e
minor key. There was also the tendency on the part of the modern
sailor to turn his minor key into a major one. I sometimes find
sailors singing in the major, nowadays, tunes which the very old men
of my boyhood used to sing in the minor. A case in point is 'Haul
away, Joe,' No. 28. Miss Smith is correct in giving it in the minor
form which once obtained on the Tyne, and I am inclined to hazard the
opinion that that was the original form and not, as now, the
following:

[Music illustration:

Way, haul away,
We'll haul away the bowlin'.
Way, haul away,
We'll haul away, Joe.]

In later times I have also heard 'The Drunken Sailor' (a distinctly
modal tune) sung in the major as follows:

[Music illustration:

What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor? etc.]

I have generally found that these perversions of the tunes are due to
sailors who took to the sea as young men in the last days of the
sailing ship, and consequently did not imbibe to the full the old
traditions. With the intolerance of youth they assumed that the modal
turn given to a shanty by the older sailor was the mark of ignorance,
since it did not square with their ideas of a major or minor key. This
experience is common to all folk-tune collectors.

Other characteristics, for example: (_a_) different words to the same
melody; (_b_) different melodies to the same or similar words, need
not be enlarged upon here, as they will be self-evident when a
definitive collection is published.

Of the usual troubles incidental to folk-song collecting it is
unnecessary to speak. But the collection of shanties involves
difficulties of a special kind. In taking down a folk-song from a
rustic, one's chief difficulty is surmounted when one has broken down
his shyness and induced him to sing. There is nothing for him to do
then but get on with the song. Shanties, however, being labour songs,
one is 'up against' the strong psychological connection between the
song and its manual acts. Two illustrations will explain what I mean.

A friend of mine who lives in Kerry wished a collector to hear some of
the traditional keening, and an old woman with the reputation of being
the best keener in the district, when brought to the house to sing the
funeral chants, made several attempts and then replied in a distressed
manner: 'I can't do it; there's no body,' This did not mean that she
was unwilling to k