Types of Folk Song: Work, Street Cries and Shanties
Work Songs
These are a class of folk song closely associated with trades and occupations, often they had a function of coordinating people in manual activities, for example waulking songs (from Scotland) or sea shanties where the strong emphasis of the rhythm helped everyone to pull ropes or push capstans in a coordinated manner. Marching songs could also be seen as closely related to work songs.
Example: Haul Away Joe (Clive Carey Manuscript Collection)
Street Cries
Street Cries are the historical version of the shouts of market traders and hawkers – they precede the modern idea of advertising by hundreds of years, but were catchy and memorable and distinctive. Many folk song collectors came across these street cries when looking for traditional folk songs and noted them down.
Example 1: Logs, Street Cry (Lucy Broadwood Manuscript Collection)
Example 2: Tinker, Street Cry (Lucy Broadwood Manuscript Collection)
Sea Shanties
Shanties are work songs associated with the sea, usually from the days of sailing boats, and often having the function of coordinating the actions of a ship’s crew for activities including raising and lowering sail, hauling up the anchor or other activities. These functional songs passed into the tradition of life on board a ship so many of them continued into more recent times. Often people talk about any song associated with sailors and sailing boats as being a shanty, so the term may sometimes cover more general sea songs.
Example: Tom’s Gone To Hilo (Cecil Sharp Collection)
You can also see the Sea Songs and Shanties pack in the Resource Bank for more material and information.
