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Read Ebook: The Shanty Book Part I Sailor Shanties by Terry Richard Runciman Editor
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Ebook has 151 lines and 18597 words, and 4 pages
Editor: Margaret C. Anderson
THE LITTLE REVIEW
MARGARET C. ANDERSON EDITOR
JUNE-JULY, 1915
Literary Journalism in Chicago Lucien Cary Epigrams Richard Aldington Education by Children Will Levington Comfort Notes of a Cosmopolite Alexander S. Kaun "The Artist in Life" Margaret C. Anderson Poems Clara Shanafelt Slobberdom, Sneerdom, and Boredom Ben Hecht The Death of Anton Tarasovitch Florence Kiper Frank Rupert Brooke Arthur Davison Ficke A Photograph of Rupert Brooke by Eugene Hutchinson To a West Indian Alligator Eunice Tietjens Epitaphs Witter Bynner Editorials and Announcements The Submarine Blaa-Blaa-Blaa "The Scavenger" The Nine!--Exhibit! Book Discussion The Reader Critic
Published Monthly
MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher Fine Arts Building CHICAGO
.50 a year
Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago
THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. II
JUNE-JULY, 1915
No. 4
Literary Journalism in Chicago
LUCIAN CARY
But I have no more compliments for THE LITTLE REVIEW.
Epigrams
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Blue
The noon sky, a distended vast blue sail; The sea, a parquet of coloured wood; The rock-flowers, sinister indigo sponges; Lavender leaping up, scented sulphur flames; Little butterflies, resting shut-winged, fluttering, Eyelids winking over watchet eyes.
The Retort Discourteous
They say we like London--O Hell!-- They tell Us we shall never sell Our works . We're "high brow" and long-haired Because we don't Cheat and cant. We can't rhythm; we can't rhyme, Just because their rag-time Bores us.
These twangling lyrists are too pure for sense; So they chime, Rhyme And time, And Slime, All praise their virtuous impotence.
Christine
I know a woman who is natural As any simple cannibal; This is a great misfortune, for her lot Is to reside with people who are not.
Education by Children
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
A little girl of eleven was working here in the study through the long forenoon. In the midst of it, we each looked up and out through the barred window to the nearest elm, where a song-sparrow had just finished a perfect expression of the thing as he felt it. The song was more elaborate, perhaps, because the morning was lofty and glorious. Old Mother Nature smelled like a tea-rose that morning; one would know from that without the sense of direction that the wind was from the south. The song from the sunlight among the new elm leaves was so joyous that it choked us. It stood out from all the songs of the morning, because it was so near, and we had each been called by it from the pleasant mystery of our tasks.
"... sang four songs and flew away."
It was a word-portrait, and told me much that I wanted. The number, of course, was not mental, clearly a part of the inner impression. However, no explanation will help if the art of the saying is not apparent. I told the thing as it is here, to a class later in the day, and a woman said:
"Why, those six words make a Japanese poem."
I wonder if it is oriental? Rather I think it belongs especially to our new generation, the elect of which seems to know innately that an expression of truth in itself is a master-stroke. Somehow the prison-house has not closed altogether upon the elect of the new generation. There are lines in the new poetry that could come forth, and have their being, only from the inner giant that heretofore has been asleep except in the hearts of the rarest few whose mothers mated with Gods, merely using men for a symbol and the gift of matter....
As I believe that the literary generation which has the floor in America today is the weakest and the bleakest that ever made semi-darkness of good sunlight, so I believe that the elect of the new generation contains individuals who are true heaven-borns; that they bring their own light with them and do not stand about stretched for reflection; that they refuse to allow the world-lie to shut the passages of power within them, between the zone of dreams and the more temperate zones of matter. They have refused to accept us--that is the splendid truth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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 sailor song is not a shanty, and 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.
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 :
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: Hauling shanties, and 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 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: those used for 'the long hoist' and 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 .
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:
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' 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:
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