Note on Yankee funeral song (5)
I believe the answer is:
elegy
'funeral song' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'note on yankee' is the wordplay.
'note' becomes 'e' (musical note).
'on' becomes 'leg' (cricket term, fielding positions).
'yankee' becomes 'Y' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'e'+'leg'+'y'='ELEGY'
(Other definitions for elegy that I've seen before include "that may be on the dead" , "Poem as Gray's in churchyard" , "Poetic lament for the dead" , "A sorrowful poem - Gray wrote a famous one" , "Milton's Lycidas?" .)