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22 Nov 09 - 06:10 AM (#2770991) Subject: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jack Blandiver All my life it's been Shanty; now it's Chantey. So what gives? Is this real or just more fake-lore revivalist pedantry? |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:16 AM (#2770992) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall It's always been CHANTY to me and I'm old. |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:19 AM (#2770995) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion Dictionaries tend to give both. Presumably the ch spelling alludes to the [speculative] origin in French chantez, while the sh one is a more faithful rendering of seamen's pronunciation — with perhaps some anxiety, among 'chantey'-users, to avoid confusion with songs sung in rude shacks ['shanties']. There isn't much ambiguity, whichever is used; so why not just regard it, as the dictionaries do, as optional; and find some more worthwhile object of worry to eat one's ♥ out over!? |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:22 AM (#2770996) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: The Borchester Echo fake-lore revivalist pedantry Yes. Though spelling it with a C may be a trifle more authentic (Fr chanter = to sing. Why not just call them "sea songs"? |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:25 AM (#2770997) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Young Buchan ... jaws harp ... welsh rarebit... It can't be pedantry, otherwise I would be using it myself. Leaving aside the late 19th century, which presumably wasn't part of 'all your life', it now seems to be essentially an American aberration no doubt aimed at taking our attention away from their inabilitity to spell aluminium and colour. Stan Hugill spelt it Shanty, and since he made them all up .... |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:28 AM (#2770999) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Leadfingers I am with Young Buchan on this - It seems to be another creeping Americanisation ! |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:28 AM (#2771000) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion Why not just call them "sea songs"? > Why, becoz not all seasongs are shanties/chanteys/whatevers, Diane; & the distinction from forebitters/focsle-/watchbelow-songs must surely be preserved. One comes across enough non-folkies who will call every song with any nautical connection a 'sea-shanty': even most educated people like Philip Howard who used to drive me crazy doing it when I reviewed folk-books for The Times when he was Literary Editor, & he just wouldn't be told — & that is something worth worrying about, I should say. |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:31 AM (#2771001) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall Sea songs would be ok to a point, but not all sea songs are chanties. Some are "fore bitters" or foc'sle songs (Forecastle) others are homeward bound songs. "A rose, by any other name" |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:13 AM (#2771018) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jack Blandiver Thanks, YB - that's all I need to know. Although... Some are "fore bitters" or foc'sle songs (Forecastle) others are homeward bound songs. Who came up with these terms anyway? Sailors or folk-revivalists? BTW - Jaw's Harp, it would seem, is a corruption of Jew's Harp by some centuries... |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:14 AM (#2771019) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: BobKnight This might make your mind up - Chanty is a toilet receptacle which in days of old went under the bed. However, my "bible" A.K.A. Longman's "Guide To English Usage" gives the following explanation. "A shanty is a crude hut. The similiar word for a sailor's work song is SHANTY, or SHANTEY in British English, but CHANTY, or CHANTEY in American English." So, ye ken noo!! |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:35 AM (#2771032) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: beeliner I was walking through the run-down section of the city yesterday and heard a catchy song of the sea emanating from one of the hovels there. It was only a chanty in old shanty town. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:42 AM (#2771035) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Young Buchan "Who came up with these terms anyway? Sailors or folk-revivalists?" Whall, who was a sailor, in Ships Seasongs and Shanties said 'As to the spelling of 'shanty', I see no reason why, because shore people have fancied a derivation of the word and written it 'chanty', I should follow. It was not so pronounced at sea, and to spell it so is misleading'. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:51 AM (#2771039) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Tug the Cox Ch is pronounced as sh in french derived words, as in Charlotte. There was a lot of mixing of language and culture at sea.The terms are equally old, and can both be found in 19th century texts |
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22 Nov 09 - 08:01 AM (#2771040) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: My guru always said And some sea songs are ballads.... |
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22 Nov 09 - 08:13 AM (#2771046) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Mr Happy Preferisco Chianti!! |
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22 Nov 09 - 12:28 PM (#2771153) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib The thing we are talking about is a type of work-song, or work-CHANT if you like, that developed amongst African-American laborers and which, by the 1830s, had been adopted by sailors of various nations. Before then, there had been a patchy tradition of work-songs aboard ship. However, although nowadays we conveniently label all maritime work-songs as chantey/shanty/shanty (especially to distinguish them from maritime NON-work-songs), one could argue that before this period there was no "chantey" per se. The African-American based genre has a distinct-enough form and character that one can see the "chantey" (in whatever erstwhile spelling/pronunciation) as something fairly new – a new addition to the previous (though as I said, seemingly patchy) practice of shipboard work-songs. Indeed, a "chantey," strictly speaking, was not restricted to work aboard ship. As such it was a label for a particular mode of coordinating work through chanting that was developed in African-American trades and later found useful by those of other ethnicities engaged in similar work. The word seems to originate in America then, amongst stevedores. (Note that "chant" or "chaunt" had been in use to describe songs with the particular connotations of being sung by African-Americans.) The earliest citation known to date is the description of the cotton-stowing stevedores of Mobile Bay of the 1840s, where their practice is referred to as "chanting" and their lead man is called "chanty-man" (Nordhoff 1855). P.H. Gosse (1859) observed the same practice in 1838, but gave it no name. In 1867, Clarke (SEVEN YEARS A SAILOR'S LIFE) used "chanty" for both stevedore-type and shipboard work. The practice of using this new-ish form was completely established by then, though to what extent the term "chanty" was used is debatable. I also want to re-iterate that whatever the earlier references to maritime work-songs, they may not have been what was originally known as "chanty". The really short hauls ("yo heave HO!") were probably existing in some form among "all" maritime nations long back. And the merely pace-setting, spirit-keeping capstan songs that could easily come from shore ditties and fiddler's airs are a distinct form from the stuff that was first called chanty. That stuff was especially suited to the long halyard pulls and windlass heaves (though also adapted to capstan, as nearly any song could be). It seems that while THIS kind of work-song became common aboard ship, worksongs became a way of life there, and subsequently the various forms, ancient and more recent, from the African-American paradigm and the European ballad-type paradigm, were all lumped…and eventually subsumed under the term "chanty." "Ch" is by far the common spelling of the 19th century. Before one starts talking about "fakelore" and "American aberrations" one had better check all the sources. I am looking at a chronological bibliography of texts about or mentioning chanties and rarely does "shanty" appear. The "sh" form does not appear in a big way until Whall's 1910 book. However, in the English vs. American debate, one would be wise to note that Cecil Sharp (ever heard of him?) called his 1914 book ENGLISH FOLK-CHANTEYS. The turning point seems to have come with Englishman R.R. Terry who, in an address to the Royal Music Association on 18 May, 1915, advocated for the spelling of "shanty." He cites two reasons, the main being that it should be spelled "as it sounds." That is a fairly absurd notion if one considers the changes that would need to be made to English spelling all around is one were to apply that idea uniformly. Nor has there been a problem with pronouncing the sound in chandelier and chamois and other words with French orthography. And not to mention that Noah Webster's very same initiative to "spell as it sounds" gives us the divide between colour and color – "American aberrations." Seems Terry was creating an "English aberration." His other, weak reason for the "sh" spelling was his idea that "shanty" was called so because of the West Indian practice of shifting shanty homes with work-songs. The strength of that argument speaks for itself! In the discussion following his address, the chair of the panel states his disagreement. Now, how did "SH" begin to stick? My hunch would be that Terry's works had become the popular source for the first Revival – or so Hugill has claimed that the drawing room chantey-singers of the 20s-30s were mostly influenced by Terry. "CH" still persisted as the most common spelling in publications into the 1920s, when Terry's books were published. However, Colcord adopted the "SH" in here 1924 ROLL AND GO. From reading her text, it is clear that she was in correspondence with Terry and used his works as a basis of comparison (at that point only the first had been published). The confusion happens after then. Take these 2 article titles for example: 1928 Broadwood, Lucy E. and A.H. Fox-Strangways. "Early Chanty-Singing and Ship-Music." Journal of the Folk-Song Society 8(32) 1928 Thomas, J.E., Lucy E. Broadwood, Frank Howes, and Frank Kidson. "Sea Shanties." Journal of the Folk-Song Society 8(32) Same journal issue; 2 different spellings. While "CH" persisted from then, now in especially American publications, there is no consistency. Doerflinger (1951), based in New York, used "SH", although I wonder how much that had to do with creating his clever title SHANTYMEN AND SHANTYBOYS (the latter being a term for lumberjacks, who lived in shanty huts!). Hugill's work certainly spread the "SH", but it was already well established by then in the post-Revival era. For further reference, see Lyman, John. 1955. "Chantey and Limey." American Speech 30(3): 172-175. |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:04 PM (#2771180) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Chant is old as an English word, used by Chaucer (1386, Miller's Tale, 'chanteth'). Nordhoff (1856) was the first to use the ch-form for a sailor's song, as "chantey-man" for the leader of the work songs. 'Shanty' applied to a sailor's song first appeared in Chamber's Journal (Dec. 1869). "Said to be a corruption of the French 'chantez' ...." (Above notes from Oxford English Dictionary) This has all been gone over in previous threads. Shanty should be reserved for the original Canadian and U. S. meanings, "an establishment ... organized in the forests in winter for the felling of trees; later something built of lumber, usu. temporary. Corruption of French 'chantier'. Canadian Dictionaries. In U. S., first mentioned in print in 1820, a hovel called a shanty, "somewhat in the form of a cowhouse." Oxford English Dictionary. |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:13 PM (#2771188) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion Q — Why 'SHOULD' the word "shanty" 'be reserved' for the single meaning you postulate. English is full of both homophones and homonyms, sometimes etymologically connected, sometimes not. Why shouldn't the 6 letters S H A N T Y, taken in combination, be subject to more than one definition, any less than, e.g., the 4 letters W E R E [or do you imagine a 'werewolf' to be an erstwhile wolf verbalised in the wrong number?]; or the 4 letters R O S E, or - or - or - [continued page 94], if that's the way the spirit of the language wishes? |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:26 PM (#2771197) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) MtheGM- because, as an old curmudgeon, I insist on my preferences and everyone else is wrong. Harrumpff! |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:39 PM (#2771216) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion Oh, yes sir, sorry sir, forelock tug sir — slurpslurpslurp |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:42 PM (#2771219) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Careful with the slurp- I just emptied the slop jar. |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:47 PM (#2771225) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion Wasn't a slurp - it was a slurpslurpslurp - you slopslopslopjarjarjar |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:53 PM (#2771232) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Bon appétit! |
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22 Nov 09 - 01:56 PM (#2771236) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jack Blandiver Cecil Sharp (ever heard of him?) Yeah - he's the founding father of the fake revival ain't he? |
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22 Nov 09 - 02:04 PM (#2771241) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: KathyW The best argument-- now-- for using "chantey" instead of "shanty" that I've heard is that if you are doing a word search with Google or something like that, "chantey" only gives hits relating to the type of song, but "shanty" also gives hits relating to the type of structure. As such, "chantey" is more precise. To add to Gibb's remarks regarding the discussion of how to spell the word in Joanna Colcord's (1934) book "Songs of the American Sailormen," I think Colcord's reasoning is interesting. She writes that she prefers "chantey" because "it looks better on the page, cannot be confused with other meanings of the word, and the in the subtle sense of word-feeling seams to suggest more closely than 'shanty' the spirit of a sea-song." But she nevertheless chooses to spell the word "shanty" in her book because she is afraid that if the word is spelled "chantey" people will mis-pronounce it with a hard "ch" and this horrified her. Personally, I've developed a liking for the "chantey" spelling, but in some contexts people don't know what I'm talking about if I spell it that way. |
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22 Nov 09 - 02:08 PM (#2771247) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Gibb pretty much sums up what we know. One wonders idly whether Nordhoff originally wrote "chanty" for "chant," which was then "corrected" by a copy editor. No matter; "chanty-man" is "chanty-man." Another formerly common spelling is "chantie." My own preferred etymology is from "chant," via "chantie" (the Scots especially love diminutives) rather than from anything French, particularly since the French for "song" is "chanson." And why would English-speaking sailors pick up a French command like "Chantez!" (An English "Sing now, ye lubbers!" or something similar would do just fine!) In tht case, the switch from a "hard" to a "soft" "ch," while not predictable, would not be difficult either. However, there's no decisive evidence one way or the other. It's all conjecture. Most landlubbers insist on the hard "ch," BTW. Proving their landlubberhood. |
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22 Nov 09 - 02:16 PM (#2771253) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Cicely Fox Smith (UK) in her early poetry books (1914) used the term "chanties" and even "chantys" but then switched over to "shanties" (1927) for her book of traditional nautical work songs. Joanna Colcord (US) in her book of sea songs (1924) also used the term "shanty" for the nautical work songs. Use either spelling but have some sense of why you have decided to do that. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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22 Nov 09 - 02:16 PM (#2771254) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall I prefer the hard CH and I'm no landlubber! I've wrung more salt water out of my skivvies than most "Shanty" singers ever sailed over. |
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22 Nov 09 - 03:06 PM (#2771277) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Kendall- That does raise the point of whether anyone can train an old sea-dog to spell! Sheerily, Sharley Noble |
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22 Nov 09 - 03:22 PM (#2771286) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) As posted above, chant has been a common English word lo! these many years; Chaucer with chanteth in 1386. Now all you saltwater wannabes, chanteth a weigh heigh... |
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22 Nov 09 - 03:25 PM (#2771288) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Q- Weigh heigh diddle dum day! Heigh knotty knotty! I like it! Charley Noble |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:27 PM (#2771310) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Hi David Harker, er, I mean Suibhne :) Cecil Sharp (ever heard of him?) Yeah - he's the founding father of the fake revival ain't he? Sure, that's one view. But I doubt C. Sharp's book is what you were referring to when you said that all your life it had been "shanty" and "now" it's "chantey." My point is that C. Sharp, indeed, was a figurehead of English "folk" music and was very influential all round. So..his use of "chantey" messes up any claim that English English spelling has any historically-acquired authority to seize upon "shanty" as correct. It illustrates that there was no divide between British and American usage until later. If anything, Terry's actions were of a "fake-lorist" in striving to change something based on his personal theory and desire. Hi KathyW But [Colcord] nevertheless chooses to spell the word "shanty" in her book because she is afraid that if the word is spelled "chantey" people will mis-pronounce it with a hard "ch" and this horrified her. Interesting! Well, her reasoning is not far off from Terry's. Hi Lighter, ...particularly since the French for "song" is "chanson." I don't dare speculate too much about etymology, but just to this point: It may not be so relevant to think of these as "songs" in any case. Were they really conceived of as "songs" by their originators? Point to ponder: if they were "songs," why didn't they just call 'em that? Clearly there was something about them, more at the level of "chant" that distinguished them, and IMHO it was not just their context of being used during work -- it had more to do with character and form (for example, short couplets in non-narrative structure). Just a thought, though. Perhaps someone could elaborate on why "chaunt" -- AROUND THAT TIME (Q!)--was used to designate some kinds of Black singing. Doerflinger had cited examples of "chaunt" in such 1840s songs as "An Original Negro Chaunt", "A Southern Negro Chaunt" and "sing de nigger's chaunt." |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:35 PM (#2771317) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Thanks, Kendall. Your sea-dog pronunciation supports a derivation from "chant." It seems to undermine the very common claim that "real" sailors only say "shanty." Of course, it would be even better evidence if you were about 175 years old, but one takes what one can get. |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:42 PM (#2771321) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: The Sandman I always thought it was Shanty, but I dont really mind either way. |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:45 PM (#2771327) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall It begs the question, what the hell difference does it make? Does anyone really give a damn? |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:46 PM (#2771328) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) You say chanty and I say chaunty, Chanty, chaunty, tomato, tomahto- Lets call the whole thing off. Apologies to George and Ira Gershwin |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:55 PM (#2771346) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall Charlie, what's wrong with my spelling? |
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22 Nov 09 - 04:55 PM (#2771347) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle Are they songs? Of course they are--in the same sense that ballads are songs. A significant percentage of of the chanteys have a story line, especially when brought to a concordant condition. What Mark Lovewell and I did in "Songs of South Street--Street of Ships" was exactly that. We took all of the versions of a chantey we could find and developed what we considered a unifying story from them. This is a prefectly valid approach because, if you examine other collections, such as Child's works, it is obvious that many of the "Popular Ballads" derive from a common source and diverged due to differences in the singer's memory, also known as the folk process. |
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22 Nov 09 - 05:25 PM (#2771371) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: McGrath of Harlow As has been pointed out, it's just a case of Americans spelling thing differently from other people. No problem, except that the ch spelling tends to encourage people to mispronounce the word. |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:07 PM (#2771393) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble C. Fox Smith has a whole diatribe as she describes some "revivalists" attempting to sing shanties from the stage: " Quoth one of these worthies to another 'Let's have a tchahntey!' and amid encouraging cries of 'A tchahntey -- yes, a tchahntey!'" Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:23 PM (#2771398) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Hi EBarnacle, There is no question as to the validity of your approach to performing chanteys. I was suggesting something different, however. I'm speaking with respect to the form of what "chanty" seems to have first referred to. I'm also speaking from a position of experience with instances where what one person may perceive as a "song" is not so by the people who perform it. For example, there are plenty of verses sung by Punjabis that, nonetheless, do not fall under the category of song. To cite a more familiar example, Quranic chant or the Islamic call to prayer is not a song, though listeners from other cultural backgrounds sometimes cant help feeling like it "sounds like" one. Is what a rapper does a "song"? I say no, but for lack of other terms, people might label "rap songs." Too bad, then you have people who don't get the aesthetic of rap who then say it is not "music", probably because it is not a "song" in their sense...though the rapper never claimed it was! Songs were adapted for use as chanteys, so now we have that significant percentage of chanteys that are...songs. But let's think back, and distinguish the style of different chanteys. There ARE the ballad types. Those are the type I am suggesting were not the original item described as "chanty." If you take "Blow the Man Down" as an example of a hybrid: As "Knock a Man Down," quite possibly an adapted cotton hoosier's "chant," it had its one-off verses, "Were you ever in Town X", a chorus that didnt mean much of anything (didnt relate to verses), and a repetitive, call and response structure. The basic couplet form of the verses, however, allowed ballad themes like "Ratcliffe Highway," "The Milkmaid" "The Fishes" etc. to be spliced onto it. A subject for a different discussion, but to my mind it is quite clear that the needs and desires of singing chanteys as "folk songs" ...to audiences, ....for entertainment, ....by a different class of people than historically sang them...has weighted or biased our impression of chanteys towards their interpretation as ballad-like "songs" in the Anglo-European sense. But that's water under the bridge, as they had already begun to undergo that form during their historical period. My question, however, seeks to get at how people would have first understood those early chanteys, with respect to how they classified other sung-expressions, by different groups of people, in their world at the time. Only then can we understand why "chantey" might derive from "chant" (as Lighter suggests, and I'm inclined to agree with). kendall, You may not give a damn, but as usual, those who do, discuss. I know your statement may be in the spirit of "don't worry about it; and let's all get along," but I don't think anyone is worried, nor are they not getting along -- it is just a question of interest. I think investigating the development of the word tells LOADS. It has already told me something about the dynamics of the folk revivals, and how the manipulation of terms has had its effect on perceptions of the national affiliations of chantey singing. If mis-information means that some people are being perceived by others as "pedantists" or less "authentic" in some way, or if some people from one nation feel they have more God given rights to something than people of another...if you've ever met someone, from any nation, who thinks chanteys are somehow inherently "British", or that they belong with "Irish music"...then having some correct info out there is important. Most importantly, the discussion has the potential to tell us about the nature of the chantey form and where it came from, which helps to interpret it in the present. Knowledge gives you options, while "don't think about it, just do it" means you're almost certain to be doing what someone else has set for you. |
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22 Nov 09 - 06:52 PM (#2771415) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: McGrath of Harlow I don't think I've ever met anyone who thought shanties were particularly British let alone Irish. No doubt they exist. I can't see how the spelling gives much of a clue where the word came from - sailormen weren't necessarily too interested in spelling. As it happens, though it seems more likely that the name comes from the French chanter, or just from English chant, one of the origins that has been suggested is that it comes from the songs used when hauling huts, or shanties in the West Indies. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:03 PM (#2771420) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Tattie Bogle Hi BobKnight "Chanty is a toilet receptacle which in days of old went under the bed." I thought that was a gazunder: but the latter is now a term used in the big bad financial world (so my son-in-law tells me) for trying to get someone to drop their price! So language evolves, n'est-ce pas? Eh bien, chantez, vous marins! Slop, slop! |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:05 PM (#2771421) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Smokey. It's always been 'shanty' to me. Chantey or chanty is the Scottish word for a guzzunda. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:14 PM (#2771425) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) In the U. S., a thunder mug. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:21 PM (#2771430) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Also conceivable, McGrath. In that case, "shanty" was presumably short for "shanty song." But "shanty song" is pretty uncommon in print, and so far as I know first appears decades after "chanty" and "shanty." So it's inconclusive either way. If we had "shanty song" in, say, 1800, and "(sea) shanty" in 1850, it would be different. But we don't. Interestingly enough, "shantyman" also meant a lumberjack - because he occupied a woods shanty. Quite a tangle. |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:21 PM (#2771431) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Smokey. Thunder jug over here, Q. Perhaps it's due to anatomical differences. :-) |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:31 PM (#2771434) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Smokey. Also known as the 'Edgar Allen". |
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22 Nov 09 - 07:49 PM (#2771442) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Shanty, meaning a rude hut, in print in New Zealand in 1860s. OED. |
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22 Nov 09 - 08:10 PM (#2771449) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall Shanty. a small hut on or near a beach. This is what Admiral W.H. Smyth KSF,DCL,&c. of HM Navy says. Thats good enough for me. |
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22 Nov 09 - 08:31 PM (#2771456) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Tug the Cox Thanks Gibb, some good reading amongst a morass of chit. |
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22 Nov 09 - 08:46 PM (#2771461) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: chazkratz What is a "hard _ch_"? I don't regard it as ch as in chant--or tCharley, for that matter. I'd say a hard ch is one as in Christmas, Michael, charisma. A soft one, of course, is pronounced the same as sh, as in Michelle, Charlene, or chanty/chantey. _ch_ as in chant or chart or Charley is neither hard nor soft--I'd call it gelatinous. Charles (gelatinous from the get-go) |
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22 Nov 09 - 09:13 PM (#2771475) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle Considering that when the word was first put into circulation, there was no such thing as standardized spelling, the question is really moot. |
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23 Nov 09 - 02:28 AM (#2771546) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall Point well taken. English was not my major. In my lingo CH is spoken as CHANT, not SHANT. |
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23 Nov 09 - 03:16 AM (#2771558) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Dave Hanson Interesting that among all the writers cited only Stan Hugill actually was a ' shantyman ' Dave H |
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23 Nov 09 - 03:32 AM (#2771563) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion But I take it Captain Whall would have known shantymen who would have served on his ships |
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23 Nov 09 - 08:15 AM (#2771677) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter People who read the word "chant(e)y" before they ever heard it spoken will naturally pronounce it like "chant." Whall (who went to sea in the 1850s), Hugill, Doerflinger, and all other writers on the subject go out of their way to say that, in their experience, "shanty" was the only pronunciation used by sailors. Which, of course, is the biggest strike against a derivation from "chant." |
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23 Nov 09 - 09:03 AM (#2771703) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Lighter et al- "Whall (who went to sea in the 1850s), Hugill, Doerflinger, and all other writers on the subject go out of their way to say that, in their experience, "shanty" was the only pronunciation used by sailors." Which was also the rationale that Joanne Colcord and C. Fox Smith used for their eventual use of "shanty" and "shantyman," as did Doerflinger. Frederick Pease Harlow, however, went with "chantey" and "chanteyman" but makes the point that sailors pronounced the word "shanty." I was also struck by Richard Dana's mention of the nautical worksongs ("singing out at the ropes") in his Two Years before the Mast (1840) as he described his experience as a sailor in the 1830's, with no mention of any particular term such as "shanty, chanty, chantey, or even tchahntey." I also agree that the term, however spelled, originated among the stevedores in the Gulf ports of Mobile and New Orleans, and then was adopted by the sailors. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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23 Nov 09 - 09:44 AM (#2771743) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Snuffy Is it not possible that both meanings of shanty/etc (work song and hut), are derived from neither English nor French, but get their name from where Europeans first encountered them - the Ashanti coast of West Africa? It's a very short step from "Ashanti" to "a shanty". |
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23 Nov 09 - 10:31 AM (#2771775) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: IanC Problem with that snuffy is that it's not the place where Europeans first encountered shanties. :-) |
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23 Nov 09 - 11:58 AM (#2771851) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall The typical work song is more of a chant than a shant. |
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23 Nov 09 - 11:59 AM (#2771852) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Dana also observed in his book, p. 134, that his messmates had no work songs for lightening their rowing efforts from their boat to the shore of San Pedro, California. However, an Italian ship was also in the harbor and her boat crews always sang as they rowed. Of course Dana didn't mention what the Italian sailors called such singing but perhaps they sang "chianties." You got to love this erudite research and discussion! Charley Noble |
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23 Nov 09 - 12:16 PM (#2771860) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle Charley, See reference "The Music of the Waters." |
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23 Nov 09 - 12:22 PM (#2771869) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) The ships Nordhoff (c. 1855) was speaking of made the voyage from the great basins of Liverpool to the American ports, Mobile being one of them. On the voyage he cites, the return cargo, after unloading the cotton, was railroad iron and crockery-ware. *Leaving Liverpool, "our chaunty-man was called for. "Said he, 'Now, just wait; I'll set all the men and women crying before you know it.' He struck up to rather a slow and plaintive tune an old capstan song, which begins as follows: 'We're going away from friends and home, Cho- Oh, sailors, where are you bound to? We're going away to hunt for gold Cho- Across the briny ocean. Father and mother say goodbye, Cho- Sailors, where are you bound to? Oh, sisters, brothers, don't you cry, Cho- Across the briny ocean. ............... *Charles Nordhoff, "Seeing the World, a Young Sailor's Own Story" (Nordhoff issued about three versions, with added or deleted portions). I believe it more likely that the 'chaunty' originated among the English sailors leaving the ports of England; a work song requiring the form of call and response which is not confined to any particular group of workmen doing a task which requires cooperation and a rhythm. I see nothing that ties the term to Mobile or other cotton ports. Moreover, the screwers at Mobile were commonly Liverpool and other men from the UK, mostly seafarers, who earned more money at cotton-screwing than at sea-faring. Other threads, not linked yet, have similar content to this thread. |
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23 Nov 09 - 12:24 PM (#2771871) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib There is a city in northwest India where I have lived called Chandigarh. Now, Indian place names are rendered with an eye towards Anglophones. So I'd think there was no problem in knowing to pronounce the name with the affricate "CH". But whenever I got a call from my moms over there, it was "So, how's it going in SHandigarh?", with the fricative "SH." Note: she is someone who knows no foreign languages. Based on my experience, I don't see what the big deal is with "CH" being read as a fricative. It happens a lot, and it seems silly that people would change spelling, rather than just insist on proper pronunciation. English spelling is so inconsistent, the words having come from so many sources (especially French), that one learns to expect variability....and the need to hear an unfamiliar word spoken. I have no idea if I heard "chantey" spoken first or saw it written first, but I know I must have been a very young child. There has never been any conflict in my mind about the "ch." There are just so many foreign (French) words in English that I'm sure my brain already processed the fact that such exception to rules are frequent. AND, those words may be coded as "foreign" or "special" words. Which is why I imagine, when seeing the foreign word "Chandigarh", my mom unconsciously jumps to the conclusion that it should start with a fricative. (Next do we need to change Beijing to Baydjing and Taj Mahal to Tadj??) |
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23 Nov 09 - 01:50 PM (#2771950) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: McGrath of Harlow "it seems silly that people would change spelling, rather than just insist on proper pronunciation. Agreed. But surely no one is suggesting changing the spelling, rather than exchanging information about which spelling is used in other parts of the world. |
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23 Nov 09 - 02:33 PM (#2771989) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) In high school English we read a book called "Erewhon," by Samuel Butler. One section described the schism between the Big Endians, and the Little Endians, who fought over which was the correct end of an egg to crack. I will have to find and re-read that classic. A parody on Victorian England, it still applies in many ways to present-day society. |
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23 Nov 09 - 02:36 PM (#2771992) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: MGM·Lion I suspect that Q has confused Samuel Butler's Erewhon with the Lilliput section of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, in which the BigEnd/LittleEnd controversy leads to war between Lilliput & the neighbouring island of Blefuscu. |
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23 Nov 09 - 03:31 PM (#2772035) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib But surely no one is suggesting changing the spelling Oh no, I don't mean in our discussion, I meant re: the act of RR Terry back in 1915, and the subsequent similar decision of Joanna Colcord. As discussed above, though there was no "standard" spelling, "ch" had emerged by that time as the most common -- common enough that they were worried about mispronunciation. Even though sailor-commentators had earlier spelled it most often with "ch", these authors decided to change it. Mind you, I do understand that if it was not completely standardized, it was not a "change" per se. But we've enough references with "ch" to argue that "ch" had indeed been customary. Now, the point that "However you spell it, it's still the same word" is well taken, naturally -- though I don't think we need to resort to characterizing sailors as illiterates or people who never cared about any such things. But the question still remains, one where spelling IS relevant: why did the early writers spell it with "CH"? There must have been some reason. Either: 1) It was at first pronounced with the affricate sound (as in "church") or 2) It was pronounced (always) with the fricative sound ("shut"), but...for unknown reasons, they felt this sound should be represented by /ch/. If #2, what were those reasons? Possibilities: -- There really was some French influence going on. The setting in the French-Creole areas of the South has been cited. -- It was done to mark off the word as somehow belonging to a special class, be it "foreign," "special" or whatever. Like the way "Chandigarh" (mistakenly) fits into such a "class" of words in my mother's mind! -- There was some existing term, the same or similar, that already favored that spelling. I have already mentioned the way "chaunt" was used as a way to label songs of a perceived AFrican-American style, while admitting I have no knowledge about why that was so. -- Visually , they wanted to maintain the connection to "chant," even though it may have been diff -- Something to do with the backgrounds of the people who were writing -- ??? 1855 Nordhoff: "chanty-man", "chants" 1867 Clarke : "chanty-man" 1869 Alden: "shanties" 1883 Luce: "chanty-song" 1886 Davis and Tozer: "chanties" 1888 Smith: "chanties" 1893 Hill: "shantier" "from French chanteur" 1903 Webb: "chanties" 1904 Bradford and Fagge: "chanties" 1906 Bernard: "Chanties" 1906 Hutchinson: "chanties" 1906 Masefield: "chanties" 1909 Whidden: "chanties" 1909 Williams: "chanties" 1910 Whall : "shanties" 1914 Beckett: "shanties" 1914 Bullen: "chanties" 1914 Sharp: "chanteys" 1915 Terry: "shanties" 1915 Derby: "chanties" 1915 Lubbock: "chanty" 1915 Meloney : "chanty man" 1916 Sharp et al : "chanties" 1917 Brown : "shanties" 1917 Robinson: "chantey man" 1918 King: "chanties" 1920 Wood: "chantey" 1920/1 Terry: "shanties" 1924 Colcord: "shanties" 1924 Frothingham: "chanteys" etc. I realize they are a little meaningless without full context cited. |
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23 Nov 09 - 03:59 PM (#2772050) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Songbob "BTW - Jaw's Harp, it would seem, is a corruption of Jew's Harp by some centuries... " Actually, the first written reference was "Jaw-harp," then "Jew's Harp," and both from the 14th Century. Jugdetromp(sp?), in German, Scatiati Pensieri(sp?) in Italian, Dan Moi in Vietnam, etc. I love 'em. Bob |
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23 Nov 09 - 05:00 PM (#2772088) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) "The Merchant Vessel," 1855, Nordhoff Chaunty-man or chanty-man? Not seen. "The Merchant Vessel" 1894 edition, a New York printing by Dodd Mead. "Chanty-man" "Seeing the World" No date but 1868 MS inscription by Capt. McNeil Boyd, Edinburgh printing by Nimmo. "Chaunty-man" "Seeing the World" no date, online, Edinburgh printing by Nimmo. "Chaunty-man" "Seeing the World" is a variant revision of "The Merchant Vessel." The online edition of "The Merchant Vessel" is a late American printing, 1894. What spelling appeared in the original 1855 edition? Was the spelling changed by various editors?? Was "chaunty-man" used in the UK editions and "chanty-man" in the American editions? |
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23 Nov 09 - 05:07 PM (#2772094) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jack Blandiver Actually, the first written reference was "Jaw-harp," then "Jew's Harp," I'm basing what I said on Michael Wright, who states that the earliest written reference is Jues Harp in 1481 - see HERE. What's your sources? Dan Moi simply means metal instrument but the wonderful Scacciapensieri means scatterer of thoughts. Like many players today I go with Trump in general, but will use the correct name for the various types I play - kubing, doromb, khomus, kou-xiang (or Ho-Ho), rab ncas, murchang, moorsing etc. etc. |
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23 Nov 09 - 05:12 PM (#2772099) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Gibb- For the record here's a list of dates for Cicely Fox Smith's use of the terms as well in her book titles: Songs in Sail and Other Chanties, Elkin Mathews, London, UK, © 1914 Small Craft: Sailor Ballads and Chantys, Elkin Mathews, London, UK, © 1917 Songs and Chanties: 1914-1916, Elkin Mathews, London, UK, © 1919 A Book of Shanties (traditional sea songs), Methuen & Co, London, UK, © 1927 Smith ridiculed the term "sea shanties" by some since in her opinion there were no "air shanties" or "land shanties." Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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23 Nov 09 - 05:48 PM (#2772126) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Q, Good point about the different editions. A 1856 edition of THE MERCHANT VESSEL is online at Google Books. It has "chanty-man", "chanting" and "chants". Under the title of SEEING THE WORLD, it has "chanting-man" in place of the first reference to "chanty-man" (in Mobile) and it has "chaunty-man" in place of the second reference (on the Liverpool ship). Charley, thanks! Seems like the movement towards preferring /sh/ really grew in the 1920s. |
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23 Nov 09 - 06:01 PM (#2772136) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jack Blandiver I must admit I started this thread in a mood of weary flu-induced cynicism, but it's been a real bounce to my spirits. Anyone for a virtual chorus or two of Essequibo River? Thanks all. |
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23 Nov 09 - 07:47 PM (#2772196) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) "The Merchant Vessel," Nordhoff from google is the 1895 New York Dodd, Mead printing, not the original 1856 edition; thus the question of whether Nordhoff used "chaunty-man" or "chanty-man" originally is not answered. Later printings often had changes made to suit the editors. |
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23 Nov 09 - 07:53 PM (#2772200) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: kendall you say tomaaato, I say tomahto |
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23 Nov 09 - 08:13 PM (#2772213) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Hey Q, I answered your question! I took the time out to compare both versions -- how else would I have been able to give you the detailed info? I will await your apology :) 1856 Suibhne, Nice! I'll join in! Essequibo Bagels |
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23 Nov 09 - 09:27 PM (#2772245) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Uncle_DaveO The Borchester Echo asked: Why not just call them "sea songs"? Because not all sea songs are (s/c)hanties! Those are work songs, but there's a lot of sea songs that aren't for that purpose. The others have various names in various places and times, but the name for the others that I'm most familiar with is "forebitters". Dave Oesterreich |
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23 Nov 09 - 09:32 PM (#2772248) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Nor are all schanties sea songs ;-0 |
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23 Nov 09 - 10:09 PM (#2772271) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Gibb- You certainly did a very convincing job in Photoshop re-editing the Nordhoff text. ;~) It really looks like a great read; I'm only seen excerpts before. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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24 Nov 09 - 02:40 AM (#2772349) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Dave Hanson According to Sid Kipper ' Blood Red Roses ' is a gardening shanty. Dave H |
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24 Nov 09 - 12:41 PM (#2772710) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Sorry Gibb- I googled the book and the 1895 edition came up. The 1856 has chanty instead of chaunty in the first citation, so that seems to have been Nordhoff's first choice. Many apologies! |
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24 Nov 09 - 01:16 PM (#2772756) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: George Seto - af221@chebucto.ns.ca Also, reference "Origin of Chantey" |
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23 Feb 10 - 08:05 PM (#2848261) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble And I just reviewed this whole thread hoping for a new recipe for chutney, or should that be shutney? Charley Noble |
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23 Feb 10 - 08:18 PM (#2848265) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Charley, In my academic style Hindi orthography, I'd write it "catni"! :) |
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23 Feb 10 - 08:44 PM (#2848283) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Arrrggghhhh! Sharley Noble |
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23 Feb 10 - 08:50 PM (#2848290) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib om śanti om..... |
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24 Feb 10 - 01:20 AM (#2848403) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Reinhard Don't pun on foreign languages or, like Napoleon, you'll find your Vindaloo! Anyway, if shanties were sung on ships, do you sing chanteys on chips? |
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24 Feb 10 - 02:56 AM (#2848422) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Dave Hanson If ' shanty ' was good enough for Stan Hugill, it's good enough for me. Dave H |
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24 Feb 10 - 07:47 AM (#2848584) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Reinhard- You should know better: "Loose chips sink ships!" Sheerily, Charley Noble |
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24 Feb 10 - 02:31 PM (#2848995) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Ruairiobroin Chanteys were gozunders (Po's for the benefit of those born to indoor plumbing)when I was growing up and were often full of sh*&e naw ..... that's hardly the link.....Shanties are enchanting |
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06 Apr 10 - 03:04 AM (#2880479) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Jim Dixon Books with the word "chanteys" in the title: "Folk-Songs, Carols, Ballads, Chanteys" by Cecil J. Sharp. "Words of Folk-Songs (Including Ballads and Pulling Chanteys)" by Cecil J. Sharp. "Words of Folk-Songs (Including Carols and Capstan Chanteys)" by Cecil J. Sharp. "Folk-Songs, Chanteys and Singing Games" by Cecil J. Sharp, C. H. Farnsworth, 1909. "English Folk-Chanteys" by Cecil J. Sharp, 1914. "Chanteys and Ballads" by Harry Kemp, 1920. "Twelve Sailors' Songs or Chanteys" by R W. Saar, 1927. "Chanteys" by Bill Adams, 1934. "American Sea Songs and Chanteys" by Frank Shay, 1948. "Salty Lullabies and Sea Chanteys" by Mrs. Ellis Taylor, 1951. "Chanteys" by Søren Claussen, 1956. "Sea Songs: Sea Chanteys, Foc'sle Songs, Ballads" by Cutty Sark Club. Winnipeg Watch, 1957. "Songs of the Sea: Chanteys, Historical Songs [and] Ballads" by Louis C. Singer, 1966. "Songs of the Sea & Sailors' Chanteys: An Anthology" by Robert Frothingham, 1969. "Songs of the Sailor: Working Chanteys at Mystic Seaport" by Glenn Grasso, Marc Bernier, 1970. "Chanteys: For Orchestra" by Ronald Perera, 1979. "Three Chanteys for Violin, Clarinet and Piano" by Ridgway Banks, 1989. "An American Sailor's Treasury: Sea Songs, Chanteys, [etc.]" by Frank Shay, 1991. "Sea Chanteys and Sailors' Songs" by Stuart M. Frank, 2000. "Sea Chanteys" by Rush Williams, 2007. Books with the word "shanties" in the title: (excluding books about buildings) "Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties" by W. B. Whall, Roughton Henry Whall, 1913. "Folk Songs of the Sea: 'Sea Shanties'", 1921. "Six Sea Shanties" by S. Taylor Harris, 1925. "The Shanty Book: Sailor Shanties" by Sir Richard Runciman Terry, 1926. "A Book of Shanties" by Cicely Fox Smith, 1927. "Manavilins: A Muster of Sea-Songs, as Distinguished from Shanties..." by Rex Clements, 1928. "Shanties with Descants Set 1" by Richard Runciman Terry, 1928. "Sea Songs and Shanties: The Songs" by W. B. Whall, 1930. "Three Shanties for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn and Bassoon" by Malcolm Arnold, 1952. "Shanties and Fo'c'sle Songs" by Edgar Waters, 1957. "Shanties" by Jürgen Dahl, 1959. "Song Book. Community Songs, Plantation Songs, Sea Shanties, Etc", 1961. "Shanties from the Seven Seas " by Stan Hugill, 1961. "Sea Shanties" by Shiplovers' Society of Victoria, 1964. "Sailors' Songs and Shanties" by Michael Hurd, John Miller, 1965. "Shanties by the Way: A Selection of New Zealand Popular Songs and Ballads" by Rona Bailey, Herbert Otto Roth, Neil Colquhoun, 1967. "The Sea, Ships and Sailors: Poems, Songs and Shanties" by William Cole, 1967. "Australian Boy Scouts Song Book: Songs, Shanties, Rounds,..." by Australian Boy Scouts Association, 1968. "Shanties and Sailors' Songs" by Stan Hugill, 1969. "Shantymen and Their Shanties: An Address" by A. E. Smith, 1971. "Shanties" by Hermann Strobach, Jens Gerlach, 1971. "Sea Shanties and Fo'c'sle Songs, 1768-1906" by John Holstead Mead, 1973. "Sea Shanties" by Stan Hugill, 1977. "Anglo-American Shanties, Lyric Songs, Dance Tunes and Spirituals" by Alan Lomax, Wayne D. Shirley, 1978. "Songs My Father Taught Me: Shanties of the Square-Riggers" by Heather Margaret Vose, Stephen Murray-Smith, 1987. "Sea Shanties and Sailors' Songs: A Preliminary Discography" by Robert J. Walser, 1989. "Ten Shanties: Sung on the Australian Run 1879" by Graham Seal, George H. Haswell, 1992. "All at Sea: 3 Famous Sea Shanties Arranged for Strings" by Daphne Baker, 1996. "American Sea Shanties" by Ann-Lis Eklund, 1998. "Shanties" by George Marston, 2001. "Sea Shanties of Old Vermont" by Aaron Tieger, 2003. "Yarns and Shanties (And Other Nautical Baloney)" by Jim Toomey, 2007. |
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06 Apr 10 - 08:37 AM (#2880612) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Jim- Nice list. Here's some more sea music books: Songs of Sea Labour: Chanties, Frank T. Bullen and W. F. Arnold, 1914 Songs and Chanties: 1914-1916, Cicely Fox Smith, 1919 Chanteying Aboard American Ships by Frederick Pease Harlow, 1962, 2004 Shantymen and Shanty Boys, William Main Doerflinger, 1951; republished as Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman, 1990. Joanne Colcord also uses the term "shanty" in her book Songs of American Sailormen but not in the title. No one seems to use the term "Tchantey" in a book title. Sheerily, Sharley Noble |
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06 Apr 10 - 05:39 PM (#2880959) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Joe_F (away from home) A lot of English words that came from French have "ch" in the spelling. If they came over with the Conqueror, they were pronounced with the tch sound at the time, and English kept that sound, tho (standard) French replaced it with the sh sound later on. More recent imports from French mostly have the ch spelling and the sh sound. Compare "chair" & "chaise" -- the same French word, two English words! (Never mind how the s got there -- it was silly.) Likewise, "chant" came from Old French, and "chantey", if indeed it came from French (which is likely but not proven), came from modern French. There is therefore nothing wrong with assimilating it to the many modern imports (machine, charade, douche, etc.). Nor, on the other hand, do we need anyone's permission to respell it with sh if we please. A bizarre example is "flour", which we took from (Norman) French without change in a subsidiary sense, but respelled "flower" in its main sense; who would want to undo that now? Given the choice, I go for "chantey"; I find "shanty" distracting. |
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11 Feb 11 - 06:41 AM (#3093039) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib bump |
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11 Feb 11 - 08:09 AM (#3093082) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble In Amharic, one of the major languages of Ethiopia, the "ch" sound could be reproduced as "tch" with an explosive glottal stop. You should not attempt this pronunciation while drinking beer in the presence of friends. Tcheerly, Tcharley Noble |
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11 Feb 11 - 08:41 AM (#3093112) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter The most detailed evidence yet discussed anywhere on earth (AFAIK)concerning the word "shanty/chantey/chantie" is right here in Mudcat in the thread "Advent and Devlopment of Chanties." |
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11 Feb 11 - 12:33 PM (#3093292) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle Consider Roger Abraham's book, "Deep the Water, Shallow the Shore," in which he discusses West Indian chanteying. Among the points he makes is that a) there were work chants used for for moving houses [shanties] from place to place and b) the origin of the word goes back to a period when spelling was not regularized. Bear in mind that the English language has been described as "two cultures divided by a common language." The American group generally spells it as "Chantey" [except for Charley Noble]and the English group tends to spell it as "shanty" with variations in both groups according to the user's inclinations. |
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11 Feb 11 - 12:38 PM (#3093297) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Richard Bridge 100 |
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11 Feb 11 - 07:30 PM (#3093589) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble Eric et al- Oh, I have some good company, with regard to the correct spelling of "shanties", here in the States, Joanna C. Colcord for one. But it's not a question that keeps me awake at night. Charley Noble |
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11 Feb 11 - 11:11 PM (#3093700) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle That's why I wrote "generally." I had you in mind and, as you say, there are others. I, too, have more critical issues to obsess over, especially late at night. |
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11 Jan 14 - 04:29 PM (#3591119) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST Now, .... far be it for me to resurect a thread that died in Feb 2011 ... BUT ... Here are some references concerning the discussion re: chanty/shanty. If they don't settle anything, they may be grist to the mill! As Confucious said - The pebble of fact thrown into the pool of debate spreads wide the ripples of knowledge. - The SAILOR'S WORD-BOOK: AN ALPHABETICAL DIGEST OF NAUTICAL TERMS by ADMIRAL W. H. SMYTH. pub 1867/1996 Contains more than 14,000 nautical terms. for chanty/chantey it has NO entry. for shanty it says "a small hut on or near a beach". But then it is concerned with important technical terms. THE LOOKOUTMAN by DAVID W BONE. PUB 1923. Has a glossary to explain certain nautical words to a land-lubberly readership. He has - "Chanteyman. (pronounced Shanteyman) . The soloist in the singing of a sailor's hauling song or 'chantey.' " [Captain Sir David William Bone (1874-1959) began his sea serivce on windjammers in Australia in 1890 and joined Anchor Line in 1899 where he ended as Commodore and retired in 1946.] THE SEVEN SEAS SHANTY BOOK by JOHN SAMPSON. pub 1927. Being the standardised reportoire of THE SEVEN SEAS CLUB which met in London for monthly dinners followed by a sing around of the old familiar songs! the members being retired and serving members of the MN. This book has throughout, shanty & shanties, including the forward by John Masefield. In passing .... in the twenties this "choir" was featured in early BBC broadcasts. e.g: "Friday June 25th 1926. LONDON, 2LO (355 metres). 09:30 (PM). Weather. News. Sea shanties sung by members of the Seven Seas Club at the Anderton Hotel." Hows that for an early folk revival??? MANAVILINS by REX CLEMENTS. pub 1928. Being a collection of sailor songs that are NOT shantys. For his own use has shanty & shanties. Though he does remark:- " ... Sailor's shanties - or 'chanteys' as some prefer to spell it ....." CAPSTAN BARS by DAVID BONE. pub 1931. A collection of shantys before "their purpose may be forgotten" Refers to chantey/chanties & chanteyman What I come away with is that there are TWO ways of spelling "this word" but ONE way of saying it!! regards Jake Pay no attention to "Confucious" - he's confused! |
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11 Jan 14 - 05:03 PM (#3591127) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Anglogeezer That was me without a cookie! Jake |
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11 Jan 14 - 06:18 PM (#3591153) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Joe_F The reason I said, a few years ago, that I found the spelling "shanty" distracting is that, as an American, I have long associated "shanty" with a rude dwelling. There used to be shanty Irish & lace-curtain Irish, and during the same period "shanty" was the usual word for a lumbermen's barracks. |
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12 Jan 14 - 07:14 PM (#3591490) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib I have drafted a chapter on this topic for a book I'm working on ... which is sorely behind schedule (but I'm doing as much as I can!)... Anyway, to summarize: 1. As we all know, a variety of spellings are found in 19th century accounts. 2. Precursors of "chanty man" and "chant" come in Nordhoff 1855. I am of the opinion that "chantyman" may well have come before "chanty." The argument for that is complicated, however. 3. Clark's "chanty" comes first in publication (1867), followed by "shanty" in _Once a Week_ article of 1868...an article that is mostly plagiarized or rehashed in _Chambers's Journal_ of 1869. The latter was Oxford Dictionary's "earliest appearance" for the term, rather than Clark. 4. Though the spellings were various, ones with "ch" were more common in 19th c. sources, and this was generally the received spelling then used by early 20th c. folklorists (mainly British). 5. A few influential non-academic writers of the early 20th c., also mainly British, were uncomfortable with the "ch" spelling and advocated for "sh" in spite of common use. These include: Whall (1910), Terry (1915), C. Fox Smith (1920s). The American Colcord, who took a lot of influence from Terry, followed suit. Their reasons: 5A. The term needed to be 'spelt as pronounced' (i.e. from a specific lingocentric view). 5B. The "ch" spelling was too evocative of French for some British writers. It suggested the popular French derivation of the term, which they thought was popular nonsense, and which they rejected because they could not fathom what they believed to be the implication of a French derivation: that English sailors got chanties from French sailors. (In my own belief, the possibility of a French derivation owes to French Creole, from the stevedores in the U.S. South.) 6. Britain's Oxford dictionary kept "sh" as the preference due to its 1869 Chambers's Journal reference, and USA's Webster's kept "ch," perhaps due to that being the actually dominant "in use" spelling at the time. 7. The works of the above-named reformers, particularly Whall (less so), Terry, and Colcord, were far and above the most influential in chanty literature of the first half of the 20th c. They were basis of early revivals and much other discourse on the topic, popular recordings, etc. Doerflinger and Hugill - the final seals on the chanty collection cannon - inherited this discourse. Hence "sh" is now the most common spelling globally, while many in USA hold onto the tradition of "ch" that predates the reform and was used by people involved with our library institutions (like RW Gordon, JM Carpenter, Alan Lomax). |
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12 Jan 14 - 07:52 PM (#3591499) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Nice summary, Gibb. My only suggestion is that "from a specific lingocentric view" seems either gratuitous or too vague. The spelling represents a word in English, and as we know, the almost inevitable pronunciation of "chantie/ chantey" would have been like the sound in "church" or "chant." The "sh" spelling, which I used to prefer, makes clear the actual pronunciation (of everyone who's ever commented on the pronunciation). Oh, yeah. A better word is "linguacentric." But even plain "linguistic" seems to work here. |
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12 Jan 14 - 11:26 PM (#3591540) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Lighter, I just made up that word in my post, haha! Neither it or the idea appear in my actual writing. I disagree with the supposition that a "church" pronunciation was/is almost inevitable. Though I might agree more if we limit that to the environment to that of the authors who advocated "sh" for that reason. It's a minor point, and probably not relevant at all in any case. What *may* be relevant: The English environment of the "chanty," at other times/places, was quite possibly, I think, influenced by the French way of interpreting "ch," so pronunciation may have been up for grabs - an environment where the urge to "Anglicise" (however that's interpreted!) is not so strong. I submit that, in America, we have both the tendency to Anglicize and French-ify unfamiliar or foreign-seeming words. I think I've mentioned before that, however many times I tell my mother I lived in an Indian city called "Chandigarh," she will see the word and pronounce "Shandigarh". As in chandelier, chamois, chantilly, etc. Out here in Southern California, there is a native people called Chumash. Guess how "everyone" says it ?: Shumash. Another common toponym is Chaparral. People say "Shaparral." All this is just talk though! |
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12 Jan 14 - 11:37 PM (#3591542) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib P.S. In a recent radio interview I came across, with Mystic Seaport's Geoff Kaufman, the interviewer used the "church" pronunciation throughout! So, my experience might just be weird...or the Connecticut education system is not doing so good a job anymore! |
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13 Jan 14 - 08:14 AM (#3591609) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham Apart from the obvious interest of etymologists is anyone actually saying it matters that there are 2 spellings of a term? The history is very interesting but there is no problem to solve. |
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13 Jan 14 - 09:49 AM (#3591631) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter > but there is no problem to solve. Hasn't stopped us yet. The ultra-pedantic problem, however, is whether "shanty/ chantey" derives immediately from English "chant," French "chantez/chanter" or English "shanty." The evidence shows that we can reasonably rule out the last. Spelling and pronunciation only became an issue because chantey collectors cringed when they heard landlubbers say "tchanty." But now that the "shanty" pronunciation is well established, and the songs themselves in no immediate danger of being lost forever, I think we can afford to be more tolerant. |
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13 Jan 14 - 02:37 PM (#3591743) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib You're correct, Steve, there is no problem as regards functioning nowadays... aside from the irksomeness of searching for "shanty" and getting results for other things, or the often encountered need to add the word "sea" to clarify "shanty." (By the way, I'm not being sarcastic!) So yes, the interest in spellings presents mainly a historical/historian's "problem." Terry, who very formally advocated for the adoption of "sh" spelling, was also the person to put forward the idea that "Maybe shanties come from people moving huts in the Caribbean." As someone interested in the historical development of the genre, I would like to be able to assess the likelihood of such a theory. I think if Terry had all the information that "we" have now, he'd have had to dismiss his theory. But he didn't, and in fact another issues of spelling (the rejection of French) helped drive Terry towards the idea. So now Terry's idea stays there in books and people continue to consider it as the plausible explanation of an expert. One of the key "mysteries" of chanty history is how, in Nordhoff's late 1840s account of cotton-screwers, the "chant" and "chanty-man" were pronounced - especially since "chanty" does not turn up after that until 1867 on a New York ship. Had Nordhoff used the spelling "sh", then we could be sure about the pronunciation. Unless we want to assume that he meant "ch" as "church" and that the pronunciation changed by 1868 - an assumption that has problems with it - we must guess that Nordhoff chose "ch" to represent "shingle" sound for a good reason. The reason may have had something to do with a French influence in the environment that bore chanties (or other reasons). Some reformers advocating for "sh" were not aware of Nordhoff's account, etc, and they assumed that later writers - not as knowledgeable as themselves about "sea stuff" - had created a fanciful spelling. So, spelling has very much to do with both locating the "flow" of the development of chanties in the early years, and with shaping the discourse produced by those who mediated the genre (e.g. change to "sh" is a small part of making the genre appear more "English"). It has little to do with how you or I function nowadays...though a little awareness of it wouldn't *hurt* for when we read the literature on the subject. |
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13 Jan 14 - 02:50 PM (#3591748) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Whatever happened to shanty Irish? Or lace curtain Irish, for that matter. |
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13 Jan 14 - 02:55 PM (#3591753) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham I'm very thankful for all of your researches, Gibb. Until solid evidence to counteract it comes up I'm quite happy to accept the French connection in the Gulf area and its spread from there. I'd be interested to know what the people who described the early British accounts of things like 'Cheerly Man' called them. |
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13 Jan 14 - 10:38 PM (#3591848) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Steve, That's just the sort of question that I personally find interesting, too. To be somewhat pedantic: I don't think there were too many things ~like~ "Cheer'ly Man." I would argue that it was almost in a class of its own. I think it was a rather innovative English/Anglo-American song, and that, as a shipboard work-song, it may have helped paved the way / set the ground (choose your metaphor) for the adoption of "chanties" on ships. (Embedded in that statement is my own belief that "chanties" as a genre did not originate on sailing vessels.) A "theory" of mine is that "Cheer'ly Man" was rather exclusively "attached" to its work task - that is, it was the primary, "go to" song used when singing was in order during those (hauling) tasks, rather than one incidental example of many songs of a particular type. Anyway: Giving it a quick scan, most of the accounts of "Cheer'ly Man" in that early period (by no means limited to British accounts) call it a "song." There are some other terms for various shipboard vocalizations, but it gets complicated. For example, it appears that French sailors did indeed use the word "chant" at one point in the 18th c. The related interesting question is how/why did sailors eventually - or at least *some* sailors (because there is also the very nit-picky question of whether writers give a skewed perception) - start calling the work-songs "chanty". Even though I personally distinguish "Cheer'ly Man" as something belonging to a different category than what I would label a "chanty," there is much that I *would* label "chanty" that, nonetheless, is only described as "song" until late 1860s. I believe that the lingo of "chanty" was borrowed from stevedores, and I think (I have evidence to support this somewhere, but it's too complicated to work out right now!) that the term "chantyman" had greater currency before "chanty." That is, the idea of a working song at sea was not new, though the concept of a masterful song-leader, in the style of Black American work gangs who retained such a specialist, was more novel. And so, the term "chantyman" became familiar to sailors as the person in those role in stevedore gangs, although at first what the chantyman and his crew sang were simply "songs." On a gratuitous side note: My feeling - enhanced by the times I have visited those places - is that New Orleans and Mobile (previously French part of Alabama) were such unique and amazing places that most people that have thought about chanties perhaps do not fully appreciate. I certainly have trouble doing so, beyond a vague "sense." When one stands in "Congo Square" - that unique meeting place that some people credit to the birth of all sorts of influential African-American musical forms - or when one walks around the French Quarter, with its buildings that feel (to me) like one could be on an island in the Caribbean... it's its own little world. The uniqueness and complexity of this world is easily overlooked when one tackles the broad concepts of "chanties" and "sailors" and "ships" etc. in the way that "we" have tended to do so, based on the various associations we've inherited having to do with those concepts. |
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14 Jan 14 - 07:42 AM (#3591926) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib A bit of humor/humour related to this thread! shanty man or chanty man |
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14 Jan 14 - 11:34 AM (#3591998) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Sandy Mc Lean Shanty, as would be defined as a dwelling, derives from the Gaelic "seann-taigh" (old house) pronounced something like "shawn-tie". Lumberwoods were heavily populated by Irish and Scotch Gaelic speakers using the words for the crude camps where they stayed while cutting logs throughout the winter. From that they came to be called shantymen, and although music and song was a vibrant part of their culture the term shanty may be simply a homonym to a sea chant. |
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14 Jan 14 - 01:28 PM (#3592038) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham The only connections I have come across connecting the hut and the song are Doerflinger's book title and the claim of the songs sung by West Indian's when moving a shanty. I don't think there is a musical connection between the lumberjacks and seamen. Some men may have been involved in both trades but not using a musical connection. |
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14 Jan 14 - 05:17 PM (#3592124) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib The lumberjack's "shanty" has been derived from French "chantier" ( = work-site, camp) as well. Believe it or not, the form /chantierman/ (sounds like "shantyman") appears in print at least a couple times, in reference to the lumbermen. IIRC, one instance makes a note about their particular musicality, and another brings up the word to show how French had been creolized (up North), the combo of a French word and an English morpheme. I have so far rejected this information, as not particularly useful to the study of work-songs, however. There just aren't enough ties to context. I have not rejected the possibility that "chantyman" is creolized French from another locale, or the possibility that the "chanty" component of it may derive from some familiar word like chantier (= dock) or chanteur (= singer) - e.g. to construct something like "singer-man" or "dock-man." To accept the latter as a possibility, it helps to consider my observation that "chantyman" may have been the word from which "chanty" is derived, rather than the other way around, and to remember that the first chantymen were stevedores. |
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14 Jan 14 - 07:33 PM (#3592144) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Just been looking at the thread, "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town." One of the first songs I learned as a kid back in 1932 (nine years old). |
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17 Sep 14 - 06:50 AM (#3661117) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,David C Kendall Well I'm going to have to join this group soon, because it's all just too interesting, and I thank you all for the lively debate, informative and entertaining. Having always heard and used the word pronounced as 'shantey' , I now live in France and I find that I am no longer a singer, but instead a chanteur, also pronounced in french with a 'sh'... I'm staying with the same pronunciation as always, with the assumption that 'chantey' is an adaptation of the french word 'chanson', which means 'song'... The french, by the way, have loads of sea chanties I would like to see eventually have better exposure in forums like these for their historical context at least. Thanks, all! |
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17 Sep 14 - 07:35 AM (#3661126) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Somewhere on this thread (or a similar one) is nineteenth-century evidence (unearthed by us) that "shanty/chantey" is indeed related to French "chanter." So I've mostly switched my own spelling. Not that it makes any real difference. |
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17 Sep 14 - 09:35 AM (#3661182) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Airymouse You guys are way over my head, but here are a few random thoughts: I've heard "chaps" (the leather kind) called "shaps". Somebody above used the word "schism". That word has a really hard ch (to pronounce) because it's silent. "Schism" gives history buffs fits, but luckily they seem to be able to handle the silent ch in "fuchsia." Finger's book of songs collected in 1897 is called "Sailor Chanties and Cowboy Songs." "Welsh rarebit" like "Jaws Harp" goes back centuries, but my favorite entry in Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary is, RAREBIT, n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it must be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-the-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau a la financiere is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker. |
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17 Sep 14 - 11:07 AM (#3661219) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Bat Goddess How about Jerry Bryant's ditty to the tune of (and parodying) "A Shanty In Old Shantytown"? If I post the lyrics, it WON'T be from my iPad! Linn |
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18 Sep 14 - 12:50 PM (#3661545) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Bat Goddess ONLY A SHANTY IN OLD SHANTY-TOWN by Jerry Bryant It's only a shanty in old shanty-town Away you, Santee, and blow the man down. Where Haul Away Joe goes down to Hilo And Stormalong's drinkin' with Reuben Ranzo. Shallow Brown, Hieland Laddie, and Jack's in cahoots, And so we will pay Paddy Doyle for his boots, And with Boney we'll roll that old woodpile on down To a shanty in old shanty-town. I'm not losing any sleep over the spelling of the word referring to maritime work songs. And I think most agree it's pronounced "shanty" at least since sailors' use of the term in the 1850s. Linn |
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18 Sep 14 - 01:40 PM (#3661561) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham Like Jon I moved quite a while ago to using 'chantey' which I was led to believe was older, and it doesn't get so confused, 'shanty' having other meanings which may or may not be related. But like Linn I'm happy to see either. Plenty of other words have alternative spellings. |
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19 Sep 14 - 01:17 PM (#3661907) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Q (Frank Staplin) This argument goes round and round. In the words of the immortal Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" |
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05 Sep 15 - 07:07 PM (#3735665) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Re: Evidence in print of the TERM (I'm not concerned as much with the spelling) chanty/chantey/shanty/etc.: I have been working with Clark's _Seven years_ (1867) as the earliest cited reference to the term -- while assuming, at the same time, that there is probably some earlier evidence waiting to be found. Well, here is some earlier evidence I have "found": a whaleman's journal entries from 1859 have "shantie." The reason for my scare-quotes is that the source isn't exactly new; granted, perhaps few people have really examined it, but the people that have would be at least somewhat close to discussions of chanties. Nonetheless, I'm not aware that they have presented it in this light. if you'll excuse a cut 'n' paste (I'd rather not re-type these details) from a FB post: // One might suppose the term "chanty" (or, as it may be spelled, "shanty," "shantey," "chantey," etc.) was known from the beginning, more or less, of the existence of the work-song genre or repertory to which the term refers. Although it's possible that was the case, evidence of the term, so far discovered, only appears in documents dating from a period well after the genre began to develop. Whether one subscribes to the idea, developed by myself, that the chanty genre developed from forms of song sung in African-American non-seagoing work contexts going back at least to the late eighteenth century, or if one prefers to see shipboard chanty-singing that emerged in the 1830s as a starting point, in either case one has to settle for references published significantly later to date the term itself. One of the best known references to s term morphologically and contextually similar to "chanty" is the mention of cotton stowers' "chants" in Nordhoff's _The Merchant Sailor_ (1855). Nordhoff, observed the singing of cotton-stowers in Mobile, AL in 1848. That these "chants" were sung by a "chantyman" confirms that they were connected to the tradition of what we know as chanties. However, the familiar form ending in a /y/ sound does not (i.e. as far as is known) appear in a publication until the 1860s. The Oxford English Dictionary long offered an 1869 _Chambers's Journal_ article, which referred to /shanty/, as the earliest known source. It was later discovered that Clark's _Seven Years of a Sailor's Life_, 1867, contained /chanty/, and the OED now reflects this revision. However, an earlier, manuscript source, long known to historians of whaling out of New England, contains plenty of earlier evidence for /shanty/. Nonetheless, I have never encountered it in any discussions about the age of the term. The source is the journal of William Abbe while he worked aboard the whaleship _Atkins Adams_ out of Stonington, CT, 1858-1859. Given the difficulty of deciphering the writing in many such journals and logs, it is not at all surpassing that this late 1850s whaleman's journal went unnoticed. I conjecture, additionally, that the small set of whaling historians who did take the pains to study Abbe's journal may have taken the term for granted, perhaps not realizing the significance of its appearance in an 1850s document. Beginning in entries from 1859, Abbe refers to "shantie" or "shanties" some ten times. For example, in the entry for January 4, 1859, Abbe wrote, 'We began to sing Shanties last night in hauling off sheets or lowering on halliards, Jack leading in "Johnny Francois" & "Katy my darling" and all hands taking up the refrain & pulling with a will. This pleased the mate, who told us that was pretty well for the first time, that he liked to hear us make a noise, as it showed that Jack -- "not Allegany" -- but any one of us, was awake. He laughed, rubbed his hands, & crew out "that's the way, sailors." The first time when lowering away on f. t. sl halliards, Tom set them all a roaring by his ludicrous singing, till Mate & all laughing, they were obliged to avast singing, and haul away without the "Shantie," but the next attempt was more successful, & we hauld home the main sheet in fine style.' My "discovery" of these references would not have been likely if it weren't for the fact that the late William Wyatt (d.2011), a retired professor of Classics at Brown University and a volunteer at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, transcribed Abbe's journal. Wyatt's transcription was posted fairly recently to the NBWM's website. (The page is marked as last modified in Aug. 2014.) _Journal of my Whaling Cruise in ship Atkins Adams_ is part of the Old Dartmouth Society's collection, log # 485. The transcription can be seen here: http://www.whalingmuseum.org/…/library/projects/atkins-adams // The journal from ATKINS ADAMS is familiar as the source for a version of "Old Maui," given by Gale Huntington. I have not seen the manuscript directly. |
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06 Sep 15 - 09:27 AM (#3735777) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Airymouse Summary Chantey/shanty two spellings one pronunciation Chaps one spelling two pronunciations (though "shaps" is less common) schism one spelling one pronunciation (Those who do not know the ch is is silent are mispronouncing the word, though the result is not so awkward as making the same mistake with fuchsia.) |
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06 Sep 15 - 11:25 AM (#3735809) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Contrary to popular misconception, the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Wesbter Online both recognize "sizzum" and "skizzum" as legitimate pronunciations of "schism." |
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06 Sep 15 - 11:32 AM (#3735813) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: DMcG That 'ch' can be tricky. My classics teacher at school used to insist we pronounce 'cherubim' as if it were 'kerubim'. It stuck with me and I tend to stand out in every carol concert! |
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06 Sep 15 - 11:39 AM (#3735815) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: DMcG This Wikipedia extract may explain why: "The Hebrew term cherubim is cognate with the Assyrian term karabu, Akkadian term kuribu, and Babylonian term karabu; the Assyrian term means 'great, mighty', but the Akkadian and Babylonian cognates mean 'propitious, blessed'.[3][4] In some regions the Assyro-Babylonian term came to refer in particular to spirits which served the gods, in particular to the shedu (human-headed winged bulls);[4] the Assyrians sometimes referred to these as kirubu, a term grammatically related to karabu.[3] " k sounds all! |
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06 Sep 15 - 12:03 PM (#3735825) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle Caribou? |
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06 Sep 15 - 12:41 PM (#3735836) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Lighter Carabao? That too is often pronounced as "caribou." (Even I would call that a mispronunciation, for reasons to complicated to go into.) Anyway, "cognate" terms don't have to share a pronunciation feature. Being "cognate" only means they're related by origin. For example, English "maiden" and German "Maedchen" are cognate. They both descend from an earlier, now-extinct Teutonic word-form. But the "kh" sound that persisted in the German word fell out of use in English long ago. (And no one apparently wants to bring it back from the fifth century either.) As for "cherub" (plural "cherubim): Greek, of course, had a "k" sound. So did Latin when the Romans adopted the word. But Latin in the Middle Ages was pronounced differently all over Europe. In English-based Latin, the written "ch" was pronounced as in "church," regardless of the centuries-obsolete pronunciation of Classical Latin and Greek. So anybody who says (or worse, insists that others say) "kerub/ kerubim" is a thousand years behind the times and, one might say, not really speaking English. |
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06 Sep 15 - 01:03 PM (#3735839) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: DMcG You might have missed that he was my classics teacher, Lighter. It was, therefore Classical Latin and Greek we were studying, not modern English. So any fault is mine in carrying a habit I learned a long time ago forward. |
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07 Sep 15 - 01:15 AM (#3735954) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Holy off-topic, Batman! |
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01 Sep 17 - 07:33 PM (#3874757) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch What's in a name? Many years ago the task of going aloft on the smaller conchy sailing vessel went to the youngest sailor. They told us the ancient Roman navy term was funambulus, a "rope dancer." They told us the so-called circus "tight-rope walker" was properly a "funambulist." Way cool. Lost in translation... |
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01 Sep 17 - 07:52 PM (#3874759) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Seriously though, on the spelling: If you're doing the spelling, work it out with your editor or whatevs in the prelims. If you're reading (read searching) - I'll see Gibb's comments elsewhere about learning to deal with the "ch" and raise you the "u" - "e" - "ſ." But that still leaves out the why it's important as a sorting criteria as applied to what they are or opposed to all the other names for them in other languages. Off to the other threads I guess. |
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02 Sep 17 - 09:00 AM (#3874821) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: SPB-Cooperator Having specialised in maritime music for nearly 30 years before 'retiring' I am not bothered what spelling people choose to use. I have always used the shanty spelling. What is more important for me is understanding the job the shanty was used for, and singing it in a way that works with the job. |
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02 Sep 17 - 12:01 PM (#3874846) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle We sang a chantey as we moved the shanty where they made our chutney. |
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04 Sep 17 - 03:10 PM (#3875191) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Charley Noble The earliest reference I can find to a chaneyman is from the French children's book Chanticleer. The first verse and chorus runs: Chanticleer, the Shanghaied Rooster Dm---F---------------Dm---------C------Dm Good friends, draw near, I've a tale to tell, -------F-------Dm----------F----C-Dm Of a rooster bold called Chan-ti-cleer; --------------F---------C---F---Dm Who sailed upon the o-cean blue, ----------F---Dm-----------C--Dm Return-ing home with ri-ches rare. Chorus: Dm----F-----------Dm------C---------Dm Crow high, crow low, and so sailed he, Dm-------F------------------Dm---C-----Dm Cock-a-doddle-do, as the wind blows free, Dm----------F----------------C---Dm Crow high, crow low, and so sailed he, --------------F--------------Dm--C--Dm Bold Chan-ti-cleer who sailed the sea! Stick that in your crop and crunch it! Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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05 Sep 17 - 11:24 AM (#3875347) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: EBarnacle And a Barbary doll to you, Charley! |
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09 Feb 18 - 07:50 AM (#3904572) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Won't solve anything but... At the other end of the Mississippi from the lumberjacks, "chantier" usage had more emphasis on the "tier," as in layered stacks (or stocks.) A lumberman's chantier was a stockpile. A nautical chantier was the scaffolding under and around a ship on the ways, also a kind of "stock" in English. |
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19 May 18 - 06:57 PM (#3925790) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib _American Speech_ has published an article of mine on this topic. “The Execrable Term”:A Contentious History of chanty. _American Speech_ 92.4 (2017): 429–458. https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-abstract/92/4/429/134095/The |
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19 May 18 - 08:55 PM (#3925801) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Thanks for the heads-up, Gibb. Great article. Before the age of the Internet, new words from non-literary sources often took many years, even decades, to enter print with any frequency. It seems certain, for example, that "O.K." effectively originated as a lame joke in a Boston newspaper in 1839, but it wasn't till after the Civil War that it began to appear much in print. It took even longer to become current in novelistic dialogue. All of this is entirely consistent with your suggestion - based in part on W. Clark Russell's recollection - that "chantey/shanty/chanty" was not a word known to the majority of deep-water sailors (especially not British sailors) before the late '60s or early '70s. The same journal published my first article back in - well, let's just say "back in the day" and leave it at that. |
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20 May 18 - 01:35 AM (#3925813) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib I'm honored to be published in the same journal as you, Lighter! My inspiration for seeking the journal was that Lyman article/note published in it in the 50s. For those reading along, I don't claim to tell the "origin" of the word chanty, but rather investigate its known development to learn certain things about it and the chanty genre. The two things that I think are my main contributions: 1. Establishing, pretty firmly I think, that "ch" is the etymologically "correct" spelling. That doesn't mean whatsoever that one must spell it that way, just that *if* one is interested in spelling words in ways that do well to preserve or reveal their origins, then "ch" is the best choice. 2. Argument that the term "chantyman" preceded the term "chanty." Instead of seeking the origin of the term "chanty" directly and assuming "chantyman" is its derivative, I argue that one might be better off seeking the origin of "chantyman." This speaks to the "issue" of the "y"; I think one would tend to get different results if one followed a path to explore an explanation for the y in chantyman versus doing the same for chanty. The antecedent (though not the origin per se) of chanty, I argue, is chant. Not much of a revelation, but rather an effort to decrease the likelihood of other proposed derivations. |
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20 May 18 - 01:40 AM (#3925814) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib A public admission here, as well: I have not directly examined (but do hope to some day when the opportunity comes) examined the 1850s manuscript I mention. Rather, I am trusting the transcription of the manuscript by Stuart Frank et.al. (I see no reason not to trust his transcription, though as a matter of formality I would like to put my own eyes on it.) I mention this because it is the earliest document I know of with the word, and it's not, I think, something that people are generally aware of. |
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20 May 18 - 07:53 AM (#3925878) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter > The antecedent (though not the origin per se) of chanty, I argue, is chant. A subtle but meaningful distinction. I concur entirely that the mere appearance of the word "chanty/ shanty/ chantey" doesn't *by itself* tell us anything about the practice of sailors or stevedores at work. The early evidence you've collected indicates strongly that the singing came before the word. Nobody ever said, "If we sing, our work will be easier! And let's call these new work songs "chanteys"! Like a trademark thing!" As you say, if an early chantey sounded chant-like to an observer, it would have been called a "chant." Otherwise it would have been called a "song" (the word Dana used in the 1830s). The usual pronunciation of "chant" strongly suggests to me that "chantey" comes from elsewhere - presumably French or Gulf/Caribbean French Creole, etc. I also agree that "chantyman" came first. It may have been in a context where English was dominant but the chanteyman began the work by shouting "Chantez!" in French. That made him the "chantez man" to English speakers. That would explain the "sh" pronunciation. The vowel change would then have come from association with English "chant." And, as you say, a "chanty" became the song led by a "chanty-man" - particularly if the English-speaker also knew some French. In other words, the origin of "chanty/ shanty/ chantey" is complex rather than singular. |
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25 May 18 - 03:45 PM (#3927106) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Constant reminder: God didn't make the Chantyman from a handful of clay c.1800. He evolved. The era under discussion has centuries of Roman Catholic maritime culture replaced wholesale with the secular/Protestant equivalent, book burnings and all. Sailor's Society for Stella Maris; “two-six-heave” and Let the Bulgine Run in for Salve Regina; chantyman for chanter, celeuste &c. Afaik Catholic sailors weren't all that welcome again in Martha's Vineyard environs until the early 20th century. So if you're shooting for any logic, order or uniformity, past, present or future, for Acadia, Nantucket, Texas and California chanty application, pronunciation or spelling fuggedaboudit. Lastly & pedantly, the so-called low, mean or crude end of the chanson scale would, methinks, traditionally come from the provençal minstrel or “chanterre” (cantores, cantatores, canteour &c) not “polite society's” psalm chanters. |
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25 May 18 - 04:02 PM (#3927111) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham I really don't think it matters that much. I for one am happy to accept the ultimate French derivation of the word via Gulf port influence. However, the songs had been in use for a couple of decades before anyone was using the word to describe them. I have been using 'chanty' for a couple of years in my own writing and I'm happy with that, though I don't object to anyone else using a different spelling. |
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25 May 18 - 04:15 PM (#3927115) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Big Al Whittle Many times afore the mainmast we sang, 'Some en-chantey evening! me boys!' the romance of the sea.... |
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25 May 18 - 06:06 PM (#3927136) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham Ah yes, Jolly Rogers and Do-me-ammerstein in the South Pacific! I remembers it well! |
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25 May 18 - 07:00 PM (#3927140) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Big Al Whittle just in case, theres anyone reading this Dorset Wrecks have got a gig tomorrow in Hope Square, Weymouth. The weekend after its Wessex folk festival and theres bound to loads of shanty singing, and even some chantey singing going on round the harbour in Weymouth. href="http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/leisure/stage/16249526.WHAT__39_S_ON_THIS_WEEKEND__Fayre_in_the_Square__Jazz_Jurassica__Nothe_Fort_1">http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/leisure/stage/16249526.WHAT__39_S_ON_THIS_WEEKEND__Fayre_in_the_Square__Jazz_Jurassica__Nothe_Fort_1 |
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25 May 18 - 08:12 PM (#3927147) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Big Al Whittle try again http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/leisure/stage/16249526.WHAT__39_S_ON_THIS_WEEKEND__Fayre_in_the_Square__Jazz_Jurassica__Nothe_Fort_1 |
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26 May 18 - 05:26 AM (#3927192) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST I once received a topless hand chandy in Weymouth if that helps... |
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26 May 18 - 02:16 PM (#3927250) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham The mind boggles! |
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29 May 18 - 07:09 PM (#3927869) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Folk history alert, none of the following is true, except maybe all of it. ;) One of the most popular edible mushrooms in North America is the chanterelle (cantharellus cibarius.) The diminutive is “chanty,” no “e.” Held one way the mushroom looks like a funnel or flute... “late 18th century: from French, from modern Latin cantharellus, diminutive of cantharus, from Greek kantharos, denoting a kind of drinking container.” [OED online] “Inverted” it's a bell... “f. The treble, in singing; also, a treble string, or bell; also, a small bell for a chyme.” [A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, (London: 1650)] No idea about the French minstrel or chantyman's fiddle strings though. Apropos nothing at all, another name for shantytown is... mushroom town. |
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29 May 18 - 07:11 PM (#3927871) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch FYI: In Creole, the “r” in chantrelle or troubadour is often pronounced as “w” ie: chantwell & twoubadou. |
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29 May 18 - 10:57 PM (#3927894) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: RTim I don't really care - but tend to use Shanty...it slips off the keyboard easier. Tim Radford |
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30 May 18 - 12:56 PM (#3928001) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch PPS: Mo French in the colonial shantytown drift. Another, older, North American name for shantytown was shantyville. Sawmills are mentioned early & often but also mining towns or even a small gathering of covered wagons around a roadhouse. |
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14 Jan 22 - 08:53 PM (#4132353) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Ranger: English vs British shanty lingo. The so-called “New World” was also New Scotland &c. It was, and still is, culturally, linguistically and socially diverse but highly stratified, as if you didn't know that already I'm sure. If one part of the vessel spoke proper English, the remainder likely did not. Also, it's undignified for a 'gentleman' to shout. The Exec's job was town crier (griot, gritador); the Boatswain's was translation: c.1750 “Many crewmen aboard a given ship in either navy* were from the same area, which was a source of unity. In the French navy, regional differences were particularly important. Ships in the Mediterranean fleet were manned by crewmen from Provence and southern France, while in the Atlantic fleet crewmen generally came from Brittany and other regions along the Atlantic coast…. The gulf between officers and men was somewhat wider in the French navy because officers did not help to raise their own crews and usually spoke only French, while crews spoke Breton or Provencal.” [Dull, Jonathan R., The Age of the Ship of the Line, (Lincoln: U. of Nebraska, 2009, pp.17-18)] *French or English. So if it's an English shanty/chanty on the quarterdeck, it will likely be a near subgenre on the foredeck but with a very different 'British' label. eg: amrán iomramh iorram iurram jorum joram jorram juram òran |
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14 Jan 22 - 09:21 PM (#4132354) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch PS: The above is drifted over from the What is a Shanty thread. Like it or not, nowadays some people call their pseudo-shanty video games and TikTok stuff as just plain 'shanty.' And while it is tempting to lay it off as a cyberspace thing, it appears some degree of that ages old show biz switcherooni may have been going on from day one. Not speaking to the American minstrelsy crossovers per se, but that's certainly one aspect of it. |
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31 Jul 22 - 02:55 PM (#4148872) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch “I love the lullaby of the waves, which sound like the rustling of leaves of a mighty forest, and although the glimpse of the moonlight through the port window tempts to wakefulness, it is pleasant to slumber to the music of the ocean, varied only by the sound of the boatswain's pipe, the distant singing of the sailors as the hoist the sails to catch a favouring breeze, the half-hourly ringing of the ship's bells, and the answer of the man on the watch that “All's well.” The “shandy” man who leads the singing of the sailors when they go round in a gang washing the decks commonly improvises a song on passing events. After each couplet the gang join in a plaintive kind of chorus, reminding me of songs I have heard sung by the monks at night in Italy.” [America in 1876, Pencillings During a Tour in the Centennial Year; with a Chapter on the Aspects of American Life, Leng, p.18, 1877] |
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01 Aug 22 - 06:19 AM (#4148916) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: The Sandman Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: RTim - PM Date: 29 May 18 - 10:57 PM I don't really care - but tend to use Shanty...it slips off the keyboard easier. Tim Radford My thoughts too, good post |
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01 Aug 22 - 02:06 PM (#4148949) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Fwiw my last, the search term was "singing of the sailors". I don't have an opinion. I have a list of them. |
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20 Feb 23 - 03:51 AM (#4165601) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib I'm interested in knowing Nordhoff better. Nordhoff is the person who gives us (*as far as presently known) the first mention of "chanty-man" in the 1856 publication The Merchant Vessel. It's his memory of observations of cotton screwmen in Mobile in 1848, while a merchant sailor of circa 18 years old. He said the songs were called "chants" and the activity was called "chanting." What I'm curious about is Nordhoff's reason for spelling it "ch." Did he hope to convey (to put it as a false binary) "etymology" or "pronunciation" with these spellings? Nordhoff was a literary man, even before his sailing career. I suppose that his spelling choice was deliberate. The first record of the song-type spelled with the "y" sound on the end is the journal (manuscript) of Abbe's 1858-59 voyage on Atkins Adams. Abbe spells it "shantie." Unless we suppose that the pronunciation of the word changed in the 10 years between Nordhoff and Abbe's experiences, Abbe's spelling tells us that Nordhoff was conveying (presumed) etymology. Nordhoff, so this would mean, expected his readers to know that "chants" should be pronounced "as in French." **This is where it gets unsettling for me.** I'd feel more comfortable had Nordhoff, elsewhere in the account, discussed the French heritage of Mobile, such that we understood we were getting some local flavor. Or, had he tossed around French terms elsewhere, we'd see he had a penchant for that. But everything reads as bog-standard Joe America as far as I can see. How could readers know they were to see "chants" and "chanting" but that they should pronounce "ch" as a sibilant? Some discussion in my article, mentioned up-thread, could explain "chant" as a spelling variation of the Anglicized-French "chaunt"—the French term borrowed into English. In that case, *maybe* readers would see Nordhoff's "chant" and intuit it as "the French chant" rather than "the English chant." But what would they do with "chanting," whose "-ing" ending looks distinctly English, or the "y" in "chanty-man," which doesn't look French? Nordhoff’s spellings would appear to contradict themselves unless readers could cleverly infer that they were hybrids of French and English or Creole terms. Importantly, Nordhoff does put these words in italics, which certainly signals something. Yet here again I'm not fully reassured. He doesn't use italics to mark foreign/non-English words in the text, but rather to mark off notable terms. For instance, he puts "gang" in italics. We know that "chants" is a special term here, clarified by the italics, but more so because Nordhoff also refers to this stuff as "songs" and "singing" ("chants" and "chanting" are the special terms for that). And later in the book, when he's leaving Liverpool and they sing "Across the briny ocean," he only calls that a "capstan song"—giving the possible implication that "chant" was more specifically the local/Mobile/screwmen's term for this variety of song. My issue is this: The only thing that leads me to supposed that Nordhoff's "chant" was pronounced with the sibilant is the Abbe spelling ten years later in a different context and the fact that, as we have inherited it, "chanty" is pronounced with the sibilant. There is less to suggest in Nordhoff alone that his "chants" should be pronounced with the sibilant and *more* (I think) to lead the reader to assume the affricate. The funny thing is that when I discuss, in speech, Nordhoff's work, I have no idea how I should pronounce "chants"! |
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20 Feb 23 - 02:42 PM (#4165645) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter I can imagine various possibilities, Gibb, none of them entirely persuasive. 1. Pronunciation in the 1840s to roughly '60s varied for one reason or another, perhaps because rationalizing, Frenchless speakers thought they heard "tchant" and "tchantay." 2. Nordhoff heard "shant(y)" but wrote "ch" to show etymology. He was thinking of "chevron" or "chevalier." 3. Or else his copy-editor, unfamiliar with the word and/or squinting at Nordhoff's handwriting, changed it. If Nordhoff wrote "chanty," the editor might have changed it as a slip of the pen. But then why keep "chanty-man"? 4. The word "shanty" was not yet in universal use. Nordhoff thought of the hauling songs as "chants" and the "chanty-man" as a "man of chants." Or else as the man who cried "Chantez!" Concerning 1, several sailor writers specify that the "correct" pronunciation is "shanty." But how many say nothing -- perhaps indicating that they thought "tchanty" was just fine. Maybe the prescriptivists believed that the pronunciation should follow the eytmology. That's all that occurs to me at the moment. As I say, none of these possibilities is fully convincing. But one (or more) may just be right! |
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20 Feb 23 - 04:07 PM (#4165651) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Joe Offer In his Feb 6 email, San Francisco Chanteyranger Peter Kasin says this:
Don't know if that's true, but that's what Peter says - and he's the only formerly professional chanteyranger I know. |
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20 Feb 23 - 06:19 PM (#4165666) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter Americans used to prefer "chanty/ chantey," but both spellings are international. "Shanty" is probably more common now. Davis & Tozer's pioneering British collection (1887) was called "Sailors' Songs or 'Chanties.'" |
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21 Feb 23 - 12:31 AM (#4165697) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Joe, From above-cited article: // The spelling of chanty has not been standardized to date, but two spellings are very common and now offered by the online Oxford English Dictionary (“shanty | chant(e)y, n.2,” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/177492). The first, shanty, appears to be the most common globally, and is now practically standardized in Commonwealth English. A large number, especially Americans, use chantey. Spellings with ch are maintained in the United States through its use by such archives and educational institutions as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Mystic Seaport Museum, [[to which we could add Peter's organization, San Francisco Maritime Park]] just as it was kept current through the works of related agents like Alan Lomax, Robert W. Gordon, and Folkways Records. The two communities of living singers that learned their traditions exclusively through oral tradition and in the context of labor, retired African American menhaden fishermen of Chesapeake Bay and whalermen of St. Vincent island, generally present their performances with the spellings chantey and shanty, respectively. // |
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21 Feb 23 - 02:39 AM (#4165700) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch For all of history it's been the same: Martial or Polybius; fiction or nonfiction. Sooner or later, you have to pick one and stick with it. Gibb: "It's his memory of observations of cotton screwmen in Mobile in 1848, while a merchant sailor of circa 18 years old. He said the songs were called "chants" and the activity was called "chanting."" Still have not got around to giving Nordhoff the full treatment but... I've got his works listed as fiction, based on a true story but, not the truth. Boy sailor Nordhoff's memories didn't need spelling out. Young adult fiction author Nordhoff's prose did. His fictional character can spell it in Klingon as long as the target popular audience can follow along. Using Nordhoff as a source for how "nautical rhythms" have influenced opera down through the years (Reidler) never ventures off the popular entertainment reservation. One might just as well cite video games and Tiktoks somewhere down the line. |
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21 Feb 23 - 04:46 AM (#4165710) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Nordhoff's 1886 publication _Seeing the World: A Young Sailor's Own Story_ (Edinburgh) replays much of _The Merchant Vessel_. The passages about cotton screwing and singing when leaving Liverpool are nearly identical (if trimmed down of content). However, this time it has "chanting-man" (instead of chanty-man) in the cotton screwing section, and "chaunty-man" (instead of chanty-man) in the Liverpool section. (!) |
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21 Feb 23 - 05:00 AM (#4165713) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Correction to the above: _Seeing the World_ was published first in 1867. That's important, because variations of "chanty" were pretty well known in literature by 1886. In 1867 they were not. Now was it Nordhoff that revised as "chaunty-man," or the editor 9with or without Nordhoff's input)? |
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21 Feb 23 - 07:20 AM (#4165729) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter My Spidey sense and an internet search tell me that "chaunty" is curious and unique. It may not matter, though, because OED avers that the obsolete spelling variant "chaunt" was always pronounced as "chant." But "chanting-man"? The word "chantey/shanty" was clearly problematic. |
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21 Feb 23 - 03:59 PM (#4165774) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton Basically work songs from the days of clipper ships as distinct from foc'sl ditties. I've always heard chantey but a shanty was a run down shack. Halyard Chanteys, Capstan Chanteys, are there others? (Bullgine Run?) |
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21 Feb 23 - 10:38 PM (#4165798) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib The phrase "chanting man" occurs in the United Service Journal for August 1837. The piece is "Saturday Night at Sea, in 1837." The men are entertaining each other with yarns and songs. The narrator calls upon someone to sing.... // ...John Tendersides, who was the only man on the forecastle who looked like a seaman... his hair was bushy and thick, and he was a fine broad-shouldered fellow, big enough and ugly enough to have fought a Spanish bull, or turned a tiger inside out. 'Now,' said I to myself, 'I shall get a stave such as I used to hear,' for his voice was as gruff as a coal-heaver's after he has cleared a collier and been the chanting man of the crew. // (pp. 481-2) |
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21 Feb 23 - 11:00 PM (#4165800) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib I guess where I'm landing with all this is that if I were, say, on a jury, and on trial stood a Mr. Xanty. Mr. Xanty has been charged with having always been pronounced as "shingle." I could not find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Nordhoff's writing, for one, gives me that reasonable doubt, for it suggests enough that Mr. Xanty was at some time pronounced as "church." Nordhoff provides solid observational details. What he tells about cotton screwing and about the songs is uncommon knowledge. To recall the songs with such detail that we can corroborate elsewhere says to me this was as close to reality as fair recollection, 6-7 years after the fact, can provide. I'm not inclined to suppose, with that evident high quality of observation, that he didn't hear how the words were pronounced. Then, I find nothing persuasive to say he heard "shingle" but wrote it as "chingle" to reflect a French orientation. It would be a bit too weird, in my estimation, to think Nordhoff wrote "chanting" for something that sounded like "shanting." It need not be that the pronunciation shifted from "church" to "shingle" between 1848 and 1859. (Abbe's sea journal, by the way, in which "Shantie" appears numerous times in the 1859 entries, has now been digitized and posted by New Bedford Whaling Museum.) Maybe both pronunciations were in use by different people. In any case, I can't declare unequivocally that the word was always pronounced "shingle." |
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22 Feb 23 - 04:26 AM (#4165826) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Shaw Well I'm no singer (I've been known to empty whole rooms, however), but I do live in the heart of Westcountry shantyland down yer in Cornwall (we have Fisherman's Friends, with a few of whom I've hobnobbed occasionally at our St Kew pub sessions, the Boscastle Buoys and, here in Bude, Friggin' Riggin', a great bunch of lads and lasses who often sing at our Memory Café), and I've never heard it said (or seen it spelled) any other way than "shanty" as in "shhh..." We watched an episode of Rick Stein's Cornwall series last night (series 3, episode 2 on BBC iPlayer) which featured a fantastic all-female group of shanty singers from west Cornwall called Femmes de la Mer. They aim to highlight the heroic doings of women of the sea to balance the dominance of men in shanties. They sounded just great. |
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22 Feb 23 - 09:51 AM (#4165849) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter I recall hearing both pronunciations in New York in the '50s (that's 1950s) from teachers and TV people. Not that I heard them very often. Wiki says Nordhoff was born in Prussia and didn't arrive in America till he was 15. If that's when he began to learn English, he probably spoke with an accent as strong as Henry Kissinger's or Arnold Schwarzenegger's. German has no "church" sound. Maybe Nordhoff found it hard to distinguish it from "sh." Or his editor thought N was saying "chant" with an accent. Just one more consideration. Too many imponderables here. When did the word "Schantie" first appear in German? |
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23 Feb 23 - 12:40 AM (#4165920) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib Nordhoff came to the US at age 5. |
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23 Feb 23 - 09:53 AM (#4165953) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter You're right. My eyes and/or brain must be going. So, no German accent. On Nov. 22, '09, when this discussion was getting underway (see what I did there?), I suggested that the "chantie" might have come from a hypothetical but perfectly natural Scots diminutive of "chant." It may well be that "shanty/chantey" has a dual origin. Whichever pronunciation "came first" (something we'll probably never know), a dual origin (Scots "chantie" and French "Chantez!" via "shanty-man," or, more plausibly, English "chant" + "Chantez!") would explain the two variant pronunciations. The "church" pronunciation, of course, is often assumed to be based on learning the word from print. All we can say for sure is that the "shanty" pronunciation was in use by 1858. Nordhoff's is unclear. |
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23 Feb 23 - 10:06 AM (#4165957) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham I'm obviously looking at this far too simplistically. Did not the earliest usage of the word occur in the Gulf Ports? Was not one of the commonest spoken languages in those places French? Okay so none of us yet have absolute proof but until we do that's good enough for me. Enchantee! |
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23 Feb 23 - 10:31 AM (#4165959) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter It's a very minor point, Steve, but the question as I see it is where the "church"-style pronunciation came from. Sheer ignorance or parallel tradition? Nordhoff's spellings muddy the waters (see what I did there?). |
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23 Feb 23 - 02:57 PM (#4165982) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Did not the earliest usage of the word occur in the Gulf Ports? In popular fiction the "usage" would be where the author wrote, not the fictional setting(s.) For all you know, Nordhoff stole it from another work of fiction, whilst sitting by the fire, feet up, in his office, with snow on the windows. Was not one of the commonest spoken languages in those places French? Creole and the colonial Spanish & French it is taken from. Roughly in that order but who is doing the talking: quarterdeck, midships, foredeck or alongshore will make a huge difference... in any one given task. It would sound a lot like 'English' calypso or junkanoo to the average European Francophone. "Champagne" & "chanteur" &c might very well come with more of a "j" sound. OTH: If one is shopping for music or instruments, one could expect to hear more German & Yiddish than Spanish. |
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23 Feb 23 - 06:16 PM (#4165999) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham 'who is doing the talking'. Well that would be the stevedores and cotton-screwers initially, largely of African-American origin, where we get the first use of 'chantyman' and then the spread to shipboard. We're not actually looking at the practice itself here, just the evolution of the word. I'm going back earlier than Nordhoff. Sorry! |
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23 Feb 23 - 07:11 PM (#4166004) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Steve: What does race have to do the etymology? Speaking just of Nordhoff, it is Nordhoff doing the writing. It is fiction. The only thing we really know for certain is that he learned of the word some time before he first went to print. We don't even know that Nordhoff ever heard the word spoken aloud in any accent. He may very well have read it somewhere. |
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24 Feb 23 - 06:08 AM (#4166030) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib All we can say for sure is that the "shanty" pronunciation was in use by 1858. Nordhoff's is unclear. What is unclear about Nordhoff? (*Playing Devil's advocate here.*) It's technically true that the digraph /ch/ can be used to represent more than one sound. So, it's not 100% clear, but I guess "unclear" to me connotes more than "not 100%". I find no suggestion *in* Nordhoff that it should be read other than "church". There's good sense in thinking that if he presented it as /ch/ in such familiar English words as "chant" and "chanting" (which is especially English morphologically) that to suppose other than "church" is overthinking. So why would *we* every suspect "shush"? I think it's only because we have learned to pronounced /chanty/ that way, through later writers and received pronunciation. On the other hand, /chant/ and /chanting/ are earlier (within the few decades prior to Nordhoff) in evidence in English-language reference to work-songs, both of sailors and non-sailor African American workers. I don't think we're talking about those things being pronounced as "shush". Why privilege what came after rather than what came before? What makes Nordhoff notable in the historiography is that his is the "first" where /chanty/ (as opposed to /chant/, i.e. with a /y/) occurs, albeit embedded in /chanty-man/. Yet, I don't think that distinction is enough to treat it as a kind of ground-zero. Nordhoff is talking about the songs as /chants/, but we've already got earlier people talking about /chants/ with a similar meaning. I don't regard those others as unclear. Again, perhaps technically we can call them unclear, but I'm inclined to read them as typical English. What to me is unclear is how Our Word was pronounced by everyone and in all places, and Nordhoff *contributes* to the overall lack of clarity, but that is something different than to say that Nordhoff was unclear. Did not the earliest usage of the word occur in the Gulf Ports? My interpretation is that "chantyman" (whatever spelling) was in use prior to "chanty" (whatever spelling) and that it was used by stevedores before sailors. At least, in use to a significantly greater degree. Some of those stevedores were in the Gulf ports. I theorize "chanty" being a "back derivation" from "chantyman". I'm happy to think of "chanty" as a simple diminutive form of "chant" as well, per Lighter. However, if I have to choose, I lean toward my theory for the reasons expressed in my article. But I would not pinpoint /chant/ to either the Gulf ports or stevedores. Rather, those places seem important for /chantyman/ (from which, again I derive chanty—a later name for the thing earlier called chant). It's a subtle point, I guess. French/Creole being a language of the Gulf ports, that offers some reasonable fodder for speculation (along with the complicated French and English mix in some Caribbean islands) about how the "shush" pronunciation got in there. In other words, its useful only insofar as we are grappling with "shush", for which I find an origin in Standard French to be less satisfying than either a Creole linguistic environment or some random sound shift within English. (Scots "chantie" and French "Chantez!" via "shanty-man," or, more plausibly, English "chant" + "Chantez!") I've never understood the /chantez!/ thing, nor the /chanter/ thing (though the latter may just be people wanting to state the verb infinitive as some kind of etymological formality?). I guess they are supposed to be accounting for the /y/ ending? Yet in French we already have the perfectly good word /chant/, which was used in French for work vocalization (and is used now as a gloss for chanties, "chants de marins"). And /chantie/ sounds to me like an equally plausible French diminution of /chant/. English /chant/ and French /chant/ are more or less equivalent. |
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24 Feb 23 - 08:06 AM (#4166040) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib The start of lining out some documentation, not of this whole subject but related to recent questions: (I'm not going to give full references and contextualize everything) 1806 Where Scotland's kings are laid; of Lewis, Sky, And of the mainland mountain circled lochs; And he would sing the rowers timing chaunt,... 1818 The reapers had their carol; the herdsmen had a song, which an ox-driver of Sicily had composed; the kneuders, and the bakers, and the galley-rowers, were not without their chaunt. 1825 (and similar French references): BOULINA-HA-HA ! Arrache ! Boulina-ha-ha, déralingue ! etc. Ancien chant des matelots français pendant qu'ils bâient sur les quatre principales boulines , notamment celle du grand et du petit hunier. Ce chant est si ridicule que plusieurs capitaines militaires le défendent. HISSA, O, HA , HISSE: chant de l'homme qui donne la voix pour réunir les efforts de plusieurs autres sur un même cordage afin de produire un plus grand effet. Ce chant ou cri n'a plus guère lieu que dans quelques ports. 1826 He was principally applauded for singing a common sailors' chant in character, having a sort of 'Sally Brown, oh, ho,' chorus; and requiring the action of pulling a rope, spitting upon the hand, and the accompaniment of a horrid yell. 1829 Our visitors were particularly animated in their extemporaneous effusions, and ran round the capstan rapidly, to words signifying their hope of soon sharing an allowance of spirits; ...The limit of the choral expression is always marked by the velocity with which the leader of the band, that is, the individual who first gives out the stave, completes a circle on the deck as he heaves round his bar, and he recommences his chant at the same spot at which it was begun. Hence, when the circumvolutions of the performers are quickened by the yielding of the ... No sooner had they got the ship under weigh, and felt her yield to the impulse of their warp, as if she gradually awoke from a deep lethargy, and slowly resumed her suspended faculty of motion, than they began their song, one of them striking up, seemingly with the first idea that entered his imagination, while the others caught at his words, and repeated them to a kind of Chinese melody; the whole at length uniting their voices into one chant, which, though evidently the outpouring of a jovial spirit, had, from its unvaried tone and constant echo of the same expression, a half-wild, half-melancholy effect upon the ear. 1831 It was the rude chaunt of some negroes returning down the river to their master's plantation, and beguiling the toil of their oars with a wild yet rich and well harmonized chorus. 1833 Every ship of war on arriving at Freetown, enters certain number of these Kroumen over and above her compliment, for the purpose of manning her boats when the may be sent on any service where there is likely to be much exposure to the sun or rain, and to the mephitic exhalation from the soil, such as weeding and watering so that our unassimilated seamen may be subjected as little as possible to the deleterious influence of the climate. We received upwards of twenty of them on board, chiefly young men, all of them more muscular and athletic, though not generally taller, than our own people;… In rowing, they have always a song of some sort or other at command, to which they keep time with the oar, someimes melodious, but usually harsh and untuneful, having generally for its subject something connected with the ship, or the officers, or the duty that is going on, each chanting a subject in turn, while the rest join in the chorus. 1834 Here is a song, or rather a chorus, which the negroes sing on such occasions, being a fair sample of their poetry and'music; kept up, perhaps, by a few of them working together, whilst the others at the same time sing some popular English tune, recently imported, forming together, something like that delectable compound of harmony and discord, a "Dutch Medley." Shatteraynite aw cung la town Chaun fine my deary hunney. Aw run roun da lemon tree, Chaun fine my deary hunney. [ETC] 1835 The hoarse panting of the high-pressure engines, the rattling of the drays on the paved wharfs, and the discordant cries in every tongue mingling with the song of the negro boatmen, as their wild chaunt on coming into port would rise ever and anon above the general din, made a confusion of sights and sounds that was bewildering. 1835 I now passed the estate belonging to Monsieur Honnemaison: the field-gang were cutting canes, and the muleteers loading their animals,—all were chaunting a short song. Negro songs are always short; it was what on French estates is called a "belle air," a kind of Creole chaunt, almost agreeable enough to merit its appellation. 1838 Ohio RIVER, 1838.-—-This morning we took on board a lot of very dry wood. and the negro firemen, as is usual, when they get good wood, and can make their furnaces hot, begin to sing, one of them chanting the burden of a song, and the rest, at the end of every two lines, striking in, by way of chorus. The whole was improvisatored for the occasion ; and it is remarkable what skill an African Orpheus of this class will exhibit in composing his extemporaneous song. 1839 Suddenly, on a signal from their spokesman, the negroes struck up a song, to which they kept time with their oars. The leading songster sang a line solo, taking up any occurrence that crossed his mind at the moment, or that took place in our progress. Thus, when the looms of the oars were thrown aft to replunge the blade in the water, the leader sang his line, whatever it might be, and as they one and all took their stroke together, every voice united in a general chorus. ... The boatmen could hear very little if any thing of our conversation; but seeing us earnestly engaged, they ceased their chaunt... ...…I was going to inquire who Hammerton was, but the question was delayed by the peculiar mournful cadences of the negroes as they continued their chaunt. ..."Massa Hammerton like for hearee we peaka too much sorry," answered Sam, the leader of the chaunt. “Go, massa, go," continued the negro; "you no top longer; Golamity bless Massa Mitchell; go den quick, and no let em boys sing em chant hearee, spose you please." 1839 “THE STOKER'S CHAUNT. The ebben tide ib floating past, Fire down below! The arrival time ib coming fast. Fire down below! 1841 On either hand the posthumous fame of Fulton ascends with the spiral wreaths of smoke, that like dusky serpents curl from the funnels of the numerous steamers that ply to and fro upon the bay and river, while the "yo, heave ho," of the mariners, the monotonous chant of the stevedores, the measured stroke of the skilfully plied oars of the waterman, the "clinking hammers" of the ship-yards, the hurried shouts of the officers of vessels and the answering response of their crews, the rattling of iron cables, the creaking of swayed masts, and the flutter of shivering sails are the whisperings of the modern Babel, falling on the ear of the loiterer at Williamsburgh, in her seasons of repose. 1842 But if these chaunts have not much meaning, they will not produce the desired effect of touching the heart, as well as animating the arm of the labourer. The gondoliers of Venice while away their long midnight hours on the water, with the stanzas of Tasso; our sailors at Newcastle, in heaving their anchors, &c, use a song of this kind. 1842 SHANTY SONG. TO A NEW AND APPROPRIATE AIR. We leave all is dear, at the falling year, ? 'Fore the bleak snows come and the frosts appear, ? O'er the wide lakes we creep, ? Rocked by the billows sleep, ? And through the rough rapids wc boldly steer. ? Then row, brothers row, ? Let the rude winds blow, ? Shove the canoe like ranting boys, ? With liquor and good cheer, ? And none an heart to fear. ? Merry be the woodland shanting boys. To dangers we go, where the snow storms blow, ? And the ice-bound rivers cease to flow, Where the axe with the sound, In the valleys resound, ? As we chaunt to the woodlands, row boys, row, ? Then row brothers, row, &c. &c. &c. 1843 Great masses of idle people were standing contemplating our arrival, the vessels teeming with negroes, oddly attired, were at work rolling cargoes in and out, and accompanying their labour with a lively chaunt, both musical and strange. 1850 Nothing to break the calm silence of the scene, save the occasional chaunt of a negro band, who were engaged, at some distance, putting up the sails of a windmill, and whose chorus, rude and imperfectly heard as it was, sounded pleasantly in the ear... 1851 I am told that negroes, although living in "Old Virginny," never did, and never would, sing such songs as Old Dan Tucker and Lucy Neale, which only originated in the brains of their sham Ethiopian personifiers. The songs they do sing are almost always of a religious turn, something between a nautical anchor-hauling chaunt and the "Old Hundredth." 1854 The little bay looks active and busy with shipping; loading and unloading goes on merrily to the chanting of the sailors, which sound is borne pleasantly across the water with every little breath of wind; 1855 Gen'el Jackson fine de trail, Whaw, my kingdom, flre away, He full um fote wid cotton bale, Whaw, my kingdom, fire away.” ... The song, a part of which I have just quoted, is fresh from the sable mint in which it was coined. Its originality and genuineness every one familiar with plantation life will at once perceive; while some Georgians may even be able to point to the very river on which the dusky troubadours still chant it. 1856 Another man had, in the mean time, stepped into the place he had first occupied at the head of the grave; an old negro, with a very singularly distorted face, who raised a hymn, which soon became a confused chant—the leader singing a few words alone, and the company then either repeating them after him or making a response to them, in the manner of sailors heaving at the windlass. 1858 But the sail wouldn't come, though. All the most forcible expressions of the Commination-Service were liberally bestowed on the watch. “ Give us the song, men!” sang out the mate, at last,— “ pull with a will!—together, men!—haltogether now! “—And then a cracked, melancholy voice struck up this chant: “Oh, the bowline, bully bully bowline, Oh, the bowline, bowline, HAUL!” 1859 and the barbaric African chant and chorus of the gang at work filling the cane-troughs ;—all these make the first visit at the sugar-house a strange experience. But after one or two visits, the monotony is as tiresome as the first view is exciting. There is, literally, no change in the work There are the same noises of the machines, the same cries from negroes at the same spots, the same intensely sweet smell, the same state of the work in all its stages, at whatever hour you visit it, whether in the morning, or evening, at midnight, or at the dawn of the day. If you wake up at night, you hear the “A-a-b'la A-a-b'la!” “E-e-cha! E-e-cha!” of the caldron-men crying to the stokers, and the high, monotonous chant of the gangs filling the wagons or the trough, a short, improvisated stave, and then the chorus;—not a tune, like the song of sailors at the tackles and falls but a barbaric, tuneless intonation. 1861 They are the product chiefly of the enterprising capitalists termed lumber-men,' and of the men and their woodmen, whose French name is "Gens de Chantier," from that habit of singing as they ply their task which was made known to our people by Moore's Canadian Boat-song." Their log-houses are called chantiers, whence the English shanty, and shanty-men. 1863 …and as the boat pushed off, and the steersman took her into the stream, the men at the oars set up a chorus, which they continued to chant in unison with each other, and in time with their stroke, till the voices and oars were heard no more from the distance. I believe I have mentioned to you before the peculiar characteristics of this veritable negro minstrelsy—how they all sing in unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard any thing like part-singing. ... Except the extemporaneous chants in our honor, of which I have written to you before, I have never heard the negroes on Mr. —'s plantation sing any words that could be said to have any sense. 1867 Down the rigging they leaped, and to the windlass brakes. Then as they felt the old emotion, that they were at every stroke of the brakes slowly parting their last hold on Yankee land, they broke forth in a chanting that made the sleepy crews of the numberless coasters turn out in quick time. “ O, Riley, O,” “Whiskey for my Johnny,” and the loud toned “Storm along, my Rosa,” woke the echoes far and near. ... The anchor came to the bow with the chanty of “Oh, Riley, Oh,” and “Carry me Long,” and the tug walked us toward the wharf at Brooklyn. ...Every man sprang to duty. The cheerful chanty was roared out, and heard above the howl of the gale. ...A chanty gang was engaged to hoist out the cargo, and one of them in trying to steal hard bread, finding the bull-dog upon him, jumped overboard and swam safely ashore....... The chanty men wanted biscuit, and waited to receive them. ......when the sugar began to roll in, the crew found I was at the head of the rope, and a “chanty man.” We rolled the sugar upon the stages, over the bows, and at every hogshead I gave them a different song. 1868 - first (?) reference to French etymology Man the capstan bars! Old Dave is our “chanty-man.”* Tune up, David! ... [footnote:] *Chanter (French), to sing. ...Dave is familiar with the songs of all nations, for he has sailed over all seas, and h’isted anchor in many ports. Perhaps he will “chanty” a favorite English capstan-song:— ... And so “Dave,” the favorite “chanty-man,” in a rough, yet musical voice, and with that temulous quaver which expresses his idea of effective style, begins... ...By this time, usually, the mainsail is up, and the song concludes itself; but it sometimes happens that the huge sail lingers on its way, and more “chanty” is needed, in which case the song “suffers a sea-change.” 1868 Truly, as I once heard an old skipper remark, a good shanty is the best bar in the capstan ; but it is impossible to give an adequate idea of them by merely quoting the words : the charm all lies in the air : indeed, few of them have any set form of words, except in the chorus ; thus the inventive as well as the vocal powers of the singer are taxed—yet the shantyman has to extemporise as he sings to keep up his prestige... ... Shanties are of two kinds, those sung at the capstan, and those sung when hauling on the ropes ; in the former the meter is longer, and they are generally of the pathetic class. ...There is an air of romance about California, the Brazils, and Mexico, that has a peculiar charm for Jack, and has made them the subject of many a favourite shanty, as Rio Grande, Valparaiso, Round the Horn, and Santa Anna. …In those lively shanties, Good morning ladies all, Nancy Bell, and Sally in the Alley, ample homage is paid to the girl he leaves behind him. ...There are many more capstan shanties, ...We now come to the hauling shanties: first, there is the hand over hand song, in very quick time; then the long pull song. When there are a number of men—perhaps twenty, or more— pulling on one rope, the reader will perceive that, to be effective, the pull must be made unanimously ; this is secured by the shanty, the pull being made at some particular word in the chorus. ...These remarks apply only to merchant ships ; in the Navy, the shanty is prohibited, and at the capstan the men move to the sound of the fife or fiddle—the musician being seated on the capstan-head. 1869 At the last word 'haul' in each couplet, every man threw his whole strength into the pull—all singing in chorus with a quick explosive sound. And so jump by jump the sheet was at last hauled taut I daresay this description will be considered spun out by a seafaring man; but landsmen like to hear of the sea and its ways; and as more fresh-water sailors read this Journal than sea-water ones, I have told them of one shanty and its time and place. ...The above is what we call a hauling shanty. Shanties are of two kinds—those sung at the capstan, and those sung when hauling on a rope ...There is an air of romance about California, the Brazils, and Mexico, that has a peculiar charm for Jack; and he has made them the subject of many a favourite shanty, as Rio Grande, Valparaiso, Round the Horn, and Santa Anna. Rio Grande is perhaps the greatest favourite of this description of songs, but all the beauty lies in the mournful air: …There are many more capstan shanties... ...I remember once hearing a good shanty on board a Glasgow boat; something like the following was the chorus: ...We now come to the hauling shanties. First, there is the hand-over-hand song, in very quick time ; then the long-pull song. When there are a number of men—perhaps twenty or thirty—pulling on a rope, the reader will perceive that, to be effective, the pull must be made unanimously: this is secured by the shanty, the pull being made at some particular word in the chorus. 1870 At the bow of the boat were gathered the negro deck-hands, who were singing a parting song...The leader, a stalwart negro, stood upon the capstan shouting the solo part of the song, the words of which I could not make out, although I drew very near; but they were answered by his companions in stentorian tones at first, and then, as the refrain of the song fell into the lower part of the register, the response was changed into a sad chant in mournful minor key. 1870 Forty-eight hours after that we were off Sandy Hook with our jib-boom pointing toward the open sea, and all hands on the main topsail halliards, pulling away to the roaring chanty, — 1871 "There are large sugar cultivations on the mainland," writes Mr. Philpot from Abaco, "and the fields of waving cane, with their delicate green leaves and golden tassels, look very pretty, especially when they relieve a dark background of sombre pine-wood. A windmill crushes the cane, and when wind fails, manual labour is called in—a number of negroes turning the windlass to the wild chaunts of their own country." 1871 For example, when hauling on the topsail halyards, they may have this song, the shanty man, as they call him, solo singer, beginning with a wailing strain: ...Shanty man: “Haul the bowline; Kitty is my darling. Crew: Haul the bowline, the bowline haul!” 1874 Shanty, a song. A term in use among sailors. From CHANTER. 1874 The men seemed of my opinion, for they went forward singing merrily one of those peculiar ditties that sailors always affect, and which you hear nowhere but in the forecastle, or else from the chanty-man when all hands are employed together doing heavy work. ... "Way, haul away, haul away, my Jo!” roared the gunner in stentorian voice, as he led off in a sonorous chanty... 1876 We were not a little amused whilst heaving round the windlass at seeing Mr H leaning over the bulwarks deplorably sick. Our putting back made the men strike up the wellknown homeward-bound “chanty”— ...We filled up with water and took aboard some fresh meat; and the wind having hauled round to N.E., with fine and clear weather, we weighed anchor to the tune of the “chanty,”—”I served my time in the Black Ball Line,”— ...Whilst heaving up anchor prior to the tug towing us to the wharf, we had some good “chanties”—for Jack's spirits are at their highest at the thoughts of a run ashore. The “chanty” known under the name of “ The Rio Grande” is particularly pretty... ...Merchant Jack laughs with contempt as he watches their crew in uniform dress, walking round the windlass, weighing anchor like mechanical dummies. No hearty “chanties” there— 1876 The morning finds us still a dozen miles from Asioot where we desire to celebrate Christmas; we just move with sails up, and the crew poling. The head-man chants a line or throws out a word, and the rest come in with a chorus, as they walk along, bending the shoulder to the pole. The leader—the "shanty man" the English sailors call their leader, from the French chanter I suppose—ejaculates a phrase, sometimes prolonging it, or dwelling on it with a variation, like "O ! Mohammed!" or "O! Howadji!" or some scraps from a love-song, and the men strike in in chorus: 1879 There’s half a dozen old “shanty songs” that are never heard on shore, sung by sailors at work. Such as “The Bully Boat’s a Coming,” “Santy Anna,” Miranza Lee,” “Storm along, John.” Take any of these chanted by a Blackball liner’s crew as they were making everything taut in the dog watch with top gallant sails set and a lively breeze humming through the rigging, and there’s music which would, with a little trimming and polishing, out-Pinafore “Pinafore.” 1879 And Short pretended to chanty a sailor's song. … “An' away, my Johnny boy, we 're all bound to go!” … 1879 The majority of the men who volunteered for the Water Transport Corps, were, as may be imagined, those who had been used to a sea-faring life, and accustomed to boats and rowing. They were a rough-and-tumble lot, and many are the wild stories told of their escapades. The boats' crews (8 and 12 oars), used generally to sweep up against the stream to the chorus of a sailors shanty song, "I'm bound away," or "Ye rolling rivers," usurping the canoe chant of the natives. 1879 The men, who are now prevented from working about deck or aloft at their usual jobs, are only worked at tending the sails, and between orders stay under the lee of the forward house. ... Through all their hardships, and this weather is really very hard on them, they seem as cheerful as possible, and sing their queer monotonous songs with a vim when pulling on the ropes, where all hands, or a whole watch is needed. ... The song or "shantee" as they call it, and which is sung when a whole watch or more are hauling, consists in the leader singing a line, then all hands the chorus, which is only one line long, and at the same time giving two long steady pulls; as the leader chants the next line the men rest, then another chorus and pull, and so on until the yard is hoisted or the sail sheeted home. 1879 Every morning they were waked up by the song of the crew, as they commenced at five o'clock in the morning to hoist out the tobacco, for it is not customary in port to “ turn to “until six, and all day long such choruses as “Walk along my Sally Brown,” and “Hoist her up from down below,” rang over the harbor, with all the force that a dozen hearty negroes could give them. When the “shanty man“ became hoarse, another relieved him, and thus the song and work went along,... ...The shantyman, as the solo singer is called, standing up “beforehand,” as high above the rest of the crew as he can reach, sings with as many quirks, variations and quavers as his ingenuity and ability can attempt, “Haul the bow-line, Kitty is my darling;” ...Great latitude is allowed in the words and the shantyman exercises his own discretion. If he be a man of little comprehension or versatility, he will say the same words over and over, but if he possesses some wit, he will insert a phrase alluding to some peculiarity of the ship, or event of the time, which will cause mouths to open wider and eyes to roll gleefully, while a lively pull follows that rouses the sheet home and elicits the mate's order “Belay!” A good shantyman is highly prized, both by officers and crew. His leadership saves many a dry pull, and his vocal effort is believed to secure so much physical force, that he is sometimes allowed to spare his own exertions and reserve all his energies for the inspiriting shanty. ...A good shantyman, who with fitting pathos recounts the sorrows of “ poor Reuben “ never fails to send the topsail to the masthead at quick notice,... ...Of all the heroines of deck song Sally Brown's name is most frequently uttered, and a lively pull always attends it. She figures in several of these songs; one has as its chorus “Shantyman and Sally Brown.” ...Each line is usually repeated twice, even if there be a rhyme impending, for the shantyman's stock must be carefully husbanded. 1881 For the first six weeks all the "Shanti songs" known on the sea had been sung. 1882 Undoubtedly many sailor songs have a negro origin. They are the reminiscences of melodies sung by negroes stowing cotton in the holds of ships in Southern ports. The “shanty-men,” those hards of the forecastle, have preserved to some extent the meaningless words of negro choruses, and have modified the melodies so as to fit them for salt-water purposes. ...There are pulling songs which approach so closely the structure of windlass songs that they were sometimes made to do duty at the windlass or the pump by shanty-men whose artistic consciences were somewhat dull. All sailor songs consist of one or more lines sung by the shanty-man alone, and one or two lines sung by the men in chorus. Windlass songs always have two choruses, while pulling songs should have but one. The choruses are invariable. They are the fixed and determinating quantities of each song, while the lines sung by the shanty-man were left in a measure to his discretion. It is true that custom wedded certain lines to certain songs, but the shanty-man was always at liberty to improvise at his own pleasure. He was also permitted to slightly vary the melody of his part, and the accomplished shanty-man was master of certain tricks of vocalization which can not be reproduced in print, but which contributed vastly to the effectiveness of his sinking. Those who have heard Irma Marie in Barbe Bleu may remember that in some of her songs, notably in the first act, she had a trick of slurring from a note in her proper register to another in her head voice. This was one of the favorite mannerisms of the shanty-man. ...Presently some one says, “Oh, give us the 'Bowline,'“ whereupon the shanty-man's sharp clear voice is heard, the men join in the chorus, and as they sing the last syllable they haul on the halyards, and the stubborn yard yields. ...This is clearly of negro origin, for the “Shanandore” is evidently the river Shenandoah. In course of time some shanty-man of limited geographical knowledge, not comprehending that the “Shanandore” was a river, but conceiving that the first chorus required explanation, changed the second chorus. ...Much care was evidently given to “Lowlands” by the shanty-men. It has often been improved. In its original form the first chorus was shorter and less striking, and the words of the second chorus were, “My dollar and a half a day.” It is to be regretted that no true idea can be given on paper of the wonderful shading which shanty-men of real genius sometimes gave to this song by their subtle and delicate variations of time and expression. ...Who Stormy was, and why he received that evident nickname, even the most profound and learned shanty-men always confessed themselves unable to explain. 1882 They always have a foreman, one of their own number, who directs their work and leads their song or chant. Sometimes he merely utters, in a high, sing-song tone, a constant succession of orders, to which the hands respond now and then as the work goes on; everything that is said is chanted, with a well-defined cadence and rhythm, often extremely musical and interesting: "Ready now! Give us light dar! What do yo' say now? All togedder dar!" and so on. Some of their songs or chants include queer, inarticulate shouts or cries and vocal explosions, 1883 “SHANTY SONGS”. OLD STORM ALONG. “CHANTY SONG.” BLACK BALL. “CHANTY” SONG. 1883 But the lack of variety is no obstruction to the sailor's poetical inspiration when he wants the “ old man” to know his private opinions without expressing them to his face, and so the same “chantey,” as the windlass or halliard chorus is called, furnishes the music to as many various indignant remonstrances as Jack can find injuries to sing about. 1883 'Then give us one of the old chanteys,' exclaimed my uncle. “Haul the Bowline,” or “Whiskey, Johnny,” or “ Run, let the Bulljine run.” 1884 The most popular of the sea songs are known as “shanties.” Whether this is an original word or is a corruption of “chants” it would be difficult to say. Whenever the sailors heave up the anchor, or man the pumps, or undertake some difficult operation which requires the use of the capstan they are apt to indulge in “shantying.”... The “shantyer,” or soloist, chants one or two rude Iines and is followed by his comrades in a brief chorus. In nearly all shanties there are two choruses, which are sung alternately. ...There are a number of songs which sailors sing while hauling on the ropes which are not called shantys, but are in many respects similar to the latter. The soloist chants a line, and his comrades follow with a chorus, at the last word of which they give the rope a terrific tug. One of these songs is known as “Hanging Johnny.” ...When seamen furl one of the larger sails it requires their united efforts to roll the canvass up on to the yard. For the final effort they stimulate themselves by a brief chant at the last word of which all pull together. In the selection of the two sets of words which Jack has set to this chant he has displayed his love of honesty and truthfulness. One version of the yard-arm chant is “Wea-hay-hay; we will pay Paddy Doyle for his boots.” The composer of these words undoubtedly owed a man named Patrick Doyle for a pair of boots, and he took a public occasion for announcing his intention of paying for them like an honest man. The other version of the chant is “Wea-hay-hay; oh, my wife she's a devil for gin.” ...The shantyer's face invariably glows with enthusiasm when he reaches this line, ...The following is a portion of one of the most popular of the shanties: ...One or two land songs have of late years been transformed Into shantys. “Marching Through Georgia” is becoming a great favorite with Jack, although the air of this does not compare with those of several of his shantys. The song in which a young man meets a pretty maid, who, upon being cross-examined, informs him that her face is her fortune, and in a very pert and forward manner says: “Nobody asked you, Sir” when he announces his disinterested Intention of marrying her, has, after some alterations and renovations been transformed into a shanty, with the following somewhat irrelevant chorus: “I was bound for the Rio Grande.” ...There is however, one shanty the words of which were very appropriate. This is rarely sung except by the crew of some sinking vessel who are about to abandon her. |
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24 Feb 23 - 01:32 PM (#4166063) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Lighter It looks as though Louisiana French - like other dialects - lacks a voiceless palato-alveolar affricate. Such speakers would naturally articulate English "chanty" as "shanty." Spanish, another major Gulf language, does have the "church" sound. So there's no influence from Spanish. I don't know what the ch/sh distribution might have been in any Afro-English creole that might have been spoken around the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to understand why English "ch" should become "sh" without some foreign influence. In any case, it's hard for me to believe that the *dominant* pronunciation should change from "chanty" to "shanty" in just few years. |
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24 Feb 23 - 01:55 PM (#4166065) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham Wow! That's some list, Gibb. Just an observation or suggestion which I'm sure you consider already. Almost all of the earlier extracts are by English-speaking 'writers'/'observers using a well-used word in their own vocabulary with the 'church' sound, whereas the few French extracts would surely be using 'shush'. Is there any significant difference in the meaning of chaunt and chant, or are they synonymous? Another aspect I haven't seen discussed is the use of the vowel sounds as in French 'shontay'. If the sailor/stevedore usage did derive in some way from the French would the earlier pronunciation have reflected this? |
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24 Feb 23 - 02:33 PM (#4166073) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Impressive list Gibb. More grist for the word list. RE: Gulf coast Creole. I was not offering it up as anything other than our maritime lingua franca answer to Steve's question. Popular fiction authors are free to invent words out of thin air and The Beverly Hillbillies weren't Appalachian. Lucky for us chantier is just a noun. |
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25 Feb 23 - 03:35 AM (#4166100) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Dave Hanson Life is too short to read that long long list. Dave H |
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25 Feb 23 - 03:25 PM (#4166140) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Gallus Moll A 'chanty/chantey' is a bedpan, or an item kept under the bed in which to micturate during the night! (back in the day when the toilet was downstairs - or even outside the house altogether!) |
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27 Feb 23 - 04:05 AM (#4166238) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Gibb Sahib I stopped the above list at an arbitrary point. Will continue it a little further. Also should be sure to add in the recently mentioned: 1837 the chanting man of the crew Nordhoff 1856 chants, chanting, chanty-man Abbe manuscript 1859 Shantie, Shanties Nordhoff 1867 chants, chanting, chanting-man, chaunty-man (list cont.) 1884 As the stranger approaches the river, a strange chorus greets his ear: "Ro! ro! ro! ro! around the corner, Sally !" chant the voices; and another chorus strikes out with admirable effect,— Nancy Bohannan, she married a barber; Shave her away! shave her away!... The singers are black stevedores... 1884 When complete the noble steed is put on a box, covered with a rug, and on the evening of the last day of the month a man gets on to his back, and is drawn all round the ship by his shipmates, to the chanting of the following doggerel:— BURYING THE DEAD HORSE. 1885 Occasionally we hear some of the familiar chants, but “ Ranzo,” “ Haul Away, Joe,” and “Knock-a-man-down,” rarely animate the sailor in this period of maritime degeneracy. ...The sea-songs of Dibdin and others were really made for landsmen, and are different from the sailors' chants proper, which were of other material; like their working toggery, expressive and matter-of-fact. Prosody received but scant consideration, but the rhymes were a sort of rugged doggerel, with a refrain strongly accentuated, which served as a signal for all to pull away together. They were called Shanty songs, from the French word chanter, to sing, and many of them are familiar, having been incorporated in magazine articles and published in books. ...One of the sailors aboard the Montauk, who has been in the West Indies, furnishes the following example of a Shanty song, which is evidently the composition of some one possessed of a better ear for rhythm than the ordinary chanteur, as the measure is reasonably accurate. 1885 There was plenty for me to do without thinking of sentiment; yet, sweating and breathless as I was, I had time to feel sad when the shanty-man struck up, “Away down Rio.” The chorus goes: Then away, love, away, Away down Rio. O, fare you well, my pretty young girl, We're bound for the Rio Grande. We were giving her the weight of the topsails, and all the fellows were roaring hard at the shanty, when I saw what I wanted to see. 1886 Years ago, when the (little) Great Western was fighting an almost solitary battle of steam versus sail power upon the Atlantic, the old Black X sailing liners were notable for their musical crews; and capstan songs, as they were called, always came rolling aft from a liner's forecastle... 1887 These black rowers then started a chant, of a more Anglican than Gregorian tone, the music of which was prettier than the words, though this is not high praise, the words being: Oh, I wish I was in Mobile Bay— Sally, get round the corner; c.1887 Sailor Songs or ‘Chanties’ 1887 The boat, by the by, was that belonging to the Congo Free State factory, and the “Kruboys” who manned her, dressed in neat uniforms, pulled steadily and in good time, to the tune of “One more river to cross!” This air is known to them as “Stanley song” —they or their predecessors having learnt it from Bula Matadi himself, as a “chantee,” when hauling the steamers overland between Vivi and Isanghila. 1888 THERE are two kinds of sea-songs: those which are sung at concerts and in drawing-rooms, and sometimes, but not very often, at sea, and those which are never heard off shipboard. The latter have obtained in this age the name of 'chanty,' a term which I do not recollect ever having heard when I was following the life. It is obviously manufactured out of the French verb, and there is a 'longshore twang about it which cannot but sound disagreeably to the elderly nautical ear. 1888 Accustomed to the comparative independence and free life of a merchant-vessel, they look with scorn on the binding discipline and severe penalties of a man-o'-war, and laugh contemptuously as they watch the crew in uniform dress walk round the windlass, and weigh anchor like mechanical dummies:—...No hearty chanties there—no fine chorus ringing with feeling and sentiment, brought out with the sort of despairing wildness, which so often strikes neighbouring landsfolk with the deepest emotion. ...In it the heavier work is done by each man doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the “Chanty,” and here is the true singing of the deep sea—it is not recreation, it is an essential part of the work. ...A writer in the St. James's Gazette of December 6th, 1884, says: “The beau-ideal chanty-man has been relegated to the past. His death-knell was the shriek of the steam-whistle, and the thump of the engines. When he flourished British ships were manned by British seamen, and carried much stronger crews in proportion to their tonnage than their successors. In those days gipsywinches, patent windlasses and capstans, had no existence, and the heaving and hauling had to be performed by manual strength and labour; and to make the work 'go' lighter, the chanty-man chanted his strange lays, while the tars with hearty good-will joined in the refrains and choruses. ... ... Old tars tell us that the chanties are not what they were before steam became so universal: ...There are several kinds of chanty, though I believe, properly speaking, they should only be divided into two classes, namely, those sung at the capstan and those sung when hauling on a rope... [ETC, similarly] ...Much care was evidently given to “Lowlands” by the chanty-men. 1888 You may also still hear, sometimes as a forecastle song, but more often adapted, in time and metre, as a Chanty, a song which was popular in Captain Marryat's time: Now, farewell to you, ye fine Spanish ladies, ...It is song that puts spirit and “go,” into all their work, and it is often said at sea that a good “Chanty-man” is equal to an extra hand. The chanties, or working songs, are the real sea songs of sea life. It may be that they are going gradually out of use nowadays, when so much is done by steam; but, wherever the concentrated strength of human muscles is needed, even on a steamship, there is nothing like a chanty for evoking the utmost motive power. ...Chanties are of various kinds, adapted to the different varieties of work on shipboard, and without a chanty a crew is as listless as a gang of South Carolina darkies without their plantation songs. In truth, there is a good deal in common between the working songs of sailors and of niggers, and it is curious that many of the most popular sea-chanties are wholesale adaptations of plantation airs, and often of the words also. 1888 And, whether to accompany the "slip-slap" of the windlass as the anchor of the homeward-bound ship comes up from foreign soil or to inspirit all hands when, in a gale of wind, they mast-head the topsail yard or set to work at the halyards, the inevitable "shanty" is yelled out at the top of strong and vigorous lungs. Song lightens labor and has always been one of the sailor's most potent helpmeets. It is asserted that there is less singing among American sailors than with those of other nationalities, but be this as it may the American sailor has his own share of "shanties" and scraps of sentimental doggerel. 1889 Shantee or Chanty.—Whence comes the term "Shantee" or "Chanty," as applied to the songs of sailors? ...Possibly from the French verb chanter, to sing. 1889 In fact, there are two distinct sorts of sailors' songs, compositions of which only a very few indeed are sung by sailors, and compositions which nobody but sailors ever dream of singing. These last are well worthy of brief consideration. Some reckless modern has hurled the execrable term “chanty” at them, and the word, I am sorry to say, has stuck. I suppose the etymology of it must be sought in the French verb chanter. The “chanty,” as it is now the custom to call it—pronounced “shanty,” I believe, but I am very unwilling to have anything to do with it—is the modern generic appellation of the mariner's working song or chorus. ...A new song will sometimes be as good as a couple of new men to a ship's forecastle; hence in the merchant service sailors' songs, in the strict sense of the expression, are of incalculable value. To be sure in these days steam and patent machinery have diminished something of the obligation of these chants. ...I remember a lady writing to ask me to assist her in forming a collection of the sailors' working songs, and I could not help thinking that if by Jack's songs she meant the “chanties,” as they are now called, she would be starting on a quest which I might expect to hear in a very little time she had relinquished with a hot face and a shocked heart. 1889 For the first six weeks all the “shanty songs” known on the sea had been sung. 1890 Shanty… (Nautical), a song. It was a tough pull, as the shark was over fifteen feet in length, until the mate suggested a shanty, or sea-song, a corruption of the French word chanter, which a fo'cs'le Mario commenced, and the rest joined in vigorous chorus. 1890 For it is not so much the sense, but the sound principally that influences the men in their choice of a “Chanty." These songs are not without a certain beauty of their own, especially when sung to the accompaniment of the tempest and the boom of the flopping sail. They are usually the genuine compositions of sailors, and are frequently improvized in part, at least. The melodies are recitatives, which are sung by the best and usually the loudest voice, while the chorus is taken up by all, suiting the labor to the rythm. The are of various kinds, some being adapted to the monotonous clank of the Windlass or pump-brake, others suited to the quick pulls at topsail halliards or main sheet. ...Some captains say a good chanty is worth an extra hand. 1890 Yankee seamen (almost an extinct race now) were then noted for their capstan chants, 1890 ...and so the same “chantey,” as the windlass or halyard chorus is called, furnishes the music to as many various indignant remonstrances as Jack can find injuries to sing about. 1890 There is one kind of "fore-bitter," which I think is very much in vogue in the Merchant Service. I think it is called "Shanties," or some such name. It is, however, totally distinct from the old man-of-warsman “fore-bitter." The one I made allusion to was essentially one belonging to the Royal Navy at that time. I don't think I know of any published "fore-bitter," either in words or tune. 1892 However, I will not here assert that the Americans have taught us any particular lesson in the direction of forecastle fare. They invented the double topsail yards ; they invented the “chanty,” the inspiring choruses of the windlass and the capstan, such hurricane airs as “Across the Western Ocean,” “ Run, Let the Bulljine Run!” “ Shanadoah,” “ Old Stormy,” “ Bully in the Alley,” “ Cheerily, Men !” and scores besides; 1892 A year later Dr. Nekle brought to camp a shanty song of more than usual merit, "Rolling Down from Old Mohee," which has since been forgotten, though deserving of preservation. 1892 The loading was done by the canoeists, all hands turning to, the boats and heavy stuff going aboard to the good old shanty, "Heave away, my bully boys..." 1893 The unavoidable flour-barrels came head foremost along a wooden slide this time and a darky on the boat sang an incessant line, "Somebody told me so," as a warning to the men below that another and another barrel was coming. They are fond of chanting at their work, and they give vent to whatever comes into their heads, and then repeat it thousands of times, perhaps. It is not always a pretty sentence, but every such refrain serves to time their movements. "O Lord God! you know you done wrong," I have heard a negro say with each bag that was handed to him to lift upon a pile. "Been a slave all yo' days; you 'ain't got a penny saved," was another refrain: and still another, chanted incessantly, was: "Who's been here since I's been gone? Big buck nigger with a derby on." ...These roustabouts…Though they chant at their work, I seldom saw them laugh or heard them sing a song, or knew one of them to dance during the voyage. 1893 We furled the sails, and then rigged the tackles to hoist the longboat, as she was large and heavy. When everything was ready, the mate sang out, 'Hoist away!" As the tackles were drawn taut, the men called to Stanwood: "Give a shanter, old boy ! " And he sang the following hoisting song, which was chorused by the men: 1893 It was now to be forced into the ship, in the process of stowing by the stevedores, with very powerful jackscrews, each operated by a gang of four men, one of them the “shantier,” as he was called, from the French word chanteur, a vocalist. 1894 IT WAS the intention to give in this edition of "Maritime Melodies" a number of chanties, but without the music, the action and the very spirit of the sea, words are feeble. The "Chanty," a corruption of the French verb to sing, came from New Orleans, where the French darkies made up songs to suit the occasion as they loaded the Yankee clipper ships with cotton. The Yankee sailor in turn "caught on" and calling their songs "Shanties," made rhymes and fitted them to music that assisted in heaving anchor, setting and furling sails, pumping out the ship, etc. And now the "motif" is explained. ...With the ship, the American sailor has also disappeared. But the Shanty remains. Listen. The fine 100 AI British ship California, a good ship with a good name, but flying the flag of Great Britain, instead of the Stars and Stripes, officered and manned by lusty Britons, good fellows all, but unfortunate in not being born here: The fine ship California is leaving the State for w hich she is named, and on the order to heave up anchor, the Chanty man starts in: 1894 What a picture they made as they swung together at the topsail halyards, their eyes gleaming, with open, thirsty mouths shouting the old shantie, 'Whis—ky John — nie. ...As we pump, the chantie (pronounced shanty) man trolls out some old sea song, and after each line all hands join in the refrain. Some of our men have a large stock of these songs. ...Think of this very slowly chanted, in time to the clank of the pump, ...When I heard an unfamiliar song being chanted this afternoon, I went forward and found the men hauling on two lines that led down to the focsle-hatch...As the hatch is very steep, they had some difficulty in hauling up the horse and its rider properly and in time to the chant. ...Round the deck they went singing 'The Old Horse,' chanting the time-honoured song with all solemnity, making the old horse plunge at times, for they had to pull it along the deck in short jerks to keep time to the tune. ...Under the foreyard the procession halted, and a running bowline was dropped over the horse's head, and Braidy got off, and to a second mournful chant it was hauled up to the yard's-arm. ...Now a chantie is started as the crew haul on the main topsail halyards. ...Chantie man: Ran-zo was a tailor, 1894 As the sailors’ chanties were used to lighten the labor of hauling and heaving before the days of the steam winch and the patent capstan, so were the harvesters’ songs required to help the reapers… 1894 The galley fires were started and coffee was made and served out, reinforced by cigars and cigarrettes from the wine mess stores. The men kept at their work singing cheerily a number of 'Shantee' songs, 1895 The reader said that "Sailors' Chanties" belonged to a time now no more...The "Chanty-man," the chorister of the old packet ship, has left no successors. In the place of rousing "pulling songs" we now hear the rattle of the steam-winch, and the steamwinch or pump give us the rattle of cog-wheels or the hiss of steam instead of the wild choruses of other days. 1895 Charteris quotes Henry Ward Beecher as relating how "many years after his first voyage across the Atlantic, he heard some sailors in a Brooklyn dock singing the same old 'chanty song' that he had heard when ill at sea, and that the mere listening to it produced the creepy feeling of seasickness;" 1896 Sailors' shanties—probably a corruption of chanting—or hauling choruses, not songs, are generally improvised by the “shantie man” who gives them out. The choruses are old and well known to all sailors, but between each pull and chorus the “ shantie man” has to improvise the next line, or compose the “shantie” as he sings it. 1896 The greyness had eaten into us, and the clank of the pump brakes, watch in, watch out, took the place of the cheery, shanty song. 1896 'Bunting topsils' is accompanied by a wild chant, the origin of which is lost in obscurity. ...When in roughest weather storm-stay-sails are hoisted, and short, heavy pulls are needed, they are given to the following curious and very ancient chantie... 1897 As soon as it was dark the fun began. One of the crew dressed as a jockey mounted the horse, and the two were pushed along the main deck in little jerks, followed by the whole crew in a long procession, singing the following doggrel in a slow chanting fashion: 1898 Shanty Songs. Songs sung by sailors at work, to ensure united action. They are in sets, each of which has a different cadence adapted to the work in hand. Thus, in sheeting topsails, weighing anchor, etc., one of the most popular of the shanty songs runs thus :— ...(French, chanter, to sing; a sing-song.) 1898 He was a favourite amongst the seamen on account of his simplicity and good nature, and also because he had a fund of French songs, some of which the rough fellows had turned into chantys or hauling choruses,... 1898 The hauling-song began something like this: "Way-ho!" (jerk), "Way-ho-hu!" (jerk), "O-le-obo-ho!" (jerk), increasing in sound, volume, and power as it progressed; then running into a wordless chant,—a vowel song,—which, with a pulling emphasis, and a melody as weird as a Gaelic psalm-tune, rose and fell like the song of the shrouds when the wind pipes strong. ...The gangway was withdrawn, the lines cast off, the order given to "Heave away on your capstan!" and we hauled slowly through the gates to the tune of the favorite outward-bound chantey: 1898 ... besides, he did not have a “shanteeman," a necessity in a boat of negroes but a man who will not paddle with any unnecessary force. 1899 The work is always accompanied by a song called a "shantey" (probably from the French word chanter, to sing). ...Some of the “shanteys" are very musical, but the words are generally absurd. ...The "shanteyman," however, drawled out clear enough, in spite of the howling of the wind— 1899 Streaming with sweat, throwing their bodies about in sheer wantonness of exuberant strength as they hoisted the stuff out of the hold, they sometimes grew so excited by the improvisations of the "chantey man," who sat on the corner of the hatch solely employed in leading the singing, that often, while for a minute awaiting the next hoist, they would fling themselves into fantastic contortions, keeping time to the music. ...Then, to a grunting chantey, the screw was extended to its full length, and another bale inserted. 1899 "'Old on, ye bloody Yank! Hif ye don't like me bloody chanty, then just ye sing us a bloody chanty as ye do like." 1900 Much of the picturesqueness of the old steamboat life on the Mississippi was provided by the negro roustabouts. Their quaint songs and chanties and their good-natured pranks did much to enliven a journey which might otherwise have become monotonous. 1900 Aboardship these songs are known by the name of "chanties"—which is, in all probability, either a sailor's pluralising of our word "chant," or a corruption of the French "chanson." ..."A song, boys, a song! Come, isn't there a 'chanty-man' in the crowd?" In response a negro—he being of a livelier temperament than his white shipmates, despite the fitting melancholy air of his farewell—begins:— We're on the plains of Mexico... 1900 continues |
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27 Feb 23 - 05:50 AM (#4166240) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Shaw Bedpan? In our house it was a potty, or, if you wanted to be posh, a pot de nuit, or just "the po." Always a lovely porcelain thing with a nice handle. You obviously had to get out of bed. I was glad of it because our outside toilet was infested with huge tarantulas lurking menacingly behind the long pipe which came down from the very high-up cistern. In my febrile childish imagination, of course. The only way you could flush that lav was to grab the chain and "take it by surprise." Sorry - back to the fray... |
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01 Jul 23 - 08:50 PM (#4175953) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch Found an early spelling. Musical but not nautical: “Chanson Composée à Langres contre les habitants de Chaumont en Bassigny. ...Ay Chaumont, ay la saint Jean Lay musique ç'ay du pien chant. Stu, que fait la basse, est obligey Pou grossi sa veix. Et pou mieux chantey To lé jo d' s'alley baigney. GLOSSAIRE Chantey. –– Chanter.” [Collection des Poètes de Champagne Antérieurs au 16. Siècle, Vols.14-15, 1851] [Recherches sur l'histoire du Langage et des Patois de Champagne, Vol.14, Tarbe, 1851] Anybody here fluent in patois de Champagne? |
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03 Jul 23 - 12:19 PM (#4176040) Subject: RE: Shanty or Chantey? From: Steve Gardham One obvious observation from Gibb's last February list of references must surely be, whilst in my mind the derivation of chanty is simple and obvious, by the time these comments were being expressed the English word 'chant' with the hard 'ch' is seen as quite separate from 'chanty' pronounced 'sh'. Those who are using the word 'chant' were describing in their minds something with barely a tune but repeated phrases, comparable with perhaps a 'Gregorian chant' and when recognising an actual regular tune being used the description was 'song' or 'chanty'. At least worth some discussion for those unsure. If nothing else we can perhaps agree that 'shanty' is simply a phonetic spelling of 'chanty'/'chantey' or am I wrong? |
