Nautical but nice: Jimmy Crowley and others explore the Irish origins of sea shanties
One of the best-known sea shanties, The Drunken Sailor, uses the melody of Oró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile. Picture: iStock
If you haven’t heard by now, the Wellerman is coming and he’s bringing us sugar and tea and rum. You’d have to have been hiding under a landlubberly, technophobic rock for the past two weeks not to have noticed that sea shanties, popularised by the video-sharing platform TikTok, are having a moment.
One song sparked the craze: a New Zealand whaling song called The Wellerman dating to the 1860s. When 26-year-old postman Nathan Evans posted his rendition of the earworm to social media network TikTok, it went viral and the rest is history; a very internet kind of history, where even Kermit the Frog has recorded a version and all sorts of humour and spin-offs have emerged, including a Wellerman cocktail recipe.
