Note 574 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)

There was also a lament sung hard upon the death of a warrior in battle. As the Goths bore away their dead king, singing a song of woe in the midst of flying weapons, so with many savages. In a skirmish which followed the murder of Captain Cook, a young islander was killed, and the Englishmen next morning saw “some men carrying him off on their shoulders, and could hear them singing, as they marched, a mournful song.” Cook’s Last Voyage, in Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, XI. 723.