Hi Dani.

I've been writing this book as an ongoing project, and was actually thinking of having it published posthumously. I state a disclaimer in the book's preface: *****

This book is filled with more plagiarism than a college freshman's term paper, but I'm still printing it for two reasons: 1. Folk music is usually considered to be in the "public domain," especially since almost every folk song ever "written" is really just a slightly reworked copy of some other song that came before it. I'm just continuing that "noble" tradition. 2. I don't charge any money for this, so I'm not committing an act of copyright infringement. I typed this on my own time, and copied it at my own expense. My motivation: deep love for this stuff, the desire to share it with others, and the fact that I don't have much of a life anyway so it's not like I had something better to do with my time instead. Pathetic, isn't it? ***** Well, I actually do have quite a life, but I enjoyed writing that just the same. My thought about a postumous publishing would be to avoid all the lawsuits. But maybe I won't die very soon, so I might want to publish it anyway. Any advice?

>I just this weekend stumbled on an LP of >these songs at an estate sale and am >wearing it out Could you please tell me, which LP?

As for the origins of the word, it comes from the French, "Chanter" which means "to sing" the French word for "song" is "chanson" Anyway, the word we use has many spellings: Chanty, Shanty, Shantey, and so on... although I keep hearing the the only "official" spelling is "chantey." Harumph. I don't beive in an official anything.