nope, sorry...it stands for Uisce Beatha (band name). DavidG, there seem to be 2 schools of thought here at mudcat on the issue of whether songs can or should be dynamic. Some feel the words and even tune can change with your mood and others feel that the copy of the song with the oldest date is always "correct" and all others are abominations. I lean towards the more dynamic. You can even hear contemporary musicians, whose authorship of the song is, sing a song differently than they've written it. This is what I like about live music. This is what some here call the folk process. But I also understand why some people get upset at singers who just don't want to bother with learning an existing tune and just sing nonsense instead of perfectly good words. This isn't the case with this song. You heard it the way the Pogues did it and the feel is entirely different...The song has changed from being about a rich and boastful man trying to impress everyone around him into a song about a man who wants people around him due to his grief at not being able to save his faithful friend despite his earthly possessions. It might even be the same man...just on a different day.

p.s. in my previous post "what makes since" should be "what makes sense" maybe my typing has aquired a southern drawl.