LL-L "History" 2010.07.08 (04) [EN]

Fri Jul 9 03:23:32 UTC 2010

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 08 July 2010 - Volume 04*
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From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>

Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2010.07.07 (05) [DE-NDS]

Hmm ... Speaking of shanties.

:-)

Eine Seefahrt die ist lustig / Eine Seefahrt, die ist schön.

Lemme tell you that in the times when *real* shanties were sung,
*keine*Seefahrt was either 'lustig' or 'schön'. I mean it.

First of all, men who went to sea, were not -- by the very fact that they
did --, well, they were not ... er ... very imaginative, to put it mildly,
among other things (yours truly included, for that matter).

Secondly, the degrading conditions they lived and worked under at the time,
just could not inspire anything close to being printable.

All the chanties, including this:

Way hay, up she rises,

Early in the morning!

-- were created and sung by romantic poets performers (the type of Joseph
Conrad -- who happened to be a rotten captain, for that matter, you know
...).

Yes, *'rises.'* (that’s what connects my rant with the subject). Ostensibly,
this is the 'work song' believed to be sung by seamen at the handspikes
round the capstan as they winched her to the anchor against the wind at the
beginning of their next lustige Seefahrt. Lustige, really? I doubt it. The
job was really done under a terrible hangover after the night before.
Incidentally, the first lines of the shanty I quoted read:

What will we do with the drunken sailor,
What will we do with the drunken sailor,

What will we do with the drunken sailor

Early in the morning?

You can hear this fancy stuff here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGyPuey-1Jw

Let me assure you: The tempo is a bit, he-he, too brisk for a bunch of
half-drunk hung over seamen 'walking out' a five-mast bark at anchor early
in morning.

You might have well seen the so-called apache dances in French or
French-style cabarets.
But did *real *apaches dance? Or, if they did, did they exactly the way you
see in the cabarets?
Right.
Did real seamen sing at the capstan?
They did.
What?

The defence calls Mr. Jan de Hartog, the great Dutch American novelist:

"The glory of the square-rigged ship has been immortalised by [...] artists
with beards singing sea-shanties in a jersey, accompanying themselves on the
Spanish guitar. [...]

I sailed under canvas as a boy, and in my memory the stalwart salts with the
hearts of oak were moronic bipeds dangling in the branches of artificial
trees in constant peril of their lives. The sea-chanties were ditties they
were forced to sing by foreheadless bosuns, brandishing marline-spikes to
mark time while pulling the ropes. I never heard it sung that my mother had
a mermaid’s tail,*nor did I hear anybody wonder what to do with the drunken
sailor*. The chanties I heard were either descriptions of the cook’s
anatomy, or based on the fact that old captains have young wives." (*A
Sailor's Life*, 1956).

I rest my case.

Vlad Lee
Tokyo, Japan/Moscow, Russia

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