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Translation of Sea Shanties Master’S Diploma Thesis Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English-language Translation Bc. Bára Skorkovská Translation of Sea Shanties Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D 2021 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Bára Skorkovská Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D., for his guidance. Table of Contents Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 3 The Incomplete History of Shantying ................................................................................ 6 1.1. English Shanties ..................................................................................................... 6 1.1.1. The Age of Shantying (1815-1880’) ................................................................ 6 1.1.2. The Age of Collectors (1890’ – 1930s) .......................................................... 13 1.1.3. The Folk Revival (1940s – 1970s) ................................................................. 15 1.2. Czech Shanties ..................................................................................................... 19 1.2.1. Jaroslav Novák and Pětka (1913 – 1950s) .................................................... 19 1.2.2. Tramping and Boating Intermezzo (1920s – 1960s) ..................................... 21 1.2.3. Naming the Sea Shanty (1948) ..................................................................... 23 1.2.4. Czech Age of Shantying (1950s-1970s) ........................................................ 23 1.2.5. Post-Folk Revival (1980s+) ............................................................................ 30 Features of Sea Shanties ................................................................................................. 33 2.1. Sea Shanty and Sea Song ..................................................................................... 33 2.2. Definitive Versions ............................................................................................... 34 2.3. Typology of Sea Shanties ..................................................................................... 35 2.4. Rhytm................................................................................................................... 37 2.5. Words .................................................................................................................. 38 Sea Shanty in Czech ......................................................................................................... 41 3.1. Singable and Non-singable Versions ................................................................... 41 3.2. Adopted Shanties in General ............................................................................... 43 3.3. Structures ............................................................................................................ 48 3.3.1. Alternating Chorus........................................................................................ 48 3.3.2. Grand chorus ................................................................................................ 52 3.4. Texts ..................................................................................................................... 54 3.4.1. Sing-outs ....................................................................................................... 54 3.4.2. Vocables ....................................................................................................... 56 3.4.3. Places ............................................................................................................ 62 3.4.4. Personal Names ............................................................................................ 66 3.4.5. Ships.............................................................................................................. 69 1 3.4.6. Captains ........................................................................................................ 73 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 75 Notes ............................................................................................................................... 79 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 81 Resumé (English) ............................................................................................................. 87 Resumé (Czech) ............................................................................................................... 88 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 89 2 Introduction The shanty has particular importance for maritime history since, rather than simply being transported from one place to another via ships and seafarers, it is inherently connected to the physical reality of maritime labour and the nature of the seafaring experience. (Tackley 409) Sea shanties were a specialized type of acapella work songs sung aboard merchant sailing-ships in the nineteenth century. Milne (2017: 376) comments that sea shanties have “particularly complicated authenticity flow” because they were constantly modified by the seafarers who used them, selectively collected and published, and then argued over by competing authorities. More recently, successive revivals have added further forks and loops in the flow, not least because they draw upon, and adapt, the work of collectors during the 1900s and 1960s alike. This thesis focuses on yet another “loop” in this convoluted process by tracking down sea shanties adopted into Czech language. Its main aims are the introduction of this obscure genre, collecting any existing Czech versions of sea shanties, discussing the process of their adoption and the reasons for it, and providing an overview of the most prominent features of the songs and the changes they underwent when forms such strongly connected with work aboard a ship and maritime culture in general entered the completely landlocked Czech environment. The first chapter provides an overview of the history of shantying and comprises of two parts – shantying in English and shantying in Czech. The first subchapter starts with the creation and use of sea shanties in the nineteenth century, through the early twentieth century collecting of the vanishing shanties and their re-emergence during the 1960s folk revival. It aims to illustrate the factors that shaped the shanties that were later adopted into the Czech language and provide a sufficient background knowledge for the later analysis. The second subchapter follows the same structure as the first but focusing on the Czech environment – starting from the earliest Czech versions of sea shanties created by Scouts, discussing the influence tramps 3 had on the later adoption of shanties, listing the main actors in the 1960s and 1970s adoption of the majority of Czech sea shanties and closing with a discussion of the latest versions and their creators. The second chapter introduces the prominent features of sea shanties, focusing on their position among other songs of the sea, their (in)definitive number of versions, typology, position of rhythm, and the most prominent words. The second chapter is then used as a basis for the analysis of Czech sea shanties in the third and final chapter. The analysis focuses on the most prominent sailing-specific features of sea shanties. It is divided into two parts, first part focusing on the structural features of the songs – alternating chorus and grand chorus – and the second part focusing on the textual features – sing-outs, vocables, place names, personal names, words for ships and words for captains. The Appendix of the thesis contains the collected and analysed Czech sea shanties together with their source versions (if available). The musical part of sea shanties (tune, syllable correspondence, rhythm, sonority of the syllables used in translation for singing etc.) is omitted in this thesis in favour of the texts and overall structure – in other words, shanties included here are treated as written texts, focusing on corresponding structure and theme rather than tune. There are three reasons that led to this decision – the lack of sufficient recordings for many included Czech versions and the variability of the recorded ones, the lack of space, and the lack of knowledge on the author’s part. The preferred spelling of the term denoting the merchant sailor’s work songs of the nineteenth century used throughout this thesis is ‘shanty’. There is still and ongoing discussion about the spelling as well as the origin of the word1, but it is not a topic to be discussed in this work. This thesis uses the term ‘version’ as a default label for the different texts of sea shanties – for both English sources and Czech translations or adaptations. Regarding the English texts, 4 the reason is that sea shanties do not have definitive set of lyrics and it is therefore impossible to claim one version as the source text. In some cases, there is a source text expressly given by the
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