Closely related to the shout songs are the funeral songs which accompanied the 'wakes' and burials of the negroes. They were sung in a low monotonous croon by those who 'sat up' and are particularly noted for their irregularity in everything except rhythm. The negroes are especially inclined to voice their sorrow in nocturnal song, as their savage ancestors did before them, and likewise they indulged in funeral dances at night. Mrs. Jeanette Robinson Murphy, writing in 'The Independent,' speaks of a custom in which hymns are sung at the deathbed to become messengers to loved ones gone before and which the departing soul is charged to bear to heaven. 'When a woman dies some friend or relative will kneel down and sing to the soul as it takes flight. One of these songs contains endless verses, conveying remembrances to relatives in glory.' Often these funeral songs convey deep emotion in a nobly poetic vein. An example recorded by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson has the following words: 'I know moonlight, I know starlight, I lay dis body down. I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight, I lay dis body down. I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard, When I lay dis body down. I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard, Fo lay dis body down. I lay in de grave, and stretch out my arm; I lay dis body down. I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day, When I lay dis body down, An' my soul an' your soul will meet in de day When I lay dis body down.' 'Never, it seems to me,' comments Col. Higginson, 'since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in that line.' There are many other examples of such funeral songs preserved; some of them Mr. Krehbiel has reprinted in his 'Afro-American Folksongs' (pp. 100 ff.). Few of the secular songs have survived. Even these, it seems, were often made to do service in the religious meeting, on the Wesleyan principle that it would not do to let the devil have all the good tunes. Some songs, on the other hand, were used to accompany rowing as well as 'shouting'--probably because of the similarity of the rhythm in the two motions. In 'Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,' which was a real boat-song, not a human Michael but the archangel himself was meant. Other tunes used for rowing were 'Heav'n Bell a-ring',' 'Jine 'em,' 'Rainfall,' 'No Man,' and 'Can't stay behin'.' Similarly, other spirituals were used as working songs, for their rhythms were hardly ever sluggish. As a good specimen of purely secular songs--'the strange barbaric songs that one hears upon the Western steamboats'--Mr. W. F. Allen points to the following: [Illustration: Music score] I'm gwine to Alabamy, Oh!---- For to see my mammy, Oh!---- She went from ole Virginny, And I'm her pickaninny,