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"A Hundred Years Ago" is a halyard chanty.
Stan Hugill learned two different versions of this shanty, one from an English sailor and one from an American sailor. It was sung at the t'gallant halyards. Hugill states it may be the shanty named "Time for Us to Go" mentioned in Dana'sTwo Years Before the Mast, though that could also refer to "Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her". It was recorded on A.L. Lloyd sang the halyard shanty "A Hundred Years Ago" on his and Ewan MacColl's albums The Black Ball Line (1957), Haul on the Bowlin' (1958), and A Hundred Years Ago (1958). Lloyd sang this shanty in another recording on his and Ewan MacColl's 1967 Tradition / Transatlantic album Blow Boys Blow. He commented in the second album's sleeve notes: English and American folklorists fail to agree whether this shanty was first made under the Stars and Stripes or the Red Ensign. It has close associations with the Baltimore clippers, yet John Masefield heard it on British ships in his seafaring days, and the singer who gave it to Cecil Sharp knew it as an English sailors' song. It may be a seaman's remake of the mid-nineteenth century minstrel song called A Long Time Ago. Whatever it is, it made a good nostalgic-sounding shanty for the long pulls on the halyard.It is included in the Roud Folksong Index as #926. It was printed in Davis's Fifty Sailor's Songs or Chanties (1870) and Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas (1987). |