Thanks, Charley, for the suggestion about Hugill. I found it strange that there doesn't seem to be what I would call a "coherent" account of his time at sea, *that I have come across*. I don't have his SAILORTOWN, and I suspected that this might be the best source. But you would think someone might have summed it up. I will leave that job to somebody else.

Here's the beginning of my last category, on "Sources".

"Sally Brown" Part 9 (a)

This final category of multiple attestation has to do with the issue of "sources" for a particular chanty that come from places other than the world of sea chanties. Here I am thinking about the following:

The shape/form of the song
The tune or tunes used by the song
The lyrics that become attached to the song
Actual songs that may have served either as models or as actual sources for the chanty

With regard to the first, Gibb has called "Sally Brown" one of those African American work songs that take the shape of "Call-response-call-response form (with the 2 "pull points" per response)". Hugill says that it has the shape of a "hauling" song, and we know that it was used as a halyards song, and for pulling. It was also used at the capstan, the windlass, and pumps, and unloading cargo. And if the song noted by Moses Curtis in 1830 on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina is a version or perhaps even an antecedent of "Sally Brown", then it was also used for rowing. So the form of "Sally Brown" was adaptable, and this may be one of the reasons for its popularity and its widespread survival over the last two hundred years or so.

The basic tune of "Sally Brown" apart from it's variants, seems to have remained fairly stable throughout its history. I am no musicologist and can't even read music notation so I will have to leave this area to someone more qualified. The differences that I can see in the various notations seem to fall within what one might normally expect with the actual usage of such a song. I would say that the song is characterized musically by its first chorus "Way, hey, roll and go!", and it often took this as its title.

In listening to contemporary renditions of this song, it seems to lend itself rather easily to "celtic" interpretations. This might suggest that the tune originally came from Irish or British sources. However, for me this mainly shows up in the second refrain, and I think that it gets elaborated somewhat in a "celtic" direction sometimes and that it's not really possible to go backwards with this reasoning. But this song may be a candidate for one of those Afro-American/Irish combinations. One could speculate that the elements of the tune arrived one day in Jamaica and was rounded out there with the unforgettable images of "Sally Brown" herself.

We have an abundance of different lyrics for this song. And here we enter into a murky and difficult area of discussion. I would like to refer you first of all to Gibb's comments on his Youtube version of "Sally Brown" for an introduction to this issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVUn_v3jIZA

It seems that at some point in the history of the use of "Sally Brown", the issue of "political correctness" entered the picture. What is interesting to me is to try to figure out when that might have happened, or perhaps more accurately, how often! When I was going through my collection of chanty CDs, I was surprised to find that I had very few recordings of "Sally Brown". I wondered why this might be the case. She just doesn't show up on a lot of the more standard or popular collections. I suspect that even though there are politically correct historical versions of this song available in the literature, that chanty singers may have felt some discomfort about singing this song. In today's terms, it is racist, sexist, and exploits women as prostitutes. And it does this by combining all of these things into the inimitable image of "Sally Brown". And then some versions throw in her daughter for good measure! The language is definitely 19th century and blunt. One might argue that it is hard to sing this song in any kind of "authentic" fashion without falling into a nest of minefields.

But, is this just a contemporary problem? In some versions, "Sally" is a white girl with blue eyes from New York City. Was there a tendency in the latter part of the 19th century to move this song away from its roots, and white-wash it? Or is this merely a contemporary concern. I think that this part of the discussion may be for another time or even another thread. I suppose if one could actually document a "white-washing shift" over the course of the 19th century, one might, using Marrayt's version as a benchmark, be able to put different sets of lyrics into different time categories. However, I think this won't work, because the "Sally Brown was a bright mullato" version remained popular alongside of other versions to the very end of the days of sail, and continues to be popular today. As has been argued by others previously, it is very hard to determine very much about the history of a chanty from its lyrics.