The Oxford book of sea songs /

Hardly a chanteyman's constant companion, this stout book belongs on a library shelf, not in a ditty bag. Its 159 songs span 16th- to 20th-century sea-singing traditions from the British Isles, North America, and other English-speaking countries, but exclude strong black folksongs from the Sea Islands and the Bahamas, such as ``Out on the Rolling Sea.'' Destined to become a standard text because of the Oxford insignia, this book contains a lengthy introduction, copious background notes on the songs, a thorough bibliography, an index of titles and first lines, and a glossary of nautical terms. Palmer has provided musical notation to accompany many of the songs, sometimes uniting music and lyric for the first time in print. Major sea-song themes about battles, storms, fishing, exploration, and sea robbery are well represented in such classics as ``The Greenland Whale Fishery,'' ``Blow the Man Down,'' and Ewan MacColl's haunting ballad ``The Shoals of Herring.'' Sources for the songs are oral tradition and old manuscripts, especially broadsides, and Francis Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Considering that these songs are ``intended to be heard rather than read,'' a number of the songs retain, in this format, the depth of the sea itself. Recommended for general readers as well as college students of all levels.-S. Scarberry-Garcia, The Colorado College

There are several collections of sea songs already, but that fact hardly diminishes the attractions of this new offering of 159, the majority of them with their music. Editor Palmer provides an excellent historical and aesthetic introduction and a little note for each song detailing the incident that inspired it, the provenance of its tune, its authorship, or other salient details about it. The chronological range runs from ``John Dory,'' reprinted from Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609) to ``The Final Trawl,'' written by the Scottish folksinger Archie Fisher in 1979. ``The Holy Ground,'' ``Pleasant and Delightful,'' ``Sally Munro,'' and ``Blow the Man Down'' are just some of the most famous folk standards in this fine selection. An asset to all folk music collections and of considerable interest to nautical history buffs, too. List of sources, bibliography, glossary of nautical terms, index of titles and first lines. RO. 784.6'86238 Sea songs / Folk-songs, English [CIP] 85-753420