"Is there a song where she recognises [her long-lost sailor] before he presents the token?"

My mother about a year after her marriage opened the door upon a tall blonde-bearded man: it took her a fair moment to connect him with the clean-shaven husband who had departed a few months before at the start of the commercial fishing season. "Billy?"

He didn't have to show her a token, though. Years later, when I asked Mom how she had identified Dad in that moment of doubt, she said, "I recognised the shirt."


Who knows how diminutives evolve? They say Beppo is an Italian equivalent of Joey (from Giuseppe). But I'd bet Meg and Molly became forms of Margaret before Peg and Polly did. How do you like Hank and Hal as forms of Henry?