Dear Luisa,

Portugal beeing a country by the sea and having a past strongly related to
the maritime discoveries, it's not surprising that in our tradition there
are lots of songs mentioning the sea. The surprising thing is that those
songs are almost all of a lyrical nature, in general single quatrains
expressing above all the human self in its relation with the sea or using
the sea as a metaphor or a comparison with human feelings.

So, you may say there are very few Portuguese songs really _about_ the sea,
or about adventures in the sea. In fact, we have very, very few ballads
dealing with the sea, the most famous one (Nau Catrineta) beeing by the way
a Portuguese correspondance of the ballad once existing in France known as
_Courte paille_. This ballad existed (and still exists) in the inland
regions (in the 1980's I myself recorded some versions of it in
Trás-os-Montes, a region which has no relation geographical or wahtsoever
with the sea).  But there are proofs that _Nau Catrineta_  was also very
much used by Portuguese seamen in the 19th century as a shanty, and even
today in Brazil this ballad is still a part of folk celebrations which are
(or at least were not long ago) performed by seamen or fishermen.

As for songs specifically about ports,  I can't think of any, except a 19th
cent. version of _Nau Catrineta_ which begins with a farewell to Lisbon and
an enumeration of places in the Lisbon harbour and in the coast as seen
from board of a ship living the harbour and heading to the high-sea. This
version was surely a shanty, even if unfortunately no information on that
is given by its collector.

J. J.



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J. J. Dias Marques
F. C. H. S. / Universidade do Algarve
8000-117 Faro / Portugal
Tel. pessoal / Home phone: +351 962651919
Fax: + 351 289818560
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