Sailors' Songs.

Mr. Kelly ran a small newspaper on board, "the Algoa Bay Gazette and Boundless Ocean Advertiser," issued once a week in manuscript, which contains interesting particulars of the daily life. Being himself a poet, it was natural that Mr. Kelly should be much struck by the sailors' "chanties" sung when doing any work in concert. Chanty, pronounced "shanty," is evidently from the French "chanter," "to sing." Several other French words are common at sea. For instance, in the Navy "matlow" is quite a common name for a bluejacket. It is, of course, the French word matelot, which means a sailor.

Chanties are never heard nowadays at sea, so it is interesting to read some of the rhymes Mr. Kelly collected on the passage. He says that the music was usually of the lowest order, seldom rising above a monotonous chant, in which, however, good time was kept. As a matter of fact, the whole idea of the chanty was to give the time, so that all hands could pull together. "The words, as a rule," writes Mr. Kelly, "do not rise above the merest doggerel, and the songs are so often interlarded with slang sea phrases as to make them almost unintelligible." As a fair sample of the songs sung when pumping—the "barky" developed a leak on the voyage—he gives "Sacramento," of which a verse runs:—

"Sacramento's the land for me—
Doodah, Doodah!
Sacramento's the land for me—
Doodah, Doodah, Day!
Chorus:
Blow, blow, blow,
For Californy, O;
There's plenty of gold In the land I'm told,
On the banks of the Sacramento!
There's where the boys are gay and free!
There's where the boys are gay and free!"

And so the song goes on, telling of the singer eventually coming back "with his pockets full of tin." The chanty usually sung when setting sails was the well-known "Whisky Johnny":—

"Whisky is the life of man,
Whisky, O! Johnny, O!"

And so on, whisky being responsible for numerous calamities in the history of the singer and his family.

Mr. Kelly confesses to being attracted by something in the chanties, although they were so crude. "I confess," he writes, "to experiencing an 'eerie' sensation when I awoke one morning about two o'clock, with a gale blowing, and heard above the howling of the blast half a score of strong-lunged sailors bawling out the well-known ditty beginning:—

"As Sankey and Moody sat up on a tree—

Sing Yo, Ho! Blow a man down!

As Sankey and Moody sat up on a tree—

Give Us some time to blow a man down!"