Picking up on an old, old thread ... Let's approach the core meaning of the song with a series of questions.

Who was "the first light Eden saw play" (to pick a half-line from another song), and for whom the modern urban wilderness might be hungering much more than do the mountains? Who (according to the written tradition) is the Only Way to God, a man whose life and death are still pondered 2,000 years later? Who (traditionally) provides a helping hand to those who follow his path? Who is it whose mother is "the perfect creature", dressed always in blue, for whom the forget-me-not is named "Eyes of Mary", and whose Healing Heart is called "the Blue Rose"?

The answers to these questions help define two of the three personalities engaged in this Catholic Mystery song: Jesus and his ever-virgin Mother. The third is the singer himself, Jimmy McCarthy, "the geek with the alchemist's stone", and here I have to speculate. I suggest that he skims over the surface of the Mysteries (symbolised by the Blackwater River), but is unable to immerse himself in them -- unlike She who is showing him the way and has, herself, already emerged "unscathed, unharmed".

A geek is a simpleton (look it up); having the alchemist's stone, the "Philosopher's Stone", the key to immortality, he either doesn't know how to use it, or lacks the courage "to leave the paths of others". It requires a healing change of one's inner heart (the traditional Catholic meaning of the bright blue rose) that he has not been able to achieve. But he knows that this "holy thing", this "precious time", is "the only Way", and, I suppose, longs to enter on it.

All mysteries resolved? Heaven forbid ...