I appreciate the sentiments that created this thread. I'm trying to imagine how I'd react if I happened by the performance and just ran into it unprepared. I expect I'd feel blindsided and unhappy. I think I'd get over it because England has a lot of historic anti-semitism in the language and a lot of attitudes, among many many such things across a range of ethnicities. I'd get over it. The knowledge I now have that the very folks singing it have mixed feelings only broadens my appreciations of the depth and complexity of the island dwellers.

After all, there are some anti-semitic references in Shakespeare, not to mention an entire play, and I accept that. If I were directing or acting in 'em, I would not change 'em.

I have a set of lyrics I'd like to fix. One of my old favorites was a poem set to music and sung on a Gordon Bok album:

Little River
Words by Ruth Moore
Tune by Gordon Bok

Little River, lighted whistle, cry no more
Sleepy sound from the breakers calling me back to shore

Whistle it soft to the silver river
Whistle loud to the drumming sea
Whistle it low to the moon and the morning
Not to me, never to me

For I'm swinging high in another country, swinging low
Playing it easy, the dolphins follow me where I go

Whistle it loud to the flood tide making
Whistle it soft to the wheeling sun
Whistle it wild to my girl's heart breaking
She'll remember, she was the one
Spring comes warm to Little River, storm comes black
I was headed home when the Indian Giver took me back

Whistle it high to the grey-beard breakers
Where the secret over the great shoals ran
Whistle the world that was in my pocket
When I had pockets, when I was a man

I'd love to have a substitute that scanned for "Indian Giver" and conveyed the same meaning but I haven't found it yet.