Pip Radish (16 Jun 11 - 04:12 AM), LOL. If you are the poet, well done! Which makes me long for the legendary CHALLENGES. Why not have a folk song for topic, and the challenge would be: add or replace verses to reveal how it really happened. (Not just an alternative ending, we had that before.)

ripov (15 Jun 11 - 04:53 PM) pronounced what every seasoned scholar always thinks of first.

And may I defend leeneia: although in all history most ordinary country dwellers certainly could swim, many educated persons are known who could not - they thought it beneath them. This included ship captains.

Keith A of Hertford (16 Jun 11 - 06:39 AM): Conservation of angular momentum was proclaimed later still, but even if the boy was malnourished, half of his effort would go to the drilling, the other half make him revolve round the auger. Same (more or less) with the "American Turtle". Modern systems have two drills revolving in opposite directions.

One version in the DT has the dead boy shouting from Heaven and sinking the GV for revenge - certainly not a patriotic ending, but matching the rest of the ballad in terms of realism.