Learning the shanties in Hugill's collection has really been a ...erm... learning experience for me, expecially for the fact that I think actually being *forced* to perform them (and thus get a practical sense of them) occasionally brings some insight that might occur if just looking at the texts. All of us here have performed chanties, and I think we have all had that experience to some extent. Anyways, I had finished learning all the English-language songs (the end was mostly dregs). Lately I've felt a bit burnt out, and one thing I realized is that I was not having a steady diet of the chanties keeping me going as it had for the last 2 1/2 years. But though I thought I'd need lots of help covering the non-English ones, and especially daunted by the idea of (as is my policy) memorizing them, have been trying some out.

I am rambling here... but I am getting to the point that which is that learning the non-English chanties has broadened my horizons with respect also to what we are doing in this thread. I am wondering what these of linguistic chanty "traditions" and sources can tell us about what was going on.

I posted a query about Norwegian shanties here:
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=134867#3071130

What is blowing my mind is that these "sjömandsviser" (sailor songs, I suppose) are from the late 1830s/early 40s. SOme form of maritime worksongs must have been well known by them. True, maybe they were mainly capstan songs, and not necessarily "chanties." But there must have been enough of a repertoire..or maybe a pretty standard form?...so that a Norwegian poet would treat them as a generic genre (!) within which to compose. I think the inspiration was English songs, but there may have been Norwegian songs, too. I only wonder what more the Norwegian (and other language) songs can tell us about what was going on.

The songs by Wergeland have a "Sing, Sally-o!" chorus. Almost all have this. Was he just supplying a generic chorus, with the assumption that one could fit the solo couplets to any chanty "framework"? Or is that that, mainly, "Sing Sally O" was just THE song, and people made endless variations on it. Are some of these halyard chanties? Were the "original" shanties really ribald, as Hugill claims, such that Wergeland had to clean them up? If so, might we find more details somewhere about the ribald originals, which would have formed a significant body?

I am vaguely aware, FWIW, that the written language in Wergeland's time was basically what's now thought of as Danish. This collection gives no explanation of the sailor songs. I wonder what might happen if we open up our literature searches to these languages.

Anyway, it's late and I am just vamping here...