The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #15756   Message #3442923
Posted By: Rumncoke
27-Nov-12 - 05:03 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Fathom the Bowl
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Fathom the Bowl - minor changes
The morris tune 'Nancy Dawson' has words - it begins

Of all the girls in our town
The black the fair the red the brown
That dance and prance it up and down
There's none like Nancy Dawson

I suspect that the colour of hair rather than skin is being refereed to, unless the town is rather unusual in its ethnic makeup.

Black hair might possibly indicate a Latin temperament - do you think?

For the last two lines of the last verse of fathom the bowl I sometimes sing

There he lies on the bottom in his best Sunday suit
The silly old bugger, he's pissed as a newt

when the company is likely to think it funny.