The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128220   Message #3467760
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
17-Jan-13 - 06:06 PM
Thread Name: The Advent and Development of Chanties
Subject: RE: The Advent and Development of Chanties
Fauset, Arthur Huff. 1931. Folklore from Nova Scotia. New York: The American Folk-lore Society.

This contains a couple stevedores' songs that seem to have been still current in the 1920s, Nova Scotia.

Fauset worked in the field with Elsie Clews Parsons.

Introduction dated 1925. States that the majority of material came from people with Black ancestry. Though popular perception of Americans might be otherwise, in Nova Scotia "the frequency with which one encounters the Negro is not unlike similar experiences in states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania." (pg vii)

Two chanty items, text only. Both were collected by Parsons. Pg. 119.

[BLOW BOYS BLOW] (mis-titled) looks like it might be similar to one of the Caribbean forms in the Lomax recordings. That is just my impression based on the phrasing of the refrain.
//
BLOW THE MAN DOWN

Yankee ship
Coming down the river
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!

How do you know
She's a Yankee Clipper.
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!

Knock him down
With a marlin clipper,
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!

The shipper's [sic] got your grog,
In an old hand dipper,
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!

The cook is a Swede,
And you want yer supper,
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!

The mate's arm,
Is just like a hammer,
Blow boys!
Bully boys blow!
//
The above was sung by Basil Robinson, 28, a longshoreman in Yarmouth. Sailor in West Indies, Atlantic Coast. "His parents are colored."

[ROLL THE WOODPILE DOWN]
//
HOLD THE WOOD PILE DOWN

Steamboat comin round the bend,
'Way down in Georgia
Loaded down with colored men,
Hold the woodpile down.
//

This was sung by Clarence Marie, 25, also a longshoreman in Yarmouth. Black man.