'Shenandoah'
by Anne G. Gilchrist
The Musical Times, Vol. 72, No. 1055 (Jan. 1, 1931), pp. 59-60
Letters to the Editor
'SHENANDOAH'
SIR,--May I be allowed, as a collector and worker in the world of folk-song for a quarter of a century, to bring to notice the weak points in Mr. Maginty's ingenious theory of the origin of the shanty ' Shenandoah,' reprinted in the October number of the Musical Times?
1. A primary mistake was to isolate 'Shenandoah' from the group of other shanties melodically akin to it, and to which it belongs; and next to base a theory upon a single variant when, as the theorist appears to admit, no two sailors sing the tune exactly alike, and when that particular variant happens to be more modern in character than many others which can be cited--
especially if the theorist perhaps never heard the shanty sung as old sailors used to sing it, but in the 'hour-of-softened-splendour' style, as I myself have heard it sung on the concert platform.
2. Most forms of ' Shenandoah ' show a strong pentatonic or gapped mode influence; and as it is musically illogical to contend that a gapped scale is likely to be developed from an ungapped one, it is to the gapped forms of the tune that one must look for its norm. The norm of the first chorus, as noted by the American writer, W. T. Alden, some time before 1882, by another
American,. Joanna Colcord, by Captain Whall, F. T. Bullen and W. F. Arnold, Mrs. Clifford Beckett, Messrs. Bradford and Fagg, Cecil Sharp (first version),[1] myself (in 1906), and others, is thus:
A - way, ye roll-ing riv- er !
a phrase decidedly negro in character, and not in the least like a Gregorian chant. It will be seen that the phrase skips over the seventh and fourth degrees of the major scale, and that its rising cadence does not form one of the coincidences with notes in the 'Agnus Dei.' Similar phrases are found in other shanties, including
[1] I do not know what is meant by the odd statement that Sharp's
'reading' is 'wrested' into a triple-time 'rowing song.'
'Leave her, Johnny, leave her' (a); 'Hanging Johnny' (b); 'Across the Western Ocean,' &c., all ending on a rising third, as above, with a characteristically plaintive effect:
(a) (b)
Leave her,Johnny,leave her, Hoo - ray! hoo-ray!
Stephen Foster, who used to haunt negro campmeetings, and who steeped himself in negro music before he began to write 'plantation songs,' successfully imitated this cadence in his ' Old Folks at Home' (on the words 'Swannee Ribber '). Take also a purely pentatonic phrase from ' Sally Brown':
- J-. ",
and recall the pentatonic framework of 'Tom's gone to Ilo.' As for the coincidence of 'Cross the wide Missouri' in the second chorus with the notes (not the time) of 'Dona nobis pacem,' these notes form a well-worn closing phrase whose 'dying fall ' is reminiscent of all sorts of tunes, including 'Kafoozle-em.' So one concludes that the less the pentatonic influence visible in ' Shenandoah,' the more it has been modernised by European or American sailors familiar with a sevennote scale, and therefore that it is only in a later phase of its evolution that it approaches anywhere near the melody of a Gregorian chant.
3. As regards the solo part, this is liable to even more variation, in melody, elasticity of rhythm, and words, than the regular rhythmical phrase belonging to the chorus, which bursts in upon the shanty-man's last word without any caesura. It was a short gap between solo and chorus which disgruntled an old shanty-man whom I invited many years ago to a land concert of sailors' songs and shanties. He explained that solo and chorus should slightly overlap (such overlapping is characteristic
of primitive communal song), though he naturally could not quite make them do so when he was singing shanties solo to me! I I print his version of ' Shangadore' (as he called it) as he sang it to me in 1906, at Southport. He said it was a pumping-shanty. His second line, 'I love my grog much more than water' was a substitution of his own for the unprintable second line of the original.
SHANGADORE
Noted by Sung by W. BOLTON, retired sailor, in 1906.
[music]
Comparing this version with the chant printed by Mr. Maginty, it is obvious that ' Shangadore' (instead of ' Shanadar ') does not sound in the least like 'Agnus Dei,' even 'at a distance'; nor does 'Ah-ha-ha I I'm bound away' (in place of ''Way we go, 'way we go') sound in the least like ' Deo gratias'; nor ''Cross the wide Missouri ' (or 'The Western Ocean ') in the least like
' Dona nobis pacem.' Yet who would venture to say that the version Mr. Maginty prints is the earlier and purer ?4. As for the original words of ' Shenandoah,' they are unprintable, but have been found as a folk-song of the land, except that they begin ' O shepherd ' instead of ' O Shenadar' (or 'O Polly Brown' of some versions). And if one is to yield to speculation, why should not ' Shenadar ' be a corruption of ' Shepherd ' this or that -' Shepherd, dear,' if you will! It was probably the unusability of the sailor words which gave birth to the American sea-song which Captain Whall supposed to be the original source of the melody.
There is no need to touch upon Mr. Maginty's confessed slight alterations of notes to aid his theory, nor to enter into the still vexed question of the origin of the word shanty, however spelt. I have stated my reasons for my opinion that the tune and choruses-all that matter-of ' Shenandoah ' are of negro origin, probably picked up, like many others, from negroes loading
cotton at American ports. British shanties, until quite recent times, were, as all contemporary evidence goes to prove, of the rudest kind, consisting more of rhythmical cries and directions, given by a leader and echoed by the rest, than of song proper.
Almost the only shanties extant which do appear to be old English are 'Haul the bowlin',' 'Haul away, Jo' (in the Dorian mode), and 'Cheer'ly, man' ('Betsy Baker'), which has a triple-time rhythm almost Elizabethan in style. In fine, the marked accents and swinging rhythm of ' Shenandoah,' as sailors sang it, form a strong piece of internal evidence that it could never have been born of the pulseless movement and cadences of Gregorian chanting. It is not by merely counting the notes, in the form of unbarred minims (which coincide in the two pieces of music so ingeniously mingled by Mr. Maginty), but by comparing the differences in time-value, ictus, and place in the music phrase of such notes that their relation, if any, to each other is to be appraised.
Strike out of ' Shenandoah,' as intertwined with the 'Agnus Dei,' those notes which are not to be found in the latter, and what remains is so shapeless and boneless that it becomes impossible to believe that the Gregorian chant could ever have been the source of a tune so different in scale, in feeling, and in usage.-
Yours, &c.,
ANNE G. GILCHRIST.