Listen to the track:
A Melancholy Hurt
On 3 October 1826, John Horn, aged 39, was buried at St Werburgh’s Church, Wembury, with Sam Thomas officiating. The parish burial record notes that Horn had “died of a melancholy hurt on the breakwater”.
His surviving memorial stone gives the stark details. Horn had been injured on the breakwater, and later died at the Royal Hospital, Stonehouse, on 30 September 1826.
The headstone is a small slate stone, located under the west window of the south aisle, in the Old Yard at Grave No. 135. Local historian Peter Lugar photographed it in November 2005, noting that it was already disintegrating, the 6 of 1826 being missing, and that the phrase “melancholy hurt” had intrigued him since childhood. I thought it was a story worth telling by song. In early 19th century English, “melancholy” here does not mean depression in the modern sense, but a tragic and distressing accident.
Verse 1
John Horn went out when the tide was low,
Where the long grey stones meet the running flow,
By Plymouth Sound and the sea wind’s tune,
Under hard bright skies and a white salt moon.
He stepped where the breakwater shoulders the swell,
Where men work silent and accidents dwell,
And a moment came that no man can mend,
And the day took a turn toward a bitter end.
Chorus
Oh poor John Horn, the sea went on,
The gulls cried out and the light was gone,
A melancholy hurt on the breakwater stone,
And the waves kept singing when he was alone.
Verse 2
They carried him in through the harbour air,
With salt on his boots and grief in their stare,
To Stonehouse wards where the lamps burn low,
Where the river turns and the cold winds blow.
And though they tried with their weary hands,
Still time slips through like coastal sands,
He held on fast, then he held on less,
Till the world grew quiet in the hospital press.
Chorus
Oh poor John Horn, the sea went on,
The gulls cried out and the light was gone,
A melancholy hurt on the breakwater stone,
And the waves kept singing when he was alone.
Verse 3
Three days later, Wembury bell,
Soft in the air where the churchyard fell,
Sam Thomas read with a steady voice,
While the village stood with no other choice.
A slate stone set where the shadows lie,
Under the south aisle’s westward eye,
Old Yard earth, Grave One-Three-Five,
Where the words stay sharp though the stone won’t survive.
Final Chorus
Oh poor John Horn, the sea went on,
The same blue water, the same pale dawn,
A melancholy hurt on the breakwater stone,
Now Wembury keeps him, and he’s not alone