I had the honor of co-hosting Bill Doerflinger's final singing party at his house in Convent Station, NJ., as well as shuttling him everywhere from New York to Mystic during his later years; we were practically neighbors.

He was a very open-minded gent, but he was a stickler for detail. He transcribed his collections exactly as rendered. At the same time, he recognized that his sources' memories might not be perfect. None the less, he left it for the rest of us to figure out.

(BTW, he essentially ghost-wrote Woody Guthrie's "Bound for Glory." Woody himself was in no condition. Indeed, his final decline began when he was found wandering on highway 24, just a couple of miles from Bill's house, where he'd stayed for a while during the writing of the auto-biography.)

Anyway, as the grandson of a Lancashire family, I always am amused when New Yorkers, as fiercely loyal to Bill as can be, make known their objections to "my darlin' when I think on thee."

Bill never sought such loyalty; he just reported what he heard or recorded. He was a scholar above all else.

If Cpt. Dick Maitland ever mis-remembered anything, it was likely this. My Grandma and Papa, as well as their siblings, said "thee" and "thou" even in their new home, California, in the 1960's. Well, they said "Tha'rt" (you are) and "Thou'wt" (you have or you should) more often than "thee" or "thou."

The idea that a Midlands sailor would say "darling when I think on thee" is incredibly obvious to those of us who grew up hearing one of the Midlands dialects.

It's the single rhyme failure in the whole of the lyrics.