'Wellerman' Shanty Picked as Folk Digital Trend of 2021

The TikTok video of a young Scottish mailman singing the traditional sea shanty “Soon May the Wellerman Come” has been named the #DigitalTrendoftheYear by student and faculty researchers at Utah State University’s Digital Folklore Project.

“The sea shanty videos blew up on TikTok — or ShantyTok, as that corner of TikTok is often called — in January of 2021. Mailman Nathan Evans’ version led to many recreations and versions of the folk song, which dates from at least as early as the mid-1800s,” said Lynne McNeill, who co-directs the project with Jeannie Thomas. Both McNeill and Thomas are folklorists in USU’s Department of English.

“This video was viewed seven million times in three weeks,” Thomas said. “The song is about the hardships of and wishes of 19th-century whalers. Viewers used it in our current era to comment on the hardships of the pandemic and also to create community during a time of isolation.”

Each year, folklore students at USU track digital trends. At the end of the year, they meet to prepare a ballot that goes out to a national panel of experts in digital folklore that selects the winning trend.

The research team places the trends into two categories that appear on the ballot: Social Issues and Serious Fun. “Soon May the Wellerman Come” is an example of an entry in the Serious Fun category. Coming in second this year were Social Issues memes that poked fun at the self-described “QAnon Shaman,” also known as the “Horned Insurrectionist.”

Other 2020 Digital Trend of the Year contenders included:

—Memes about the Evergiven, a massive cargo ship that got stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal causing massive delays to global shipping efforts

—Memes that employ the shocked facial expressions Oprah Winfrey exhibited during her interview with Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan one year after the announcement that they were stepping down as working members of the British royal family

—Memes mocking conspiracy theories, especially the idea of “Jewish Space Lasers”

—Memes about Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which was the small business where Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani held a press conference discussing their campaign’s opposition to the process of counting mailed-in ballots

—TikTok “magnetic arm” videos, which either try to perpetuate or debunk the false notion that COVID immunizations contained microchips that caused people’s arms to become magnetic

—Memes about Bernie Sanders and the iconic mittens he wore to Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration