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The skyfarer’s trade sings. It sings while it works — the chants that time the lifting of cargo, the rope-songs that pace a long night-watch, the small private hummings sailors do without noticing while they tie a knot. It sings in port — the bawdy verses of the dockside taverns, the grief-songs of crews who have buried a name, the homesickness-fragments that get sung once and finished only halfway. It sings, occasionally, on the long crossings, when the watch is light and the upper mist is clear and the captain has decided to permit it.
The trade does not have a single tradition of song. It has, like most of its working culture, clusters and overlaps and small private versions. What follows are five fragments collected from working ports of the Quiet Reach and the Copper Ring over the past decade. They are not the only songs. They are a working sample.
A working chant — the cargo-lift
This is the most-heard song-form in any working port: the chant that times the lifting of cargo from dock to deck. Eight hands working a winch keep their pace by the chorus’s beat. The chant varies; the shape does not. The fragment below is from a Pike’s Reach port-recording, written down by an itinerant scribe in 408 AU.
Heave the salt and heave the line, kiss the mist on second time, share to Vessen, share to Korr, share to the deep that takes no more.
The verse is not religious in any technical sense. The temple does not approve of it; the temple does not formally disapprove. Most working captains sing the share to Vessen, share to Korr line without thinking about which gods are named. The line scans well. The line works. That is enough.
A port-tavern song — the bawdy
This fragment is from a song called, in working trade-tradition, The Brassman’s Counting. It is a port-tavern song of the Copper Ring, sung mostly in Brassmarket and the smaller dock-ports south of it. The full song has perhaps fourteen verses; nobody sings all fourteen on one occasion. The chorus, which is what most drinkers know:
Oh the brassman counts his coin, and the smith his anvil-shoes, but the skyfarer counts his shore-leaves by the wine he never refused.
The song is generally taken in the spirit of self-deprecation. It has produced, by reach-folk-tale, at least three marriages in which the partners first met during a particularly enthusiastic group-rendition of the chorus. The brasswright community of the Copper Ring is mildly tolerant of the song. They do not sing it themselves.
A grief-song — for one of theirs
The trade sings, when one of theirs has not come home. The song varies by cluster and by relationship — there is no single correct grief-song — but the tradition is consistent: at the first port-call after a crewmate’s loss to a fall, the surviving crew sings. The song is sung once. The song is not repeated that evening, or that voyage, or by that crew. The next crew that encounters the loss will compose their own.
The fragment below is from a grief-song sung at Pike’s Reach in 411 AU, after the loss of the Quiet Star’s First Hand, Toll (see The Marriage Customs of Sky and Stone). It was written down by Toll’s surviving partner. The fragment was given to the harbour-master after the singing.
When the bell-rope last was rung at sundown, we heard but did not turn — the harbour-master stood the watch alone, as he had said he’d learn.
The grief-song tradition does not require the song to be good. The grief-song tradition requires the song to be theirs. Most working sailors, asked, have at least one grief-song they remember from a particular port on a particular evening, and will not repeat it for outsiders.
A homesickness fragment — for the home-isle
This fragment is universal across the Reaches. The text varies; the shape is consistent. The version below is from the Quiet Reach. The home-isle named is Pike’s Reach; in Copper Ring versions, it is Brassmarket; in Ironvale versions, Highforge.
Pike’s Reach, your grey roof in the morning, the smoke of your hearths in the cold — I have crossed the wide air without warning, and I am not yet too old.
The phrase not yet too old is the song’s signature: a working sailor’s small private recognition that they will, in time, be too old, and that the home-isle will be there when they are. The song is sung quietly, usually after midnight, in the corner of a port-tavern by sailors who are about to cross again the next morning. Tavern-keepers know to keep the music down for the duration.
A ballad chorus — for a famous loss
The Reach has its long-narrative ballads, of which perhaps ten are in working circulation. They are sung over a long evening, with many verses, and are usually performed by a single singer with the crowd joining the chorus. The fragment below is from the ballad The Pale Doe, composed in working memory of the lost ship of that name (see Things Found in Drift Wrecks), first published in writing approximately 407 AU and now sung in most working ports.
She turned toward the green and we did not follow, we did not say a word — the Pale Doe sailed where we could not go, and her bell, when it came back, was heard.
The ballad is technically respectful and emotionally restrained. The Pale Doe’s salvor, Captain Aelya Brenne, is named in the third verse with appropriate dignity. The captain of the Pale Doe is, by the ballad’s careful tradition, not named — out of respect for the family, who never released the name to public record. The ballad has, in the working trade, become the standard way of remembering a loss to the Veiled. Most working captains will, on hearing the chorus, stop their conversation for the duration.
“My grandmother kept five song-books, hand-copied. She gave them to me on her deathbed and asked me to keep singing. I have sung in this tavern thirty-seven years. I do not always sing well. I do always sing. The trade has come in here in the worst hours of their lives, and the trade has stayed for one more song. I will die in this room, with my hand on a glass, mid-verse. The trade will finish the song without me. I trust them to.”
— attributed to the keeper of the Bell-Light tavern, Pike’s Reach, undated