TomB, I understand what you mean, and I agree. Just brainstorming here, but I am suggesting, in addition, is that this issue was qualitatively different by the 1920s, when shanties had become a hot/popular item...and also contentious.

Part of the mix-up comes in the attempt to present history along with performance. The issue you're talking about -- the need for a full and satisfying set of verses -- applies to the need of performing. Sharp wasn't concerned with creating texts for performance. (Please don't misunderstand this to mean I think you shouldn't perform them -- just the opposite!) OK, maybe he *was,* sometimes, interested in performance -- I am no expert on all of Sharp's activities, and I'm mainly speaking about this specific case. What is mean is that, basically, he was collecting folklore for study. His English Folk-Chanteys collection was a weird animal in that it was meant to facilitate performance...and yet as I said, he created his versions in a way that based in direct observation. The verses he included to beef up the presentation all came from his field informants.

Though the need for a performance-ready version may be the same, I think there is a qualitative difference between this method and say, Colcord reading Masefield, taking his version without much criticism, and mixing it with her own. Consider, too, that Sharp would have admitted, "Look, I am no sailor -- I don't know this stuff. I can only present what I hear." Whereas a Colcord or Terry let's us feel "Look at my family nautical history and be impressed by my experiences with these sailors...Now, believe what I say!"

Davis & Tozer's book was clearly a song-book, for performance. It doesn't inspire lot's of confidence as history, and yet it wasn't trying to be. LA Smith's was an academic (though often poorly done) study -- not for performance. And the many early articles were for study, not performance. Again what I am saying is that I think there had been a more clear distinction of what was for performance and what was study. The "parlour" singers of shanties in the early 20th century were happy to sing without trying to study, without presenting history.

It seems like it was these folk's performances that were laughed at and inspired the 1920s writers to present their collections in a way that was wrapped up in the semblance of history. Problem was, they didn't do a great job. Instead of working with historical documents or doing rigorous fieldwork, they grabbed all the prior articles/books about shanties, read them, and basically rehashed their content with a bit of themselves mixed in.

Earlier writers, perhaps, simply didn't have all the verses to pick from, from which to make 'complete' sets. Which of the early authors really gave long sets? Well, Davis did, but he clearly made up new verses for publication. And then Masefield did. You guys probably know I have a chip on my shoulder against Masefield, because 1) Where does he get all these verses from when others are not writing many? 2) His presentation confounds fancy with anything useful he may have known. Perhaps due to this very factor -- the presence of "full" texts, it was Davis and Masefield's books that got most rehashed by other writers up to and into the 1920s. People weren't borrowing from Sharp or Bullen.

So all of a sudden you have all these books in the 1920s that have borrowed from the go-to collections, Davis' and Masefield's. They reconfigure the material, add their own insight when and if they can, and *their* books, full of "complete sets" become the new go-to books. They appeal to later readers in a way that the earlier collections can't, in that they present little blurbs of quasi-history book-ending the songs.