Feck feck feck, it's happened again. Why does this happen? I'd composed a post with several points, and when I pressed "Submit message", it didn't post, but just returned to the menu. Here it is again, as much as I can remember.

A twang man was a dealer in twine, so my mother told me; she grew up in Dolphin's Barn in the 1920s.

Billy-in-the-Bowl was a popular song; it was the norm for men who lost their legs in war (common after the invention of chain shot) to be set in a large bowl to beg; they navigated by rocking themselves along, steering with their hands. The concept appears in Johnny I Hardly Knew You, in the line "You'll have to be put in a bowl to beg", addressed to the singer's formerly athletic and handsome young husband who's come back crippled, armless, legless and eyeless from war; modern singers usually mis-sing this as "put with a bowl to beg".

My mot, then and now in Dublin, is my girlfriend of wife; it's not a polite usage though a common one; the term comes from "motte", an 18th-century term for the mons veneris.

Old hen would correctly be pronounced ow-uld hen, and the line would scan, in Dublin accents.

Carlisle Bridge is now O'Connell Bridge. At the time the song was written, Bachelors Walk at the side of the bridge was a brothel area (hence the name). I'm saying nothing, mind.