Derelict
written into this one subsequent to 1901, which was the first time that the six-stanza version had ever been published anywhere.
But the Times, apparently, had had enough of the controversy, for it refused to publish Mr. Hitchcock’s letter. Whereupon that gentleman, his fighting blood thoroughly aroused, wrote a monograph on the subject, complete and convincing, and published it himself. This book, it may be added, is not only one of the rarest in existence, but is one of the finest expressions of friendship to be found anywhere, and is a credit alike to its author and to the man whose qualities and achievements it celebrates.
Now of course Walt Mason was entirely right. “Derelict” is not a rough, unstudied jingle; it is a piece of polished artistry. No sailor could have composed it unless he was also a scholar and a poet. But it is art that conceals art. “Taking Stevenson’s quatrain as a starting-point, Allison succeeded in writing a wholly modern versification in words and meter so skilfully used as to create not only a vivid atmosphere of piracy and antiquity, but of unskilfulness and coarseness.”
Also it is not a chantey. It could not possibly have been used, as chanteys were used in the days of sailing-ships, to get a gang of men to heaving or pulling together. True chanteys consist of one line only, used as a chorus, the
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