Somehow the message got sent when it existed in name only. Then I got disconnected and couldn't get back on line. So let's try this again.

Well, I don't know what happened, but the initial message got posted before it existed except in name. So here it is.

On Claire Bear's suggestion, I'm trying this query under another subject heading. It has to do with Angelo Dornan's distinctive version of 'The Green Mountain' (the American form of 'Come All You Little Streamers'). This is in all probability traditional in the Dornan family; a stanza has been added at the beginning (replacing the usual first stanza of the song) and another at the end, not found in any other version and consisting of phrases familiar from other songs, to adapt 'The Green Mountain' to the situation of an immigrant from County Down to New Brunswick, Canada. The last stanza begins: 'If I were over Newry water I would think myself home,/ For it's there I have a sweetheart but here I have none'.

The usual form of the second stanza of 'The Green Mountain' is exemplified by a Boston broadside: 'On the top of this mountain is verdure of green, / The finest of places that ever was seen / For fishing, for fowling, and walking also, / And the finest of roses on this mountain doth grow.'

Angelo Dornan's version: 'O sleep valiant mountain, it bears a great name, / And beyond Lunar mountain it is fair to be seen, / With hunting and fowling and grazing also, / And the finest of blueberries on this mountain do grow'.

The first two lines of the above stanza appear to be pretty nonsensical. I seems to me that localization to County Down (or less likely to New Brunswick) may have occurred here, and that the existing text may contain garbled forms of Irish place names; song lyrics are notoriously vulnerable to corruption through misunderstanding, and toponyms familiar to a first-generation immigrant might well have been meaningless to his descendents several generations later, and have been replaced by similar sounding English words which made little sense in that context. Could 'sleep', for example, originally have been _sliabh_? After all, the high hills in County Down are called 'Slieve' this and that down to the present. Are 'valiant' and 'lunar' perhaps distorted forms of Irish names for such prominences around Newry? Or perhaps translations of Irish names?

Here I need help from someone familiar with County Down topography; the available gazeteers and atlases are no help. Any suggestions?

Stephen R. (still looking for the window to sign in as a member, but still a guest in the computer's estimation)