John Masefield

Burial Party

Sailor's dialect

Masefield writes phonetically—'n' for 'and,' 'corp' for 'corpse.' This isn't decoration; it's the actual speech of merchant seamen he sailed with before becoming a poet.

'He's deader 'n nails,' the fo'c's'le said, ''n' gone to his long sleep';
''N' about his corp,' said Tom to Dan, 'd'ye think his corp'll keep
Till the day's done, 'n' the work's through, 'n' the ebb's upon the neap?'
'He's deader 'n nails,' said Dan to Tom, ''n' I wish his sperrit j'y;
He spat straight 'n' he steered true, but listen to me, say I,
Take 'n' cover 'n' bury him now, 'n' I'll take 'n' tell you why.
'It's a rummy rig of a guffy's yarn, 'n' the juice of a rummy note,
But if you buries a corp at night, it takes 'n' keeps afloat,
For its bloody soul's afraid o' the dark 'n' sticks within the throat.

Soul in throat

The superstition: souls exit through the mouth at death. A night burial traps the soul mid-exit, stuck in the windpipe while the body sinks.

''N' all the night till the grey o' the dawn the dead 'un has to swim

Will o' the Wisp

Phosphorescent plankton glow when disturbed—common in ship wakes. Dan reinterprets this natural phenomenon as a ghostly light marking drowning souls.

With a blue 'n' beastly Will o' the Wisp a-burnin' over him,
With a herring, maybe, a-scoffin' a toe or a shark a-chewin' a limb.
''N' all the night the shiverin' corp it has to swim the sea,
With its shudderin' soul inside the throat (where a soul's no right to be),
Till the sky's grey 'n' the dawn's clear, 'n' then the sperrit's free.
'Now Joe was a man was right as rain. I'm sort of sore for Joe,
'N' if we bury him durin' the day, his soul can take 'n' go;
So we'll dump his corp when the bell strikes 'n' we can get below.
'I'd fairly hate for him to swim in a blue 'n' beastly light,
With his shudderin' soul inside of him a-feelin' the fishes bite,
So over he goes at noon, say I, 'n' he shall sleep to-night.'
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Masefield's Merchant Navy Background

Masefield deserted his merchant ship in New York at age seventeen and worked odd jobs before returning to England to write. This poem draws directly from those years at sea—he knew this dialect, these men, these superstitions firsthand.

The fo'c's'le (forecastle) is where ordinary sailors lived, crammed in the ship's bow. The term becomes shorthand for the common seamen themselves. When "the fo'c's'le said" something, it means this is collective sailor wisdom, not one man's opinion.

"Deader 'n nails" and "right as rain" are actual sailor idioms, not literary invention. Masefield's ear for this speech was so accurate that the poem works as a kind of linguistic preservation—this is how merchant seamen actually talked in the 1890s.

The Burial Superstition

Dan's superstition has real roots in sailor folklore: bodies buried at sea after dark would float and haunt the ship. The "scientific" explanation sailors gave: rigor mortis sets in differently depending on time of burial, affecting whether bodies sink or surface.

The image of the soul stuck in the throat combines Christian belief (souls departing at death) with visceral body horror. Sailors believed the soul exited through the mouth—hence the tradition of closing a corpse's jaw. A night burial interrupted this process, trapping the soul mid-escape.

Dan's concern is practical compassion: "I'm sort of sore for Joe." He's not being sentimental—he's arguing for a daylight burial so Joe's soul won't spend the night swimming in terror. The repetition of "shiverin'" and "shudderin'" emphasizes the physical suffering Dan imagines for the trapped soul, even though it's already dead.