ntil a few years before the disappearance of the
sailing ship. I do not assert that the negroid derivation is
conclusive, but that from (_un_) _chante_ will not bear serious
inspection.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The material under this head is very scanty. Nothing of any
consequence was written before the eighties, when W.L. Alden, in
_Harper's Magazine_, and James Runciman, in the _St. James's Gazette_
and other papers, wrote articles on the subject with musical
quotations. Since then several collections have appeared:

1887. _Sailors' Songs or Chanties_, the words by Frederick
J. Davis, R.N.R., the music composed and arranged upon
traditional sailor airs by Ferris Tozer, Mus. D. Oxon.

1888. _The Music of the Waters_, by Laura Alexandrine Smith.

1910 and 1912. _Sea Songs, Ships, and Shanties_, by Capt.
W.B. Whall.

1912. _Songs of Sea Labour_, by Frank T. Bullen and W.F.
Arnold.

1914. _English Folk Chanteys_ with Pianoforte Accompaniment,
collected by Cecil J. Sharp.

Of all these collections Capt. Whall's is the only one which a sailor
could accept as authoritative. Capt. Whall unfortunately only gives
the twenty-eight shanties which he himself learnt at sea. But to any
one who has heard them sung aboard the old sailing ships, his versions
ring true, and have a bite and a snap that is lacking in those
published by mere collectors.

Davis and Tozer's book has had a great vogue, as it was for many years
the only one on the market. But the statement that the music is
'composed and arranged on traditional sailor airs' rules it out of
court in the eyes of seamen, since (_a_) a sailor song is not a
shanty, and (_b_) to 'compose and arrange on traditional airs' is to
destroy the traditional form.

Miss Smith's book is a thick volume into which was tumbled
indiscriminately and uncritically a collection of all sorts of tunes
from all sorts of countries which had any connection with seas, lakes,
rivers, or their geographical equivalents. Scientific folk-song
collecting was not understood in those days, and consequently all was
fish that came to the authoress's net. Sailor shanties and landsmen's
nautical effusions were jumbled together higgledy-piggledy, along with
'Full Fathom Five' and the 'Eton Boating Song.' But this lack of
discrimination, pardonable in those days, was not so serious as the
inability to write the tunes down correctly. So long as they were
copied fr