Hi Chanteyranger,

I have gotten the impression that Paddy Doyle's Boots really was the bunting chantey par excellence back in the day. Maybe for this reason (the distinctive task), it was to feature very distinctly in the texts of those people who ended up writing about chanteys...and it was so well-preserved that it escaped the ghetto of "miscellaneous sing-outs."

The authors who cite Royal Artillery Man and Corn Broom (all of them, I believe?) discuss it as for sweating up. No reason to necessarily assume it was limited to that task. However, I believe that the Mystic Seaport demonstration program, seeing the utility of them and perhaps looking for variety, adopted them for bunting chanteys...especially because of the dearth of bunting chanteys on record, and because it is a task they demonstrate often. This is prob. how Rev learned them. Someone can perhaps confirm.

Thanks for reminding me of another clip: Rev Carr can be heard leading his version of Royal Artillery Man in the following clip...though it takes a slight bit of work to find. It's at approx. 15:30 minutes in, after John Kanaka. [The crew was all shanghaied here last minute, and we weren't all sure what we were doing necessarily :) ]   The tune, I believe, is the oral version developed in the Mystic school, which might be compared to my straight-outta-Hugill's-text version, above.

RAM

Gibb