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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	Music of the waters.             285
	Nagareyama ; it is sung throughout in chorus, only the songs that accompany heavy work being in the form of alternate soli and chorus. I give a few of the notes which will show the style of the music; it is to our ideas monotonous, as there are many verses and only these few tones to set them to :— NAGAREYMNA. (SONG SUNG DURING A CALM AT SEA.) The first and third lines and second and fourth of this song are sung by the same men, not as soli but in chorus:— " Nagareyma, naggarete ritaka, Nagareyma nagaretewo ronai, Murano nadesoya Medetaimonowa ofunadama Asa, oroshi banniwa, koganeo Isumifuruiso." In the Gulf of Yedo, the populous coast is very impres­sive—thousands of fishing-boats skimming here and there, sampans being sculled in all directions—the general appear­ance is colourless, the sea is pale, the coast grey, the boats are pale (their hulls being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck), whilst overhead, 13,080 feet above the sea, gleams in its dazzling pallor the wondrous truncated cone of snow, the sacred mountain of "Fujisan," so dear to the Japanese. The air and water seem motionless, the mist hangs still and ghost-like, grey clouds rest on a bluish sky, the .reflections of the white sails of the fishing-boats scarcely seem to quiver; it is all (says Miss Bird, in her