"After any modern industrial accident--an elevator-shaft fall, a wall
collapse, a crane boom's touching a power line--workers still engage in
functionally therapeutic talk. Creative individuals for centuries
fashioned such talk into patterned accounts of bravery, lucky escapes,
or resignation to death. Listeners dissolved their fears or borrowed
courage from such anecdotes. When craftsmen were together in stable
communities over long periods of time, their job yarns assumed the
character of local legend... In particular areas--sometimes called
"singing communities--narratives of job danger were frequently cast in
ballad form, which might hold the alternative emotions of sorrow or
hope." /Only a Miner/, Archie Green.

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