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Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called all hands aft. “Men,” he said, “I’ve got an all-hands job for you this forenoon.” “Mr. Mate,” he cried, “get all hands on to the main-tops’l halliards and bowse the sail stiff up and down.” So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old John Chantyman piped up
He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses every time, a kind of a yarn he spins while he sings." Soon after this, toward the end of a warm, windy April night, I awoke and heard them singing. I jumped up and went to my window.
I could hear the plaintive tenor voice of the chantyman who sang them now low and almost mournful, now passionate, thrilling up into the night, as though yearning for all that was hid in the heavens. Could a man like that feel things like that? But what were the words he was singing, this yarn he was spinning in his song?
"The folk songs of the Seven Seas!" How that phrase took hold of me! I went for information to an old dock watchman who had been a sailor. "Songs? Why sure!" he answered. "It must be the chanties ye mean." "Chanties?" "That's it. I've been told the word's French." "Oh! Chanter!" "No chanty. An' the man that sings the verses, he's called the chantyman.
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