No Charley, George Herbert of West Geelong, outlived Stan by a few years but not many. He too was a singer, musician (concertina, alto uke & harmonica) & shanteyman.

Funny, lately I've been thinking more about the vulgarity of the old sailors. "They never get it right', Stan said. 'We were much more filthy-minded than they imagine."

"The topic rose again after the club closed at John Swift's home where Stan was staying. Eventually we prevailed on him to sing us an example. He launched into 'Bollocky Bill the Sailor' but rapidly faded into silence, saying, 'It's no good. I wasn't brought up to sing filth in front of ladies, like you young buggers!"


The statements above back up what I'm begining to think which is that these sailors weren't near as vulgar as they thought they were. I do believe they were very aware of their surroundings & were quite restricted to there victorian senseabilities as to where they would sing them. On my tapes of & from George Herbert & with my personal experiences with him, he thought he to was crass. Knowing him I never found him to be either crass or vulgar though I'm sure had he had been 60 or 70 yrs younger, out 5000 mile from port & 6 months away from seeing land he'd probably would've been a bit more than I'd ever seen or heard him. I was at a party with him down in the hold of the brig Carthiginian (Lahina, Maui 1979) he started to sing a song but the chorus he just left off as "you can go aft & tell Van Hope (an actuall skipper at the party from Port Townsend, Wa) the skipper he can tra la la la la la la". There were females at the party so he wouldn't sing those lines. Later he sent me a tape of the same song & again the line of the chorus went "You can go aft & tell the skipper he can shove this ta la la la la" (it should've gone "this ship right up his ass". Later in the tape he states that this song should never be sung in mixed company. He sang the lines "she was round in the counter & bluff in the bow" & he then stops to chuckle like a little kid that's just said something that shouldn't been said,,,, & then tells me (still on tape) "that means a big bum & big boobs" & chuckles again. He sang another song, before preceding he's says that it's a filthy song & then says "well I a crass man, so" & the song was no more crass than one would hear today, well maybe a little but not at all what I expected. Later at the same prty he waited untill the room was clear of women before he told this story, which he thought vulgar. He said he was on his way home to England & he han't been there for many years. While there he said he was going to visit the grave of the 1st mate that had kicked him in the head when he (George) was a cabinboy. First thing he was gonna do was pour a full bottle of rum all over the mate's grave (here I'm waiting to hear about some unheard of sailors's rites of passing).....after he drank the contents. I can see his side about not wanting to maybe embrass himself at his age in front of some women or maybe his wife. Of course his wife took no offence at any of the langauge from the rest of the crowd, neither did any of the women present & I think some of the women were over doing it a bit with the racy language to make him feel comfortable so's he'd be able to speak more freely in front of them. So my feeling lately was that the "vulgar" & "racy" shanties that we're looking for weren't as common as we'd like to believe. I don't say that they weren't sung, I'm just starting to believe that they weren't as common as we think that they were. And they porbably wouldn't find them near as much fun to sing as we would, had we had any more of them. Still I'd like to hear them being sung.

Barry

   



Barry