The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties, by
Richard Runciman Terry

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Title: The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties

Author: Richard Runciman Terry

Contributor: Sir Walter Runciman

Release Date: March 8, 2007 [EBook #20774]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Shanty Book

Part I

Sailor Shanties

(Curwen Edition 6308)

Collected and Edited, with Pianoforte Accompaniment, by RICHARD
RUNCIMAN TERRY, with a Foreword by SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart.

LONDON

J. Curwen & Sons Ltd., 24 Berners Street, W. 1

Copyright, 1921, by J. Curwen & Sons Ltd.

FOREWORD

By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN

It is sometimes difficult for old sailors like myself to realize that
these fine shanty tunes--so fascinating to the musician, and which no
sailor can hear without emotion--died out with the sailing vessel, and
now belong to a chapter of maritime history that is definitely closed.
They will never more be heard on the face of the waters, but it is
well that they should be preserved with reverent care, as befits a
legacy from the generation of seamen that came to an end with the
stately vessels they manned with such skill and resource.

In speech, the old-time 'shellback' was notoriously reticent--almost
inarticulate; but in song he found self-expression, and all the
romance and poetry of the sea are breathed into his shanties, where
simple childlike sentimentality alternates with the Rabelaisian humour
of the grown man. Whatever landsmen may think about shanty words--with
their cheerful inconsequence, or light-hearted coarseness--there can
be no two opinions about the tunes, which, as folk-music, are a
national asset.

I know, of course, that several shanty collections are in the market,
but as a sailor I am bound to say that only one--Capt. W.B. Whall's
'Sea Songs, Ships, and Shanties'