Passed down in the oral tradition and sung traditionally as working songs, sea shanties tell the human stories of life at sea: hard graft, battling the elements, the loss of ships or pining for a lady on shore. Its pages decorated with hand-drawn or wood-cut illustrations from celebrated artist Jonny Hannah, Sailor Song addresses the current modern revival of sea shanties, and seeks to celebrate and to explore the historical, musical and social history of the traditional sea song through 40 beautiful, mournful, haunting and uplifting shanties. Acclaimed shanty devotee Gerry Smyth presents the background to each one alongside musical notation. The lyrics are elaborated with explanations of terminology, context including historical facts and accounts of life at sea, and the characters, both fictional and non-fictional, that appear in the songs from the great age of sail to the last days of square-rig. Where appropriate, a direct digital link is made to a shanty recording in the British Library Sound Archive.

Newfoundland songs are diverse in origin. Vast numbers of them come from the British Isles, especially from England and Ireland; many are composed in Newfoundland, usually on English or Irish models; a lesser number of American, Canadian, and French songs are current. The ballads to be found in the Child collection are probably the oldest now sung. Then there are many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century broadside ballads, particularly English, and many nineteenth-century compositions. Such are the backgrounds from which the compilers of this volume have drawn their unusually interesting and delightful collection of ballad texts and ballad music. Expeditions to the island in 1920 and 1929 furnished the tunes; and a genuine interest in folk-literature assured the care and accuracy of the work.

Old Salem in Ballad and Song is a collection of ballads and songs that have roots in Salem Massachusetts' history through the oral and the written tradition. The songs, ballads and broadsides describe events and give a hint of Salem's past and its influence in helping to shape America, both politically and socially. The book traces the history of Salem not only through ballads and songs but vintage photographs, postcards and newspaper clippings. The book can be a learning tool to teach Salem's history through singing. The rich material unearthed laid the foundation for Old Salem in Ballad and Song. In the introduction, the author examines the role ballads and songs played in chronicling current events and saving them for posterity. The pages that follow are crammed with lyrics, verses, musical scores, illustrations and historical tidbits relating to works with Salem connections. Some names will be familiar to many readers. Famed 19th century bandleader Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, who wrote the best-known version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home, led the Salem Brass Band from 1855 until 1858. The equally famous Hutchinson Family Singers performed at a New England Anti-Slavery Society convention held in Salem in 1844, and the group's temperance song King Alcohol, says the author, was inspired by the town's controversial Deacon Giles Distillery. And while Manuel Fenollosa is hardly a household name, the Salem composer's Emancipation Hymn (1863) was one of the most popular tunes of the Civil War era.

A rousing collection of the most memorable and feel-good shanties in maritime history.

In the old days when American sailing ships still plowed the seas, it was the custom of their sailors to enliven both their work and their leisure time with song. The songs they used were not, generally speaking, those current and popular ashore at the same period, but were traditional compositions of unknown date and authorship, growing as all folk-song does out of the needs and experiences of men. These songs of the sea have in every line of their verses and every bar of their music the distinctive flavor of seafaring. They are of equal interest to students of folk-lore and to those who love the memory of old days spent on blue water; and it is with both in mind that this work has been undertaken.