Like all traditional tunes, some shanties are in the ancient modes, and others in the modern major and minor keys. It is the habit of the 'folk-songer' (I am not alluding to our recognized folk-song experts) to find 'modes' in every traditional tune. It will suffice, therefore, to say that shanties follow the course of all other traditional music. Many are modern, and easily recognizable as such. Others are modal in character, such as ['What shall we do with the drunken sailor?'] No. 14, and ['The Hog's-Eye Man,'] No. 11. Others fulfil to a certain extent modal conditions, but are nevertheless in keys, e.g. ['Stormalong John,'] No. 10.
Like many other folk-songs, certain shanties—originally, no doubt, in a mode—were, by the insertion of leading notes, converted into the 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:
In later times I have also heard ['The Drunken Sailor'] (a distinctly modal tune) sung in the major as follows:
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.