Haul Away


Printed:	2009	Author:	Hartmut Emig
Publisher:	Edition Eres	ISBN:	978-3-87204-035-0

ERES 3535: Paper cover: 80 pages. 26 sea songs with German and English lyrics.
Haul Away is a nicely produced, clearly laid out songbook which fully meets its purpose which is to arrange traditional English language shanties and sea songs for German shanty choirs to be sung with German lyrics. Guitar chords are provided for most of the arrangements and the scores are arranged such that page-turning is unnecessary. Purists might shake their heads and question the very idea translating these lovely old work songs out of their original context but that is all fair and square here in Germany, dear surfers. Just reflect on the abuses done to The Wild Rover by Klaus & Klaus in recycling it as An Der Nordseeküste. Haul Away too has one such oddity whereby the The Mingulay Boat Song (itself not a shanty at all but written in the 1930's by Sir Hugh S. Roberton as an unaccompanied song to a traditional pipe melody) has been resurrected as Heim nach Nordeney. The seaman and historian will be irritated by many major and minor inaccuracies (that old chestnut and nonsense that shantying was never permitted in the Royal Navy finds its place here for instance) in the descriptions but that should not detract the roaring unaccompanied as Peter Warlock once put it in another context.