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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
GUEST,MtheGM Lyr Req: The Grocer (Ewan MacColl) (50) RE: Lyr Req: The Grocer (Ewan MacColl) 24 Aug 09


Re the note above re 'swaddies/squaddies' - 'swaddies' is a fairly widespread dialect [esp Irish - see the well-known 'Hand Me Down Me Petticoat'] variant of 'squaddies'.
Well, Ewan would have hated Thatcher with a vehemence, & as someone remarks above he wasn't the only one. But this is an ill-natured, witless song to my mind, not worthy of the considerable poet that EM at his best could be: what kind of socialism and 'Brotherhood of Man' is it to sneer at someone because her father happened to be of petit-bourgeois origin? In my review of his 'Journeyman' autobiog for the Times [16 Mar 91], I wrote that I admired his fine Radio Ballads songs and songs of men-at=-work like "Champion At Keeping 'Em Rolling", 'but wouldn't give a dime a dozen for the political songs of which, he tells us, it was his aim from the sixties to the eighties to write at least ten each month'. The song which is subject of this thread strikes me as a pretty dire example of this genre.


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