Music Of The Waters - online book

Sailors' Chanties, Songs Of The Sea, Boatmen's, Fishermen's,
Rowing Songs, & Water Legends with lyrics & sheet music

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	CANADIAN BOAT SONGS.
	Almost as celebrated as the sailors' songs of England, and the gondoliers' of Venice, are the boat-songs of the old Canadian voyageurs. The hymns to their patron saint, Saint Anne, that are so popular with the Breton fishermen of to-day, all owe their origin to the French-Canadian pilgrims of the olden time. The very word " Chanty" I have so often made use of in this book, is the name originally applied to these boat-songs of Canada, derived, of course, from the verb "chanter" (to sing).
	This quaint old tune is one of the oldest known boat-songs in Canada. Moore's " Boat Glee " in " M.P., or The Blue-Stocking," is, I believe, supposed to be a translation of one of the Canadian voyageurs' songs :— " The song that lightens the languid way When brows are glowing, And faint with rowing, Is like the spell of Hope's airy lay, To whose sound through life we stray.