Hi, Sandy, Caroline, and all...

I'd be the last one to insist my "marble stones run" is correct. I'm sure this has gone through my own folk processing (sorta like multiprocessing run backwards and inside out).

Best I can say is, I must have run across the Creighton in a library in the late 50s. The only written copy I have is one I typed up to go vagabonding with in summer 1959. Must have thrown away my original...

Talk about fluid, as in ink, oil, marble, and so on: the way songs slither and change in my head is a good definition of fluid.

So "run" may well be my kink, and, having now had the benefit of checking out the wonderful Carrickfergus thread, and new messages above, I think the black marble of Kilkenny, per menzze above, has to be it.

So, how do the black marble stones get to Pennsylvania? In Nova Scotia, miners or miners' friends, thinking of the mines of Pa., substitute it for Kilkenny. There was a lot of moving around in those 19th century coal years, looking for good work. I know a lot of miners came to Pa. from Wales especially, and elsewhere in Britain looking for good-paying jobs. Maybe the Nova Scotia originator of my version of the line was thinking that work in Pennsylvania might be a good way to get out of a more restrictive society and earn better money? "Where the pretty little girls they do adore me, And never care what I say or think," etc. Or... (your theory here) -- Bob