Poetic Obituaries: Professor [Tristram P. ] Coffin returned

often to his great scholarly love, the Anglo-American ballad. In his academic writings he argued that many ballads, especially those about the death of the hero, had arisen out of narrative obituary verse, a curious type of folk poetry for which he had great affection.

Printed on broadsides and read or sung at funerals, narrative obituary poems flourished in 18th-, 19th- and early-20th-century America.

from The New York Times: Tristram P. Coffin, Folklorist, Dies at 89

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