The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #75102   Message #1317032
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
04-Nov-04 - 07:27 PM
Thread Name: Wee pen knife
Subject: RE: Wee pen knife
The meaning hasn't changed. What you have in that case is a combination of two ballad commonplaces; looked at objectively, they are contradictory, but penknives were almost always "wee", even if, coincidentally, also "lang and shairp". The singer won't have seen that as a problem, or -probably- thought twice about it.