Lighter,

I was thinking the same. Also wondering what this "ve'a" thing was. Is it just a phonetic realization of some nonsense sound? Or could it be an Anglicization of 'voix' perhaps? It is unclear to me whether it is the name for the 'cry' or else the word that is shouted when one cries.

I have a feeling that the French texts about shanties have mulled over these things already, but I have not read any of those. On the other hand, Hugill (for one) seems to have gobe through some of those. I don't know if he read them closely or just harvested texts from them. I'm inclined to think that he read them. And if that was the case, he never brought up any special insights they may have supplied.

Please let me apologize to any chanty scholars who read this and who have studied French sources -- I don't mean to imply that you have not.

Anyway, as for a word for shanty that the French may have had before English-speakers, there is of course "chant."

My coming upon "chanter", as the verb for singing the maritime work song, and "chanteur", for the person who sings, is pretty exciting for me. But again I say that I don't know how significant that really is in adding to work of people like J. Lighter and S. Gardham on the etymology issue. That is, I don't know if it's a situation like "Yup, we already knew that. What we still need to really confirm is XYZ."

What we don't have, indeed, is the noun. I presume it would have been "chant", but I'd like to see it -- specifically, with reference to "maritime worksong" for example.

"Chant" does seem a little obvious. It is not a "special" word for a thing in French -- it would only have had extra connotations...versus in English where it is a special/unique term.

If "chant" is the word, then we still need the gaps filled as to how exactly it got borrowed and applied to what English speakers were doing. I would also like to know if "chant" had any particular connotations, in both the French and English uses, for types of song. Did English speakers borrow it when they were still in the days of the rudimentary "yeo heave ho" songs, or was it only first used in application to the African-American style worksongs?

Were the cotton stowers observed by Nordhoff calling their songs "chants" in the regular English sense, or were they French-influenced folk (i.e. the Creole environment) using it similarly to a description of maritime work songs in use by the French?

Anyway, Boyer's French-English dictionary was first published as early as 1702 it seems (a copy was recently digitized on Google), and FWIW the maritime definition of "voix" is not there. Nor is there anything of note under "chanteur" or "chanter." That may suggest that this meaning didnt come round until later in the 18th century.