R. H. Whall Ernest Reeves: Sea Songs and Shanties.

Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1986, 154 Seiten mit einigen Illustrationen. Gebunden Leinen.

ANOTHER reprint of this book being necessary seems to show appreciation and looks as if the reviewer was right who said This is the real thing". We should like to say, in reply to some criticisms, that the words and music in this collection are, with a few verbal alterations for the sake of decency, those which were actually sung by seamen. No one who started sea life after 1875 heard shantying in its prime. As to the spelling of shanty, the earliest collection known to us, published about 1875, calls these ditties "Shanty Songs", meaning, we suppose, songs from the shanties. Many of the early ones were certainly nigger; for example, "Way! Sing Sally!" "Jamboree", "Let de Bulgine run"; and though, as a rule, white men did not sing "nigger", still there were hundreds of coloured men in our ships, both naval and mercantile, and many of these songs came from the shanties, as the negro huts on Southern plantations were called. In any case, why go to the French when we have the good old English word "chant?" There are many French sea songs of this class, but they are not called "chanteys". Besides the well-known shanties, there were songs peculiar to certain trades. And lastly, as this song-book has been used in the ships of our Grand Fleet, we have thought it worth while to insert three more old naval songs—the real thing, not the shore imitation. "Cawsand Bay" first appeared in an old naval book, Nautical Sketches, by Hamilton Moore, published early in 1840. The other Captain Whall knew all his life, for his uncle, Admiral Boultbee, used to sing it to his nephew when he was a child. "The Dolphin" is also an old sea song, and used to be sung at sea within Captain Whall's recollection. Now, of course, there are many more shanties, but in this book will be found all the best-known, and we do not propose to add any more. We are glad to have saved these shanties from oblivion. They will never more be heard at sea.".