Dear All,

Thanks to "Nutty" for supplying the Lyrics to "All the Good Times"
by "Mr. Fox", shown below; words in brackets are what I originally thought they were.

ALL THE GOOD TIMES
Words: Bob Pegg; Music: Traditional

(The) Singer has left his song on the air, (the) hunter has hung up his horn,
After the day the long, long night - (and) after the night the dawn.


All the good times are past and gone, all the good times are o'er,
All the good times are past and gone, little darling don't you weep no more.


I don't want a seat (?to sit) at your table so bright,
I don't want a bed on your floor,
You can't hunt me down through the forests of love
and nail up my hide on your door.


Forget all the teeth that threaten to tear (you),
forget all the pains in your head,
The meek and the weak shall inherit the earth,
the savage and (?) honest are dead.


Build me a boat where the willows once grew,
where the vole and the otter swam free,
Row me away from this desolate land,
(and) make for the open sea

I already had the words of the traditonal/gospel song from which the chorus and tune are clearly derived. I actually remembered most of them anyway, but there were a few words which didn't sound right; perhaps I had an attack of "Mondegreens!" (see below), eg:

The meek and the weak shall inherit the earth
The savage and honest are dead"

"Honest" doesn't sound appropriate; "dishonest" would be bettter, though this is clearly not what "Mr. Fox" (ie Bob and Carolanne Pegg) were singing on the album. Reminds me of the saying by J. Paul Getty: "The meek shall inherit the earth - but not its mineral rights".

I also thought "You can't hunt me down through the forests of love" was something like "You can't hunt me down through the forester's blow" (ie of an axe") but it looks like I was wrong. Even the singers with the clearest diction are easy to mishear, hence the existence of "Mondegreens".

A Mondegreen, by the way, is a misheard song lyric and was coined by one Sylvia Wright, who on hearing the following words in the Scottish song The Bonnie Earl of Moray:

"They have slain the Earl of Moray
And laid him on the green"

thought it was:

"They have slain the Earl of Moray
And Lady Mondegreen"

There are at least a couple of websites devoted to Mondegreens; most of the one submitted are rather boring in my opinion. The most famous mondegreen, allegedly, is Jimi Hendrix's "Kiss this Guy" (ie Kiss the Sky) which even if the original is correctly pronounced, must be heard to distinguish from its alternative. Another is from Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" (The Ants are my Friends/The answer, my friends). I am sure we all make (if that is the right word) mondgreens; when I see the original lyrics of a song, I have seldom failed to see discrepancies between the actual words and what I thought they were.

Another bit of trivia useful if you take part in table quizzes: Who wrote the well-known song "The Floral Dance" (derived from the Helston Furry Dance, from Cornwall, England? Answer: Kate Moss (but as this was about 1900, it was obviously not the famous British supermodel who used to go out with Johnny Depp.

That's enough showing off in the guise of "Edukayshun". On a serious note (ie F sharp, ha ha) is there any way of contacting people via E-mail whose E-mail addresses do not appear in the list?

IAN RIPPEY 28.11.2002