I'm making this thread as a place to file certain kinds of similar chanteys in order to benefit from discussing them as a group. Let me first explain what I mean by the title of this thread.

There are numerous chanteys in Stan Hugill's SHANTIES FROM THE SEVEN SEAS especially, and also in the collections of some earlier writers, that rarely appear in recent repertoires or recordings. A lot of these seem to be Caribbean or of less-determinate Black American origin. However, I'm not so interested in ascribing this or that origin, or any particular degree or "rarity"; I'm just trying to roughly circumscribe this certain body of songs.

There is a broken link: For whatever reasons (which could be discussed), these chanteys have not survived well in the revival era. This is despite the fact that they are easily available in Hugill's popular text. They could have been preserved or revived in oral tradition through Hugill's performances, but for debatable reasons they were not. So when they are occasionally performed, it is based on the somewhat sketchy notations of Hugill and/or the few other writers, with little or no basis in oral tradition.

Because they are comparatively rarely performed, they are little-known. I wanted to make this thread as a place to discuss these, which share similarities and are discussed well as a group. There is a discussion of them started here, and of course bits in various other threads, though hard to recognize and locate.

So far, I'd consider these to be in this category:

"Mudder Dinah" a.k.a. "Sing Sally, O!" (in 2 distinct forms)
"Shinbone Al" aka "Sister Susan" aka "Gwine to git Home"
"Round the Corner Sally"

The list is much much longer, but I don't have time to generate more names just now.

It would be great to have more additions…I'm particularly interested in compiling info on who is/was performing each this chanteys in recent times, where they learned them from, etc. Hopefully this isn't too confusing!

Gibb