The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128220   Message #2874329
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
28-Mar-10 - 09:58 PM
Thread Name: The Advent and Development of Chanties
Subject: RE: The Advent and Development of Chanties
In THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF WILLIAM REYNOLDS: UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 1838-1842, by William Reynolds, Nathaniel Philbrick, and Thomas Philbrick, there is mentioned, on page 97 (Penguin Edition), that

       "Many of the girls at Point Venus [Tahiti] have learned the chorus songs common with sailors in heaving up the Anchor & other work...Their voices were good, and the ditties of "So early in the morning the Sailor loves his bottle oh," "Round the corner, Sally," "Tally Ho, you know" & a dozen others were often heard along the beach for half the night." (sometime between September 18th & 24th, 1839)


Great to have corroborating evidence that "Round the corner, Sally" and "Tally Ho" were shipboard songs of the 1830s! Too bad it is vague, i.e. "in heaving up the Anchor & other work" -- i.e. were these capstan "ditties"? (The "Round the Corner" handed down via Hugill is a halyard chanty, but I am not getting a strong sense of that from these mentions.)

The other correspondence to note is between the 1831 Guyanese rowing song, "Right early in the marning, de neger like the bottley oh!" and this 1839 ship-transmitted "So early in the morning the Sailor loves his bottle oh."