The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #134614   Message #3064565
Posted By: GUEST,John Moulden
31-Dec-10 - 01:38 PM
Thread Name: The Sea in Song, radio documentary
Subject: RE: The Sea in Song, radio documentary
Of course I would say so, wouldn't I. But the point is that, apart from a very few in Sam Henry, the Irish collections contain, almost no shanties. This is partly because the collectors weren't interested in them but in songs in Irish and didn't get them. When Tom Munnelly and Sean Corcoran went looking, in the sixties and seventies, either the singers were reluctant on account of bawdry or because they were inappropriate on shore, and they too got few. The songs being used in these programmes are forebitters or land-based sea songs. As Stan Hugill said, there is no doubt that Irish shanty men were prized, hence their contribution is prominent in the collections from Terry, Whall and others to Hugill and later but not in Irish collections. The first programme said this.