A Writer’s Curiosity:

When I was working on edits for Love and Other Incurable Ailments, I had to research the song, “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor.”

First, I had to be certain the lyrics were in public domain. But then I began to wonder what this even means:

Weigh Heigh and up she rises,
Weigh Heigh and up she rises,
Weigh Heigh and up she rises,
Early in the morning.

I’m glad I looked it up. First of all, I had misspelled it as Way hey (I imagine a few knowledgeable readers wouldn’t be pleased).

But also, what does weigh heigh actually mean? And who is she?

A capstan shanty

I learned that “Drunken Sailor” is a capstan shanty—a work song sailors sang while raising the anchor (say that three times fast). The crew inserted bars into the capstan and then walked in a circle, pushing the bars to wind the chain and lift the anchor.

Sailors sung this particular shanty aboard sailing ships in the 1830s, maybe even earlier.

To weigh anchor means to lift it from the seabed and return it to its stowed position on the ship. So, when the sailors sang “Weigh heigh and up she rises,” they were singing about the anchor.

However, there are two plausible interpretations:

• “She” = the anchor — “weigh” the anchor, and up she rises as the sailors haul it from the seabed.
• “She” = the sea — the sea rises around the ship as the ship comes away from the seabed (a more poetic interpretation).

The song does the work in the novel, too

Either way, I realized how well it fits Serenity, the protagonist in Love and Other Incurable Ailments.

She spends much of the story emotionally anchored under, held down by anxiety, guilt, grief and the fear of moving forward. But, like the sailors at the capstan, she finds her rhythm, begins to push back against the weight, and slowly rises.

Anxious, unsure, and living way too much inside her own head, Serenity spends much of the story emotionally anchored under the weight of anxiety, guilt, grief, and the fear of moving forward. But, like the sailors at the capstan, she eventually finds her rhythm, begins to push back against the weight, and slowly rises.

She moves to Ocracoke Island to find the man who wrote the discarded letters she rescued from a dumpster in Michigan but then must contend with a cottage in disrepair, ghosts, termites, no full-time doctor on the island (a nightmare for a hypochondriac), and an inability to even figure out how to get her mail.

But because she’s determined—and stubborn when she really wants something—she sticks with it. Soon Serenity finds friends in a nosy twelve-year-old, an octogenarian who dispenses homemade remedies such as sulphur and tonic wraps, and Emma, her neighbor, and Jake, the carpenter, who become true allies.

She learns to accept the unfamiliar. She learns to trust others. She begins to see her own capabilities.

Wisdom in a capstan shanty

Maybe that’s the wisdom of a capstan shanty: when the work feels heavy, just sing, keep moving, and eventually, you rise.

The best part of this post is that I wasn’t trying to find a metaphor. I was trying to determine domain rights and spelling of a lyric.

Here are the entire song lyrics.

What ordinary phrase or song lyric have you misunderstood for years? I’m beginning to think there’s wisdom hiding in things we sing without thinking.