Ghost songs show that they have changed their behaviour considerably over the years. Back in the day, a murdering seducer had to beware of the poor girl's ghost tearing him in three, even on shipboard, thus giving the lie to the tale that ghosts can't cross water. Later ghosts were less strenuos, but appeared in dreams to reveal the location of the body, leaving vengeance to due legal process. And in America over the water, the ghost becomes the merely passive narrator who observes the veiled woman, without thoughts of even hiding the glasses of the real murderer who framed him (her?).