Barry-

The snatch from the Bergin (the end of the first line and the second line) may not trigger copyright enfringement but maybe I should contact Jez Lowe anyway, and offer him the whole song to record himself as comphensation. I initially had a different melody for those lines but the Bergin kept nosing in and I finally gave up the battle.

My major concern is it's really hard to find situations where one can sing any long ballad. If you sing one at a session there's the stress of thinking that you're using up valuable collective time, someone else's turn. In concerts the audience may get restless after any song that has more than three verses. And if recorded, long ballads are said to sink any nautical CD. But long ballads are great if you're trapped in a van or airliner for a long trip, or wintering over at a lumber camp in the north woods, or on the fo'c'sle hatch during the Dog Watch rolling down to Rio with the Northeast Trade.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble