy mixture of clay and sand with organic matter.

Magnesia: an earthy white substance somewhat similar to lime.

Magnify: to make a thing larger in fact or in appearance; to enlarge the appearance of a thing so that the parts may be seen more easily.

Membrane: a thin layer or fold of animal or vegetable matter.

Mildew: a cobwebby growth of fungi on diseased or decaying things.

Mold: see mildew.

Mulch: a covering of straw, leaves, or like substances over the roots of plants to protect them from heat, drought, etc., and to preserve moisture.

Nectar: a sweetish substance in blossoms of flowers from which bees make honey.

Nitrate: a readily usable form of nitrogen. The most common nitrate is saltpeter.

Nitrogen: a chemical element, one of the most important and most expensive plant foods. It exists in fertilizers, in ammonia, in nitrates, and in organic matter.

Nodule: a little knot or bump.

Nutrient: any substance which nourishes or promotes growth.

Organic matter: substances made through the growth of plants or animals.

Ovary: the particular part of the pistil that bears the immature seed.

Ovipositor: the organ with which an insect deposits its eggs.

Oxygen: a gas present in the air and necessary to breathing.

Particle: any very small part of a body.

Perennial: living through several years. All trees are perennial.

Petal: a single leaf of the corolla.

Phosphoric acid: an important plant food occurring in bones and rock phosphates.

Pistil: the part of the blossom that contains the immature seeds.

Pollen: the powdery substance borne by the stamen of the flower. It is necessary to seed production.

Pollination: the act of carrying pollen from stamens to pistils. It is usually done by the wind or by insects.

Porosity: the state of having small openings or passages between the particles of matter.

Potash: an important part of plant foods. The chief source of potash is kainit, muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, wood ashes, and cotton-hull ashes.

Propagate: to cause plants or animals to increase in number.

Protein: the name of a group of substances containing nitrogen. It is one of the most important of feeding stuffs.

Pruning: trimming or cutting parts that are not needed or that are injurious.

Pulverize: to reduce to a dustlike state.

Pupa: an insect in the stage of its life that comes just before the adult condition.

Purity (of seed): seeds are pure when they contain only one kind of seed and no foreign matter.

Ration: a fixed daily allowance of food for an animal.

Raupenleim: a patented sticky substance used to catch the cankerworm.

Resistant: a plant is resistant to disease when it can ward off attacks of the disease; for example, some varieties of the grape are resistant to the phylloxera.

Rotation (of crops): a well-arranged succession of different crops on the same land.

Scion: a shoot, sprout, or branch taken to graft or bud upon another plant.

Seed bed: the layer of earth in which seeds are sown.

Seed selection: the careful selection of seed from particular plants with the object of keeping or increasing some desirable quality.

Seedling: a young plant just from the seed.

Sepal: one of the leaves in the calyx.

Set: a young plant for propagation.

Silo: a house or pit for packing away green food for winter use so as to exclude air and moisture.

Sire: father.

Smut: a disease of plants, particularly of cereals, which causes the plant or some part of it to become a powdery mass.

Spike: a lengthened flower cluster with stalkless flowers.

Spiracle: an air opening in the body of an insect.

Spore: a small body formed by a fungus to reproduce the fungus. It serves the same use as seeds do for flowering plants.

Spray: to apply a liquid in the form of a very fine mist by the aid of a spraying pump for the purpose of killing fungi or insects.

Stamen: the part of the flower that bears the pollen.

Stamina: endurance.

Sterilize: to destroy all the germs or spores in or on anything. Sterilizing is often done by heat or chemicals.

Stigma: the part of the pistil that receives the pollen.

Stock: the stem or main part of a tree or plant. In grafting or budding the scion is inserted upon the stock.

Stover: as used in this book the word means the dry stalks of corn from which the ears have been removed.

Subsoil: the soil under the topsoil.

Sulphur: a yellowish chemical element; brimstone.

Taproot: the main root of a plant, which runs directly down into the earth to a considerable depth without dividing.

Terrace: a ridge of earth run on a level around a slope or hillside to keep the land from washing.

Thorax: the middle part of the body of an insect. The thorax lies between the abdomen and the head.

Thermometer: an instrument for measuring heat.

Tillage: the act of preparing land for seed, and keeping the ground in a proper state for the growth of crops.

Transplant: a plant grown in a bed with a view to being removed to other soil; a technical term used by gardeners.

Tubercle: a small, wart-like growth on the roots of legumes.

Udder: the milk vessel of a cow.

Utensil: a vessel used for household purposes.

Variety: a particular kind. For example, the Winesap, Bonum, Æsop, etc., are different varieties of apples.

Ventilate: to open to the free passage of air.

Virgin soil: a soil which has never been cultivated.

Vitality (of seed): vitality is the ability to grow. Seed are of good vitality if a large per cent of them will sprout.

Weathering: the action of moisture, air, frost, etc. upon rocks.

Weed: a plant out of place. A wheat plant in a rose bed or a rose in the wheat field would be regarded as a weed, as would any plant growing in a place in which it is not wanted.

Wilt (of cotton): a disease of cotton in which the whole plant droops or wilts.

Withers: the ridge between the shoulder bones of a horse, at the base of the neck.

Yeast: a preparation containing the yeast plant used to make bread rise, etc.

---

ing them ashore, and partly because of the Rabelaisian character of the words to which they were sung aboard ship. 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.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD

Here let me enter my protest against the literary preciosity which derives the word from (un) chantÉ and spells it 'chanty'—in other words, against the gratuitous assumption that unlettered British sailors derived one of the commonest words in their vocabulary from a foreign source. The result of this 'literary' spelling is that ninety-nine landsmen out of every hundred, instead of pronouncing the word 'shanty,' rhyming with 'scanty' (as every sailor did), pronounce it 'tchahnty,' rhyming with 'auntie,' thereby courting the amusement or contempt of every seaman. The vogue of 'chanty' was apparently created by the late W.E. Henley, a fine poet, a great man of letters, a profound admirer of shanty tunes, but entirely unacquainted with nautical affairs. Kipling and other landsmen have given additional currency to the spelling. The 'literary' sailors, Clark Russell and Frank Bullen, have also spelt it 'chanty,' but their reason is obvious. The modest seaman always bowed before the landsman's presumed superiority in 'book-larnin'.' What more natural than that Russell and Bullen, obsessed by so ancient a tradition, should accept uncritically the landsman's spelling. But educated sailors devoid of 'literary' pretensions have always written the word as it was pronounced. To my mind the strongest argument against the literary landsman's derivation of the word is that the British sailor cultivated the supremest contempt for everything French, and would be the last person to label such a definitely British practice as shanty-singing with a French title. If there had been such a thing in French ships as a labour-song bearing such a far-fetched title as (un) chantÉ, there might have been a remote possibility of the British sailor adopting the French term in a spirit of sport or derision, but there is no evidence that any such practice, or any such term, achieved any vogue in French ships. As a matter of fact, the Oxford Dictionary (which prints it 'shanty') states that the word never found its way into print until 1869.

The truth is that, however plausible the French derivation theory may sound, it is after all pure speculation—and a landsman's speculation at that—unsupported by a shred of concrete evidence.

If I wished to advance another theory more plausible still, and equally unconvincing, I might urge that the word was derived from the negro hut-removals already mentioned. Here, at least, we have a very ancient custom, which would be familiar to British seamen visiting West Indian seaports. The object moved was a shanty; the music accompanying the operation was called, by the negroes, a shanty tune; its musical form (solo and chorus) was identical with the sailor shanty; the pulls on the rope followed the same method which obtained at sea; the soloist was called a shantyman; like the shantyman at sea he did no work, but merely extemporized verses to which the workers at the ropes supplied the chorus; and finally, the negroes still pronounce the word itself exactly as the seaman did.

I am quite aware of the flaws in the above argument, but at least it shows a manual labour act performed both afloat and ashore under precisely similar conditions as to (a) its nature, (b) its musical setting; called by the same name, with the same pronunciation in each case; and lastly, connected, in one case, with an actual hut or shanty. Against this concrete argument we have a landsman's abstract speculation, which (a) begs the whole question, and (b) which was never heard of until a few years before the disappearance of the sailing ship. I do not assert that the negroid derivation is conclusive, but that from (un) chantÉ will not bear serious inspection.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The material under this head is very scanty. Nothing of any consequence was written before the eighties, when W.L. Alden, in Harper's Magazine, and James Runciman, in the St. James's Gazette and other papers, wrote articles on the subject with musical quotations. Since then several collections have appeared:

Of all these collections Capt. Whall's is the only one which a sailor could accept as authoritative. Capt. Whall unfortunately only gives the twenty-eight shanties which he himself learnt at sea. But to any one who has heard them sung aboard the old sailing ships, his versions ring true, and have a bite and a snap that is lacking in those published by mere collectors.

Davis and Tozer's book has had a great vogue, as it was for many years the only one on the market. 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.

Miss Smith's book is a thick volume into which was tumbled indiscriminately and uncritically a collection of all sorts of tunes from all sorts of countries which had any connection with seas, lakes, rivers, or their geographical equivalents. Scientific folk-song collecting was not understood in those days, and consequently all was fish that came to the authoress's net. Sailor shanties and landsmen's nautical effusions were jumbled together higgledy-piggledy, along with 'Full Fathom Five' and the 'Eton Boating Song.' But this lack of discrimination, pardonable in those days, was not so serious as the inability to write the tunes down correctly. So long as they were copied from other song-books they were not so bad, but when it came to taking them down from the seamen's singing the results were deplorable. Had the authoress been able to give us correct versions of the shanties her collection would have been a valuable one. The book contains altogether about thirty-two shanties collected from sailors in the Tyne seaports. Since both Miss Smith and myself hail from Newcastle, her 'hunting ground' for shanties was also mine, and I am consequently in a position to assess the importance or unimportance of her work. I may, therefore, say that although hardly a single shanty is noted down correctly, I can see clearly—having myself noted the same tunes in the same district—what she intended to convey, and furthermore can vouch for the accuracy of some of the words which were common to north country sailors, and which have not appeared in other collections.

If I have been obliged to criticize Miss Smith's book it is not because I wish to disparage a well-intentioned effort, but because I constantly hear The Music of the Waters quoted as an authoritative work on sailor shanties; and since the shanties in it were all collected in the district where I spent boyhood and youth, I am familiar with all of them, and can state definitely that they are in no sense authoritative. I should like, however, to pay my tribute of respect to Miss Smith's industry, and to her enterprise in calling attention to tunes that then seemed in a fair way to disappear.

Bullen and Arnold's book ought to have been a valuable contribution to shanty literature, as Bullen certainly knew his shanties, and used to sing them capitally. Unfortunately his musical collaborator does not appear to have been gifted with the faculty of taking down authentic versions from his singing. He seems to have had difficulty in differentiating between long measured notes and unmeasured pauses; between the respective meanings of three-four and six-eight time; between modal and modern tunes; and between the cases where irregular barring was or was not required. Apart from the amateur nature of the harmonies, the book exhibits such strange unacquaintance with the rudiments of musical notation as the following (p. 25):

music

[Listen]

A few other collections deserve mention:

There are one or two other collections in print which are obviously compilations, showing no original research. Of these I make no note.

SHANTY FORMS

Shanties may be roughly divided, as regards their use, into two classes: (a) Hauling shanties, and (b) Windlass and Capstan. The former class accompanied the setting of the sails, and the latter the weighing of the anchor, or 'warping her in' to the wharf, etc. Capstan shanties were also used for pumping ship. A few shanties were 'interchangeable,' i.e. they were used for both halliards and capstan. The subdivisions of each class are interesting, and the nature of the work involving 'walk away,' 'stamp and go,' 'sweating her up,' 'hand over hand,' and other types of shanty would make good reading; but nautical details, however fascinating, must be economized in a musical publication.

Capstan shanties are readily distinguishable by their music. The operation of walking round the capstan (pushing the capstan bars in front of them) was continuous and not intermittent. Both tune and chorus were, as a rule, longer than those of the hauling shanty, and there was much greater variety of rhythm. Popular songs, if they had a chorus or refrain, could be, and were, effectively employed for windlass and capstan work.

Hauling shanties were usually shorter than capstan ones, and are of two types: (a) those used for 'the long hoist' and (b) those required for 'the short pull' or 'sweating-up.' Americans called these operations the 'long' and the 'short drag.' The former was used when beginning to hoist sails, when the gear would naturally be slack and moderately easy to manipulate. It had two short choruses, with a double pull in each. In the following example, the pulls are marked music accent symbol.

Reuben Ranzo

[Listen]

It is easy to see how effective a collective pull at each of these points would be, while the short intervals of solo would give time for shifting the hands on the rope and making ready for the next combined effort.

When the sail was fully hoisted and the gear taut, a much stronger pull was necessary in order to make everything fast, so the shanty was then changed for a 'sweating-up' one, in which there was only one short chorus and one very strong pull:

Haul the Bowlin'

[Listen]

So much effort was now required on the pull that it was difficult to sing a musical note at that point. The last word was therefore usually shouted.

SOURCES OF TUNES

The sailor travelled in many lands, and in his shanties there are distinct traces of the nationalities of the countries he visited. Without doubt a number of them came from American negro sources. The songs heard on Venetian gondolas must have had their effect, as many examples show. There are also distinct traces of folk-songs which the sailor would have learnt ashore in his native fishing village, and the more familiar Christy Minstrel song was frequently pressed into the service. 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. 11. Others fulfil to a certain extent modal conditions, but are nevertheless in keys, e.g. 'Stormalong John,' No. 10.

Like many other folk-songs, certain shanties—originally, no doubt, in a mode—were, by the insertion of leading notes, converted into the minor key. There was also the tendency on the part of the modern sailor to turn his minor key into a major one. I sometimes find sailors singing in the major, nowadays, tunes which the very old men of my boyhood used to sing in the minor. A case in point is 'Haul away, Joe,' No. 28. Miss Smith is correct in giving it in the minor form which once obtained on the Tyne, and I am inclined to hazard the opinion that that was the original form and not, as now, the following:

Haul away Joe

[Listen]

In later times I have also heard 'The Drunken Sailor' (a distinctly modal tune) sung in the major as follows:

The Drunken Sailor

[Listen]

I have generally found that these perversions of the tunes are due to sailors who took to the sea as young men in the last days of the sailing ship, and consequently did not imbibe to the full the old traditions. With the intolerance of youth they assumed that the modal turn given to a shanty by the older sailor was the mark of ignorance, since it did not square with their ideas of a major or minor key. This experience is common to all folk-tune collectors.

Other characteristics, for example: (a) different words to the same melody; (b) different melodies to the same or similar words, need not be enlarged upon here, as they will be self-evident when a definitive collection is published.

Of the usual troubles incidental to folk-song collecting it is unnecessary to speak. But the collection of shanties involves difficulties of a special kind. In taking down a folk-song from a rustic, one's chief difficulty is surmounted when one has broken down his shyness and induced him to sing. There is nothing for him to do then but get on with the song. Shanties, however, being labour songs, one is 'up against' the strong psychological connection between the song and its manual acts. Two illustrations will explain what I mean.

A friend of mine who lives in Kerry wished a collector to hear some of the traditional keening, and an old woman with the reputation of being the best keener in the district, when brought to the house to sing the funeral chants, made several attempts and then replied in a distressed manner: 'I can't do it; there's no body,' This did not mean that she was unwilling to keen in the absence of a corpse, but that she was unable to do so. Just before giving up in despair my friend was seized with a brain wave, and asked her if it would suffice for him to lie down on the floor and personate the corpse. When he had done this the old woman found herself able to get on with the keening.

An incident related to me quite casually by Sir Walter Runciman throws a similar light on the inseparability of a shanty and its labour. He described how one evening several north country ships happened to be lying in a certain port. All the officers and crews were ashore, leaving only the apprentices aboard, some of whom, as he remarked, were 'very keen on shanties,' and their suggestion of passing away the time by singing some was received with enthusiasm. The whole party of about thirty apprentices at once collected themselves aboard one vessel, sheeted home the main topsail, and commenced to haul it up to the tune of 'Boney was a warrior,' changing to 'Haul the Bowlin'' for 'sweating-up.' In the enthusiasm of their singing, and the absence of any officer to call ''Vast hauling,' they continued operations until they broke the topsail yard in two, when the sight of the wreckage and the fear of consequences brought the singing to an abrupt conclusion. 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. 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. Of course I have had sailors sing shanties to me in a fine declamatory manner, but I usually found one of three things to be the case: the man was a 'sea lawyer,' or had not done much deep-sea sailing; or his seamanship only dated from the decline of the sailing vessel.

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. The collector who comes upon the scene at this late time of day must necessarily be at a disadvantage. The ordinary methods which he would apply to 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. When the originals are available it seems to me pedantic and academic to put into print the comic mispronunciations of well-known words by old and uneducated seamen.

And this brings me to the last difficulty which confronts the collector with no previous knowledge of shanties. As a mere matter of dates, any sailors now remaining from sailing ship days must necessarily be very old men. I have found that their octogenarian memories are not always to be trusted. On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me. I have seen similar results in print, since the collector arrived too late upon the scene to be able to detect the tricks which an old man's memory played him.

One final remark about collectors which has an important bearing upon the value of their work. There were two classes of sailing vessels that sailed from English ports—the coaster or the mere collier that plied between the Tyne or Severn and Boulogne, and the Southspainer, under which term was comprised all deep-sea vessels. On the collier or short-voyage vessel the crew was necessarily a small one, and the shanty was more or less of a makeshift, adapted to the capacity of the limited numbers of the crew. Purely commercial reasons precluded the engagement of any shantyman specially distinguished for his musical attainments. Consequently, so far as the shanty was concerned, 'any old thing would do.' On the Southspainer, however, things were very different. The shantyman was usually a person of considerable musical importance, who sang his songs in a more or less finished manner; his melodies were clean, clear-cut things, without any of the folk-songer's quavers and wobbles. I heard them in the 'seventies and 'eighties before the sailing-ship had vanished, consequently I give them as they were then sung—undisfigured and unobscured by the mixture of twirls, quavers, and hiccups one hears from octogenarian mariners who attempt them to-day.

METHOD OF SINGING

So far as the music was concerned, a shanty was a song with a chorus. The song was rendered by one singer, called the shantyman, and the chorus by the sailors who performed their work in time with the music. So far as the words were concerned there was usually a stereotyped opening of one or more verses. For all succeeding verses the shantyman improvized words, and his topics were many and varied, the most appreciated naturally being personal allusions to the crew and officers, sarcastic criticism on the quality of the food, wistful references to the good time coming on shore, etc. There was no need for any connection or relevancy between one verse or another, nor were rhymes required. The main thing that mattered was that the rhythm should be preserved and that the words should be such as would keep the workers merry or interested. Once the stereotyped verses were got rid of and the improvization began, things became so intimate and personal as to be unprintable. It was a curious fact that such shanty words as lent themselves most to impropriety were wedded to tunes either of fine virility or haunting sweetness.

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.

THE WORDS OF SHANTIES

I have already noted the shanties which were derived from popular songs, also the type which contained a definite narrative. Except where a popular song was adapted, the form was usually rhymed or more often unrhymed couplets. The topics were many and varied, but the chief ones were: (1) popular heroes such as Napoleon, and 'Santy Anna.' That the British sailor of the eighteenth century should hate every Frenchman and yet make a hero of Bonaparte is one of the mysteries which has never been explained. Another mystery is the fascination which Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1795-1876) exercised over the sailor. He was one of the many Mexican 'Presidents' and was defeated by the American General Taylor in 1847. That did not prevent the British sailor presenting him in the light of an invariable victor until he was led out to be shot (he really died a natural death) by persons unknown. (2) The sailor had mythical heroes too, e.g. 'Ranzo,' already mentioned, and 'Stormy,' who was the theme of many shanties. No sailor could ever give the least explanation of them, and so they remain the last echoes of long forgotten sagas. (3) High-sounding, poetic, or mysterious words, such as 'Lowlands,' 'Shenandoah,' 'Rolling river,' 'Hilo,' 'Mobile Bay,' 'Rio Grande,' had a great fascination, as their constant recurrence in many shanties shows. (4) The sailor also sang much of famous ships, such as 'The Flying Cloud,' 'The Henry Clay,' or 'The Victory,' and famous lines, such as 'The Black Ball.' Even famous shipowners were celebrated in song, as witness 'Mr. John Tapscott,' in 'We're all bound to go.' (5) Love affairs, in which 'Lizer Lee' and other damsels constantly figured, were an endless topic. (6) But chiefly did Jack sing of affairs connected with his ship. He never sang of 'the rolling main,' 'the foaming billows,' 'the storm clouds,' etc. These are the stock-in-trade of the landsman; they were too real for the sailor to sing about. He had the instinct of the primitive man which forbids mention of natural forces of evil omen. But intimate or humorous matters such as the failings of his officers, the quality of the food, the rate of pay, or other grievances were treated with vigour and emphasis. Like the Britisher of to-day, he would put up with any hardship so long as he were permitted to grouse about it. The shantyman gave humorous expression to this grousing, which deprived it of the element of sulks. Steam let off in this way was a wholesome preventive of mutiny.

The choruses were usually jingles, with no relevance save maintenance of the rhythm.

One feature of the words may be noted. The sailor's instinct for romance was so strong that in his choruses, at least, no matter how 'hair-curling' the solo might be, he always took the crude edge off the concrete and presented it as an abstraction if possible. For example, he knew perfectly well that one meaning of 'to blow' was to knock or kick. He knew that discipline in Yankee packets was maintained by corporeal methods, so much so that the Mates, to whom the function of knocking the 'packet rats' about was delegated, were termed first, second, and third 'blowers,' or strikers, and in the shanty he sang 'Blow the man down.' 'Knock' or 'kick,' as I have recently seen in a printed collection, was too crudely realistic for him. In like manner the humorous title, 'Hog's-eye,' veiled the coarse intimacy of the term which it represented. And that is where, when collecting shanties from the 'longshore' mariner of to-day, I find him, if he is uneducated, so tiresome. 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. Now it has become a flourishing industry of high commercial value. From the commercial point of view it is essential that results should be printed and circulated as widely as possible. Some knowledge of seamanship is an absolute necessity where folk-shanties are concerned. The mere collector nowadays does not possess that knowledge; it is confined to those who have had practical experience of the sea, but who will never print their experiences. The mere collector must print his versions. What is unprinted must remain unknown; what is printed is therefore accepted as authoritative, however misleading it may be. Many highly educated men, of whom Captain Whall is the type, have followed the sea. It is from them that the only really trustworthy information is forthcoming. But so far as I can judge, it is uneducated men who appear to sing to collectors nowadays, and I have seen many a quiet smile on the lips of the educated sailor when he is confronted with printed versions of the uneducated seaman's performances. For example, one of the best known of all shanties is 'The Hog's-eye man'; I have seen this entitled 'The Hog-eyed man,' and even 'The Ox-eyed man.' Every old sailor knew the meaning of the term. Whall and Bullen, who were both sailors, use the correct expression, 'Hog-eye.' The majority of sailors of my acquaintance called it 'Hog's-eye.' Did decency permit I could show conclusively how Whall and Bullen are right and the mere collector wrong. 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 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. Granted his drinking, cursing, and amours—but were not these, until Victorian times, the hall-mark of every gentleman ashore? The Rabelaisian jokes of the shantyman were solos, the sound of which would not travel far beyond the little knot of workers who chuckled over them. The choruses—shouted out by the whole working party—would be heard all over the ship and even penetrate ashore if she were in port. Hence, in not a single instance do the choruses of any shanty contain a coarse expression.

EDITORIAL METHODS

As regards the tunes, I have adhered to the principle of giving each one as it was sung by some individual singer. This method has not been applied to the words. Consequently the verses of any given shanty may have derived from any number of singers. Since there was no connection or relevancy between the different verses of a shanty, the only principle I have adhered to is that whatever verses are set down should have been sung to me at some time or other by some sailor or other.

Of course I have had to camouflage many unprintable expressions, and old sailors will readily recognize where this has been done. Sometimes a whole verse (after the first line) has needed camouflage, and the method adopted is best expressed as follows:

There was a young lady of Gloucester Who couldn't eat salt with her egg, And when she sat down She could never get up, And so the poor dog had none.

As regards the accompaniments, I have been solely guided by the necessity of preserving the character of the melodies in all their vigour and vitality, and have tried, even in obviously modal tunes, not to obscure their breeziness by academic treatment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Amongst those to whom I owe thanks, I must number the Editors of The Music Student and Music and Letters, for allowing me to incorporate in this Preface portions of articles which I have written for them. Also to Capt. W.J. Dowdy, both for singing shanties to me himself, and affording me facilities for interviewing inmates of the Royal Albert Institution, over which he presides. I also wish to express my gratitude to those sailors who have in recent years sung shanties to me, especially Capt. R.W. Robertson, Mr. Geo. Vickers, Mr. Richard Allen, of Seahouses, and Mr. F.B. Mayoss. And last, but not least, to Mr. Morley Roberts, who has not only sung shanties to me, but has also given me the benefit of his ripe nautical experience.

R.R.T.

Hampstead, 1921.

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