The Brean Lament

The waters they washed them ashore, ashore
And they never will sail the seas no more
We laid them along by the churchyard wall
And all in a row we buried them all
But their boots we buried below the tide
On Severnside
The gulls they fly over so high, so high
To see where their bodies all safe do lie
They fly all around and loud they do call
Where all in a row we burid them all
But their boots we burid below the tide
On Severnside
Spoken:
The bodies of the drowned at sea were not buried in the church
But on the tideline until the 1870s. And even when accorded Christian burial,
were never brought into the church itself
But buried in the Sailors' Graveyard. The sea might wish to reclaim them.
Many people believed, drowned sailors returned as seagulls and that according
to estuary law, a gull would attack an exhausted swimmer, who was still
managing to escape his fate, out of sheer envy of the living. On many Western
coasts, it was the practice, even in days of more Christian funerals,
to bury the boots of the dead on the tideline
The waters they washed them ashore, ashore
And they never will sail the seas no more
We laid them along by the churchyard wall
And all in a row we buried them all
But their boots we buried below the tide
On Severnside