For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep (Labor Day Special): Three Fishers

In 1851 an Anglican preacher by the name of Charles Kingsley published a poem based on recollections of his childhood in Clovelly, a small coastal town in southwest England mostly populated by herring fishermen and their families. Of course, Kingsley likely had many sunny summer afternoons enjoying the salt air of the seashore, but we're talking Dead Lovers songs here, so his poem was obviously not one of that sort.

Instead, Kingsley recalled a day "when the old bay lay darkened with the grey columns of the waterspouts stalking across the waves before the northern gale," and the local fleet of tiny herring boats fleeing before the storm trying fruitlessly to make their way between the waves and the rocky coastline while the fishermen's families watched helplessly from shore. "Corpse after corpse swept up at the feet of wife and child," he said, "till in one case alone saw upwards of sixty widows and orphans weeping over those who had gone out the night before."

As an adult, Kingsley became a priest and author and was involved in the Christian Socialist movement. He was an advocate for the rights of the working class and for protecting them against abuse and exploitation by the wealthy. After being chastised for preaching on the topic, he recalled the dangers and hardships faced by the poor fishermen he knew in his youth, and wrote his famous poem, "Three Fishers." It was set to music shortly thereafter, and became a popular Victorian parlor song. At some point it entered the folk tradition, with the help of Canadian musicians Stan and Garnet Rogers, has become popular again with a slightly different melody than its original setting.

The phrase "Men must work and women must weep," became something of a catchprase in the Victorian labor movement. At the time, of course, many of the most dangerous jobs, including commercial fishing, mining and factory work were done almost exclusively by men (though the pre-union era wasn't exactly a safe time for working class women either), and their wives had to face the possibility that the man they loved and counted on might be killed or crippled at any time, leaving them and their children to face starvation and homelessness.

The song is perhaps so moving because, rather than focus on the struggle of the men caught in the storm, it focuses on the helplessness of those left on the shore. The wives sit up at night keeping the lighthouse flame going with some degree of determination, but you get the sense as "they looked at the squall and they looked at the shower" they knew there was little hope. To me the most chilling line in the whole song is "for the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep." It's a reminder that for these people, poor working class families, there's no gracious period of extended mourning, but yet another day full of chores and tasks ahead of them, children to feed, a house to manage, now made infinitely harder with the loss of a husband. There may be a little sleep to be had when the crying is done, but there will be no rest.

This isn't a song about wealthy women pining away for their suitors or knights bravely dying for love, but people facing a hard and storm-lashed existence, yet still trying to love and support each other. When they're gone all that's left is the moaning of the wind across the sandbar.