Excerpt from Songs of Sea Labour<br/><br/>Personally I anticipate little profit or credit from the publication of this book. It is true that I have often been asked by literary friends why I did not do some such thing, but I have always refused. Nor should I have yielded now but for a period of enforced leisure before the end and the knowledge that in Mr. Arnold I have found a musician without prejudices, willing to do what he has done to rescue these old songs from oblivion. To conclude, I do not claim that I have here recorded all the Chanties there are — but these are all I know and have sung many times. And although many a furtive smile will creep over old sailors' faces, when they hear these Chanties and remember the associated words that went with them, those words are not down here.