Grammar Girl here, I'm Minyeon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today we'll

talk about why C-shanties are popular again and why they're called shanties. And I'll

tell you how I remember the right way to spell the word conscience as opposed to conscious.

When it comes to popular music, we're used to hip-hop, indie rock, and even hip-hop topping

the charts. But we really didn't expect the newest trend to be a genre that was out

of fashion a hundred and fifty years ago. Yes, the hot tunes of the moment are C-shanties.

C-shanties are songs that sailors sung while they worked. Sailors sing shanties as they

worked pumps up and down, removing water from the hold of a ship. They sing shanties as

they heaved on the heavy ropes that dragged a new sail into place. They sing shanties as

they sanded the decks in the earliest hours of the morning or turned the capstan that

pulled the heavy iron anchor up from the ocean floor. But whatever the task, it was hard

and it was done by hand, and it often had to be done rhythmically. It wouldn't do if

half the men sheeding a sail into place pulled on a rope while the other half relaxed.

Someone had to pull together, reset their hands higher on the rope, and then pull again.

Singing as shantie was an effective way to keep men working in sync. To keep everyone

in time, the singing was led by a shanty man. He would sing a brief verse, and the sailors

would follow with a chorus, often giving their greatest push or pull on the chorus's ending

word. Here's an example that makes fun of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom British sailors

called Old Boni. The shanty man would say, Boni was a warrior, and the crew would say,

Way heia. The shanty man would say, a warrior and a terrier, and the crew, Jean-François.

Boni was a warrior, Way heia, a warrior and a terrier, Jean-François. Sometimes the shanty

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