Imaginary places in song??

Subject: Imaginary places in song??
From: Mr Happy
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:17 AM

Some current threads are querying locations of places mentioned in songs.

Many are imaginary entities, such as Cliffs of Dooneen


Spancil hill

Glocca Morra


Others?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: MMario
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

Lullaby bay
Hush-a-bye mountain
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Toyland

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: beeliner
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:24 AM

"There's a place where lovers go / To cry their troubles away / And they call it Lonesome Town / Where the broken hearts stay..."

"Your kisses take me to Shangri-La..."

Glocca Morra's not a real place? Waddiya know!

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Mr Happy
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:31 AM

........maybe down the road from Brigadoon?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:51 AM

Honilee ?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: RTim
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:55 AM

Fiddlers Green!

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Mr Happy
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:57 AM

Re: 'Honilee ? '

As a young lad, I always imagined that PPM were singing about 'Honolulu' but mispronouncing it !

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: frogprince
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:04 AM

Hmmm; does "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow" meet the definition?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Maryrrf
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:07 AM

Spancil Hill is a real place, I thought.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: MMario
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:10 AM

Bali Hai

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:12 AM

I actually know someone who lives in ' Cloud Cuckoo Land '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Mr Happy
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:14 AM

Sorry, should've checked

Yes Spancil Hill does exist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spancil_Hill

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Vic Smith
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:14 AM

I've climbed Spancil Hill in County Clare and looked down on the field below where there were still pens for the annual fair, a great gathering place for travellers.

Have a look at http://www.hillviewbandb.com/spancil-hill-fair.php. It doesn't look that imaginary to me.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:15 AM

Spancill Hill IS a real place. As are the Cliffs of Dooneen.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Smedley
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:25 AM

Gillygillyossenfefferkatzenellerboagun-by-the-Sea

Understandably, I may be spelling that incorrectly.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:31 AM

Imasazz

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:33 AM

Dixie - at least as described.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:35 AM

Oz

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: MMario
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:40 AM

Lighter - if you are going *there*
then
Oklahoma, Cape Cod, Ireland, Colorado, and virtually any place ever sung about.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:46 AM

Kraftwerk - Metropolis

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Maryrrf
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:47 AM

Romeny, or Bohenny, or wherever Geordie sold the king's deer that he'd poached.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: beeliner
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:55 AM

"Kraftwerk - Metropolis"

Metropolis is in southern Illinois. There is a Superman museum there, and the local newspaper WAS the Daily Planet, until a few years ago when it cut back to weekly.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:58 AM

I stand corrected, beeliner.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 12:47 PM

That's Gillygillyhossenpfefferkatzenellenbogen By The Sea, I think.

And I nominate Copperline, Utah - which I know from a terrific song by copland smith, inspired by what's probably a much better-known song by James Taylor.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 12:58 PM

Drumsnot takes some lickin' (pun intended)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Paul Burke
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 01:26 PM

Nottamun Town
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Xanadu (Dave, Dozy, Beaky, Cuthbert, Dibble and Sloth)

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 01:32 PM

I have always taken it that Nottamun Town = Nottingham?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 01:37 PM

Of course, one must ask if misnamings count:— Take the song that begins "Here's to the lass of Lancashire Town". Lancashire isn't a town; it's a county whose county town is called Lancaster.. So does that one count or not?
Or, when Geordie stole 16 of the king's red deer and sold them in Bohemmy - does it mean Bohemia? and anyway is it Bohemmy or Bohenny?...

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Bert
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 02:24 PM

Heartbreak Hotel

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST,suegorgeous (away with the fairies)
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:04 PM

In September, while at the Tulla Festival, which is 5 miles down the road from Spancil Hill, I thought I'd drive over to have a look at the place I've sung about so often. For some odd reason, despite following the signs, I couldn't find it! drove round and round, and gave up in the end, frustrated... I wondered if the leprechauns had hidden it for the day...

Sue

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: beeliner
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:18 PM

So far I don't think anyone has mentioned Diddy Wah Diddy.

But that could be a whole 'nother thread.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Tangledwood
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:27 PM

Shores of Avalon
Highlands of Heaven

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Effsee
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:27 PM

The Land o' the Leal?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:32 PM

Walker Hill and Byker Shore.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Paul Burke
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:25 PM

Of course Nottamun Town is fictional. Nottingham is far more surreal.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:32 PM

Durham Town (on the River Tyne. Not to be confused with the City of Durham on the River Wear).

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:40 PM

Kubla Khan

by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge



In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:44 PM

How about Heaven? Worked for John Lennon in 'Imagine'...

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Goose Gander
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:47 PM

Fenario, in 'Pretty Peggy-O' . . .

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 07:01 PM

MMario: maybe Ireland especially.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST,Gweltas , sans cookie!
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 07:36 PM

Mocking Bird Hill ??

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Snuffy
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 03:42 AM

Morningtown (many miles away)
Scarlet Town

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 04:02 AM

"Spancil Hill,"
It's there all right Sue - a few hundred yaards from the main road.
But if you'd driven down to the coast at Spanish Point and looked out to sea you might have caught a glimpse of 'Cill Stefeen', the island which only appears every thousand years.
It doesn't feature in any song but there plenty o stories about it.
Then again, there's the 'fourth' Aran Island - but we don't talk about that!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Marje
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 05:15 AM

Martin Wyndham Read has recorded two that come to mind: "My El Dorado" (Graham Miles), and "Somewhere in Atargo (Otago?)"

Marje

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 05:20 AM

mormond hill(North east of Scotland)

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Vic Smith
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 05:33 AM

"That seaport town called Canadee-i-o"

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 05:39 AM

The local tourist board will be very surprised to learn that Mormond Hill is imaginary! And the good citizens of Strichen toun.

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Mr Happy
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 05:52 AM

Mormon Braes?

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 06:04 AM

Walker and Byker are real places on the outskirts of Newcastle. I think the Hill and Shore were names or nicknames of coal mines therein.

How about MooMoo Land, as in Justified and Ancient by KLF? Or is that real as well?

DeG

Subject: RE: Imaginary places in song??
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 06:24 AM

Olde England...