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The clearest illustration of the cathartic process whereby "hard death" is made "goOO"
is found in local disaster songs, and shows through the resolution of such a death along the
structure and context of ritual. These plots narrate the elements' unsuspected assault on the
vessel, the men's brave fight, the living's mostly vain efforts to rescue them and the
victims' peaceful rest with God on the eternal shore. The public perfonmmce of such
songs, besides, actualizes communal celebration oflhese breadwinners' sacrifice for their
own. Whether in song or narrative, phantom ships. lights and ghostly sailors commonly
testify that the dead contribute to the common cause of survival as by these phenomena they
signal danger to their comrades and help them through it. In this maybe fatalistic bllt in no
way defeatist worldview, the awe and powerlessness that tragic death naturally inspires are
similarly converted into greater confidence and security.
If disaster songs teach men how 10 do the job while conslantly at risk, lyrical songs
teach women how to wait for them at home, and cope with uncertainty. Come tragedy one
day, courage and loyalty are the lessons for the absent as for those waiting for them:
courage to die and courage to survive. loyalty to comrades and fidelity to husband or
fiance. If men are helped by their dead comrades while confronting the "unknown" at sea,
women can rely on equivalent apparitions in their daily surroundings to contain ("tame")
their worry. Sea phantoms warn against changing weather and impending danger, omens
and fetches, when preparing women for tragic death, similarly assure them of spirilUal
communion with their own. As disaster songs carryon the teachings of the classical
ballnds, but use local settings, hero(in)es, and"watery graves," the heroines w'liting ashore
in lyrical songs are traceable to Lady Margaret.
While the exemplary fidelity of the local classical ballad "heroine" in her prolonged
waiting has parallels in the lyrical repertoire, her courage in bereavement has no equal in
either ballad or song. Other classical ballads presenting the dramatic apparition of the
revenant lover to his unsuspecting sweetheart either give him the last word, which no more
than implies the girl's resignation to his admonition for courage in her loss (Ch 78, 248),
or end with her death from grief (Ch 272). Song heroines who prove faithful in the
absence of their lover either are happily married to him on his return ("Seven Years I loved
a Sailor") or succumb to the discovery of his body washed ashore ("Strawberry Tower,"
"As Susan Strayed the Briny Beach") or to his revenant taking leave from them ("Jimmy
Whelan"). What is the coherent sense, if any, of these obviously related yet varying plots
and outcomes: heroines mourning and dying from grief, heroines ignoring their lover's
death and visited by their revenant, heroines knowing of his death and begging him to