The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #106455   Message #2199911
Posted By: RTim
22-Nov-07 - 10:32 AM
Thread Name: Song on a taboo subject?
Subject: RE: Song on a taboo subject?
At least in A Brisk Young Sailor - his does not marry the girl and goes off to sea for ever, where he has aready been for "40 years or more" - so when he says "If I was ten years older and she as old as me" - it would suggest? she is not a child?

I am singing with a choir here on Cape Cod early in the New Year, and one of the songs I suggested is Colin & Phoebe (again a Hampshire version), and I made the point to the organiser that I could change the line;
"With a virgen like me who is scarcely Sixteen"
by making it Eighteen or even Nineteen without it altering the song. However If I had suggested Brisk Young Sailor, I wouldn't have even though for a second I needed to make an adjustment.

To continue the theme (and with another Hampshire song) - You should ask Carolyn (of your own group CMR) how she feels about sing "Abroad as I was Walking" where in the 5th verse the subject of the song says:
"And now I am with child by you, Scarce Fourteen years of age"


Tim Radford