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Mostly uncelebraled because deprived still of any social status in traditional society, infants
make a first appearance in the nineteenth century iconography of death. So also in song
with such popular pieces as 'The Orphans"} or "The Babes in the wood."2
In expressing the love and anxiety felt for loss-·actual or potential--of a dearest person
in life--a lover or parent--felch belief and lyrical song the most obviollsly translate the
"romantic" perception of death. At closer inspection, their concern also appears to be
consistently articulated around a very central situation of the "pragmatic" context of local
life, work, love and death: a man's absence and his wife, fiancee or mother waiting for his
uncertain return. In this material, indeed, gender is mostly consistent with dramatic role,
lhe men's absence being commanded by work or duty and the women's waiting by their
own responsibilities ashore. Fetch belief, both in its most traditional 'Illd most personal
narrative expressions, provides a key to some of the possible symbolic meanings of
imponed lyrical song. The stressful waiting to be endured by many a 'ewfoundland
spouse, fiancee or mother, and triggering "impressions" amicipating the worst, indeed,
gives a cue 10 a coherent patterning articulating a good portion of these songs. If their
advocation of fidelity in love from courting to mourning sounds closer to ideal than reality,
the examples of their most deserving heroines, vanquished not even by disaster, might help
building up women's tried "nerves."
I MUNFLA ms 83-151, p. 35; the song, colleClcd by K. Goldslcin, was copied from Mrs. Mac
Flynn's handwrillcn songbook.
2MU NFLA ms 78·236, p. 14.