om other song-books they were not so bad, but when it came to
taking them down from the seamen's singing the results were
deplorable. Had the authoress been able to give us correct versions of
the shanties her collection would have been a valuable one. The book
contains altogether about thirty-two shanties collected from sailors
in the Tyne seaports. Since both Miss Smith and myself hail from
Newcastle, her 'hunting ground' for shanties was also mine, and I am
consequently in a position to assess the importance or unimportance of
her work. I may, therefore, say that although hardly a single shanty
is noted down correctly, I can see clearly--having myself noted the
same tunes in the same district--what she intended to convey, and
furthermore can vouch for the accuracy of some of the words which were
common to north country sailors, and which have not appeared in other
collections.

If I have been obliged to criticize Miss Smith's book it is not
because I wish to disparage a well-intentioned effort, but because I
constantly hear _The Music of the Waters_ quoted as an authoritative
work on sailor shanties; and since the shanties in it were all
collected in the district where I spent boyhood and youth, I am
familiar with all of them, and can state definitely that they are in
no sense authoritative. I should like, however, to pay my tribute of
respect to Miss Smith's industry, and to her enterprise in calling
attention to tunes that then seemed in a fair way to disappear.

Bullen and Arnold's book ought to have been a valuable contribution to
shanty literature, as Bullen certainly knew his shanties, and used to
sing them capitally. Unfortunately his musical collaborator does not
appear to have been gifted with the faculty of taking down authentic
versions from his singing. He seems to have had difficulty in
differentiating between long measured notes and unmeasured pauses;
between the respective meanings of three-four and six-eight time;
between modal and modern tunes; and between the cases where irregular
barring was or was not required. Apart from the amateur nature of the
harmonies, the book exhibits such strange unacquaintance with the
rudiments of musical notation as the following (p. 25):

[Music illustration]

A few other collections deserve mention:

1912. _The Esperance Morris Book_, Part II (Curwen Edition
8571), contains five shanties collected and arranged by
Clive Carey.

1914. _Shant