Scratch that! The passage in my last post seems to have been developed from a still earlier comment on Newcastle capstan song.

1818         Ford, James. "Suffolk Provincial Songs, Ditties, Healths and Proverbs." In _The Suffolk Garland: or, A Collection of Poems, Songs, Tales, Ballads, Sonnets, and Elegies, Legendary and Romantic, Historical and Descriptive, Relative to that County; And Illustrative of its Scenery, Places, Biography, Manners, Habits and Customs._ Ipswich: John Raw. Pp. 395-404.

//
Songs of trades, or songs of the people, are of very remote antiquity. The Grecians, says D'Israeli in his entertaining work, the "Curiosities of Literature," had songs appropriated to the various trades. There was a song for the corn-grinders; another for the workers in wool; another for the weavers. The reapers had their carol; the herdsmen had a song, which an ox-driver of Sicily had composed; the kneuders, and the bakers, and the galley-rowers, were not without their chaunt. We have ourselves a song of the weavers, which Ritson has preserved in his "Ancient Songs;" and it may be found in the popular chap-book of "the Life of "Jack of Newberry;" and the songs of anglers, of old Isaac Walton, and Charles Cotton, still retain their freshness. Dr. Johnson is the only writer I recollect who has noticed something of this nature which he observed in the Highlands. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest song, in which all their voices were united. They accompany every action which can be done in equal time with an appropriate strain, which has, they say, not much meaning, but its effects are regularity and cheerfulness, There is an oar song used by the Hebrideans, and our sailors at Newcastle, in heaving their anchors, &c. use a song of this kind.
//

A song? A single song? Or does he mean a *class* of song? Either way, it sounds limited. But interesting!