I hope no one else minds this digression, then! (anyways the OP seems to have gone AWOL)

So I am intrigued, Claire, with your experience of a "fast and furious" minor tune. To see if we are on the same page: is the minor tune you're familiar with the same tune as the major....only minor? i.e. exact same contour, etc, just using the minor scale degrees?

This "issue" started bugging me when I heard two women (Bonnie Milner, and Denise of the chantey staff) perform, separately, 'Lowlands" at Mystic Seaport earlier this summer. They sang in minor mode. The lyrics they used were drawn by Stan Hugill's book.

Background: Basically, Hugill presents 2 tunes and 3 sets of texts for Lowlands. The first two texts are "I dreamed a dream," but the difference is that one is from a male perspective, the other from a female's. These are meant to correspond to the same tune.

The 3rd set of text Hugill gives has the "Dollar and a half a day." He prints up a fresh musical notation for the tune to go with that. However, it is essentially the same tune already done for the other texts......except, the first one is in minor, and the "dollar" one is in major.

Here's the kicker (well, kickers): Stan's own performances of "Lowlands" (as in the link I put up thread) use the major mode, but they use the "dream" text. Sure, chantey lyrics get switch and re-set to melodies all the time. However, other renditions, such as this non-chantey one by the Corries , also use the "dream" text with the major tune, as did other versions I've heard.

My assumption, when first seeing Hugill's text, was that the notation of the tune to his "dream" text was in error (note: there are many many transcriptional errors in the book). The error, I thought, is simply that an incorrect key signature was added to the "dream" tune. It is in the key of C, and 2 flats are in the key signature, making it appear like a C Dorian mode. The "dollar" tune is written out in the key of Bb, with also 2 flats, i.e. Bb major. Having assumed based on recordings that the minor/Dorian mode was in error, I rationalized this by thinking those two flats in the key signature were accidental, migrated over from the other tune or something.

hearing those two ladies at Mystic, however, I wondered if they were taking the text literally ("error" and all) or whether a minor tune was really traditional.

I've found a minor tune in one other source, LA Smith's 1888 book, with a key signature of F minor (Aeolian). As I mentioned earlier, she surely plagiarized it from an 1882 article by Alden, the original of which I dont have, however. It's not the ~exact~ minor tune as in Hugill ; Hugill's requires no accidentals apart from the key signature, while Alden/Smith's uses the raised seventh as a leading tone.

I'm quite torn, because I think the Smith texts shows evidence that a minor tune existed, however uncommon, but Hugill's performances and "general performance practice" (vague, I know) suggest it the one major tune gets both texts.

Colcord present both "dream" and "dollar" versions to the major tune. Other collectors, Harlow, Doerflinger, Terry, and Bullen, all give only the "dollar" version coupled with the major tune.