But though you can no more wrest a chanty from its surroundings and then pass it off as a seaman's folk-song than you can take the blue from the water or the crimson from the sunset, yet, as some chanties have become so well known ashore, as others so richly deserve to be known there, and as all are now being threatened with extinction, perhaps a few may be mentioned in passing. Away for Rio! with its wild, queer wail in the middle of its full-toned chorus, has always been a great favourite afloat:
For we're bound for Rio Grande,
And away Rio! ay Rio!
Sing fare-ye-well, my bonny young girl,
We're bound for Rio Grande.
The Wide Missouri is a magnificent song for baritones and basses on the water:
Oh, Shenando'h, I love your daughter,
'Way-ho, the rolling river!
Oh, Shenando'h, I long to hear you,
'Way-ho, we're bound away,
Down the broad Missouri.
A famous capstan chanty is well known on land, whence, indeed, it originally came:
And it's hame, dearie, hame; oh! it's hame I want to be.
My topsails are hoisted and I must out to sea;
But the oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree,
They're all a-growin' green in the North Countree.
—which is quite as appropriate to the Nova Scotia as to the one beyond the North Atlantic. A favourite sail-setting chanty is
Solo. Haul on the bowlin', the fore and maintop bowlin'—
Chorus. Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin' haul!
A good pumping-out chanty after a storm is
Solo. Old Storm has heard the angel call.
Chorus. To my ay! Old Storm along!