Posted by Forrest Brownell on August 06, 1997 at 21:57:23:
In Reply to: 'The Maid of Amsterdam' (WAS 'Re: Shanties in S&A') posted by Forrest Brownell on August 06, 1997 at 18:48:43:
Frank Shay, in An American Sailor's Treasury (Smithmark, 1991) lists 'The Whale'
in his inventory of 'forecastle songs' (ie, forebitters), giving lyrics very close to
one of the versions of 'The Greenland Whale Fishery' presented in Roy Palmer's Oxford
Book of Sea Songs. It would appear that my original guess wasn't so far off the
mark after all.
Shay also gives a Nantucket sailor's version of the same song from Herman Melville's
Moby Dick, the novel which AR described* as 'the greatest of all books
ever written' and likened to a 'great wind blowing overhead'. While I hesitate to
disagree with so formidable a critic, I can't say that I'd second AR's enthusiastic
assessment of Moby Dick, but I'd certainly agree with him about the windy bit.
* In a reading list he compiled for children 'who ... enjoyed his books', and which
Christina Hardyment quotes in her wonderful Arthur Ransome and Capt. Flint's Trunk.