CHANTIES.*

THE chanty (pronounced " shanty ") is a song of labour on board a sailing ship, and is to be distinguished from a sea song, which is a song about the sea, and has never been affected by the fo'c's'le. When sailors sing purely for their amusement they sing such songs as landsmen sing ; certainly not the jolly songs of Dibdin, nor even that magnificent old sea song, "Farewell and Adieu to you, Spanish Ladies." The chanty in these days of almost universal steam—even the sails in many large sailing ships are set by steam—is almost dead. Mr. Mullen has done well to write down some of the chanties he himself used to sing, and he has been aided and encouraged by the right sort of musical collaborator in Mr. W. F. Arnold,- who has not desired to give the chanties a setting which improves them out of all knowledge, and at the same time deprives them of all historical value. Mr. Bullen, who had a strong and good voice, an accurate ear, and a retentive memory for tunes, was naturally chosen inhis sailing. ship days to sing the solo part of the chanties. For the chanty proper invariably had a solo part, and the crew crashed in with • Songs of Sca labour (Ch.:ratios). By Frank T: Sullen, P.R.O.S., and W. P. Arnold. With an Appreciation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. London Thi Orpheus Music Pnbrsbink Co. Dr. ed. net.) the chorus. The complete chantyman had to bare something more than a good voice and a good ear ; he had to be able to improvise quickly and amusingly. The truth is that the tune of a chanty was traditional, and for the rest there was a small permanent nucleus of words which were added to according to the ideas of the soloist or the promptings of the crew. Most of the words were unfit for publication. This accounts for the form in which the chanties are reproduced in this book. Only a few lines are given in every case. The chorus, however, was made up of fixed phrases. It was important that the chorna should hardly vary at all, because it was on the recurrence of a certain cadence or emphasis in regular places when the haul came on the ropes that the lightness of the manual labour depended.

Mr. Bullen recalls some delightful instances of the emotion or exhilaration caused by a well-sung chanty. No. 10 of this collection, for example, is "Johnny Come Down to Hilo," and Mr. Bullen relates the following episode

:- "No. 10 brings to my mind most vividly a dewy morning in Garden Reach where we lay just off the King of Oudh's palace awaiting our permit to moor. I was before the mast in one of Bates' ships, the 'Herat,' and when the order came at dawn to man the windlass I raised this Chanty and my shipmates sang the chorus as I never heard it sung before or since. There was a big ship called the ' Martin Scott' lying inshore of us and her crew were all gathered on dock at their coffee when the order came to "Vast heaving,' cable was short. And that listening crow, as soon as we ceased singing, gave us a stentorian cheer, an unprece- dented honour. I have never heard that noble Chanty sung since, but sometimes even now I can in fancy hear its mellow notes reverberating amid the fantastic buildings of the palace and see the great flocks of pigeons rising and falling as the strange sounds disturbed them."

Again, Mr. Millen explains how the fall of the musics in certain chanties was arranged for two pulls to be taken. He says :—

"They were exceedingly useful, but I have known a crew worked up to snob a pitch of fervour and exertion that they did not hear the mate's shouted belay !' when they were hoisting a topsail yard, with the result that the halliards parted under the furious stress and the great yard came down with a run. Fortunately the Lifts were good or serious damage would have resulted, yard cracked in the slings perhaps, for it is no joke to have a spar weighing a ton and a half even without sail and gear fall a distance of twenty feet on to its middle."

Mr. Arnold says that the majority of chanties are negroid in origin. The negroes of the Southern States of America and of the West Indies sing chanties—they have chantyman, chorus and all—at every sort of labour. The pentatonic scale on which the music is founded seems to be the most primitive form of tonality known among all peoples. Mr. Arnold agrees with Sir George Grove in supposing that the negro melodies are a modified survival of pre-slave days, and therefore originated in Africa. If a negro be asked to heat time with his foot to a chanty, he does it regularly, but he beats against the time instead of with it as any English- man would do. The result is a "feeling of syncopation" which is well known—perhaps too well known—among us now as "mg-time." The tunes of many chanties are strikingly like the hymns of Moody and Sankey, and this is not surpris- ing when it is remembered that numerous negro melodies were adopted for evangelical or revivalistic purposes. Mr. Arnold admirably sums up the difference between the chanty and the sea song or ballad by saying that in the chanty the tune is the thing, the words counting for little, whereas in a sea song or ballad the lyric is all-important.

Mr. Bullen considers that "Rio Grande" is the grandest chanty known. Its open vowels provide splendid possi- bilities of sound. "It can never be forgotten," he says, "when it has once been heard pealing over a quiet anchorage, while the musical clatter of the windlass pawls adds a quaint accompaniment unlike that of any orchestration yet attempted." The few words Mr. Bullen gives are as follows :- " Chantyman Oh, captain, oh, captain, heave yer ship to. Chorus: Oh, you, Rio.

Chantnman For I have got letters to send home by you.

Chorus: And I'm bound to Rio Grande. And away to Rio. Oh, to Rio. Sing, fare you well my bonny young gal, for I'm bound to Rio Grande."

The most popular chanty is perhaps "Sally Brown"

" Cita/avian : Sally Brown she's a bright mulatto.

Chorus: Way ay-y, roll and go l Chantymon: She drinks rum and chews terbacker.

Chorus; Spend my money on Sally Brown."

A very curious chanty is "Stormalong." Legend does not say who the prototype of Stormalong, was; but, the chanty in an expression of the admiration sailors feel for a great seaman. This chanty is his epitaph ; it is economical in words, yet proves that a Stormalong can stir• the sailor's heart. We suspect that old Stormalong had a loud voice and a quick temper, but was just and kindly at bottom ; that be was determined and bold in his seamanship ; and that, while he exacted hard work, he saw to it that his crew had good victuals :— " Chantyman Stormy he was a good old man. Chorus: To my way, you Stormalong,l C'haniymon: Oh Sforniy he is dead and gone! Chorus: Ay ! Ay ! Ay! Mister Stormalong."

Readers of Stevenson's plays will remember his use of the chanty "Leave her, Johnny." Mr. Bullen says that it summed up all the hatred of a ship that had accumulated during a voyage. To sing it towards the end of a voyage was tanta- mount to mutiny :— "Chanty:flan Leave her, Johnny, and we'll work no more. Chorus: Leave her, Johnny, leave her !

Choidgmen: Of pump or drown we've had full store.

Chorus: It's time for us to leave her."

Mr. Bullen divides his chanties into the three usual classes of capstan chanties (which were sung when weighing anchor or warping), halliard chanties (sung when the topsails and top-gallant sails were being mast-headed), and fore-sheet chanties (sung when the fore, main, and crossjack sheets were hauled aft and when bowlines were tautened or tacks boarded). There was a still older chanty known as a pumping chanty, but Mr. Bullen makes no mention of this. Possibly he never heard one, as it is long since these chanties were common. There was yet again a sort of chanty that was not a true chanty, in that it had no solo part, but was simply a general chorus_ It was used by all hands together as they raced along deck with the ropes in tacking ship. Of the well..

known capstan chanty, " go no more a-roving," Mr. Masefield, in writing of chanties, has said that the solo is strangely like a song in Valentinian, one of Thomas Heywood's plays. Several of the couplets are identical. Mr. Bullen says that "Haul the Bowline" is an anomaly, since so weak a rope required no chanty. But, as Mr. Masefield has pointed out, this chanty goes back to the time of Henry VIII., and the bowline was once a more important rope than it is now. Mr. Bullen and Mr. Arnold have done their record in the right way, and no reader, we think, will doubt that a chanty really was worth "ten men on the rope."