its use from his first going to sea in 1861. in vol 9 of MM L G Carr laughton traced the development of shantying to the Gulf cotton trade in the period 1830-60, but was forced to accept rather unconvincing connexions with shanty in the sense of a crudely built house or tavern as the origin of the term. One of the arguments against deriving shanty as a song from the French 'chanter' is the change in pronunciation; another is the difficulty of explaining how a French word could have crossed the channel as alate as 1830. However, shanty as a houseis from the French 'chantier' (timberyard), via the wood-choppers' cabins in Fr-Canadian logging camps, so there need be no doubts about French 'ch-' becoming English 'sh-'. Mencken, in 'The American Langiage', derives shanty as song from French 'chanter' but calls it 'not American', and the word is not in the 'Dictionary of American English'. Thanks, Steve, that is useful to have it stated with that phrase, vague though it may be. I have been assuming, too, from other secondary sources, that "Cheerly Men" is "older." However, I would like to build up a picture from the ground, too. I am trying to hold both things in play: intuitive sense of how old things might be, and corroborating evidence. No doubt as I turn to more literature from later decades there will be additional suggestive phrases such as "time out of mind" that add to the "intuitive sense" side. As