The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #14799   Message #1854139
Posted By: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
09-Oct-06 - 11:42 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Grey Lake of Loughrea
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Grey Lake of Loughrea
No, Martin, I haven't (which would largely end discussion/confusion/repeated listenings and attempts to discriminate nicely and, not least, remember!). And, of course, I wouldn't dare suggest "improvements" (as I realised, later, "emendations" might suggest; I only meant emendations to what I took to be other people's attempts to get the words of all verses). However, I did take your own point about P Fallon, and finds he uses an expression about "arc-lamps" in one poem, so perhaps the singer is indeed "walking the lamps", one-by-one, all through the night in the London streets, and hearing not lake-water lapping at the shore but instead the Lady herself, indulging in blood-sports. Incidentally, the song has two of my favorite concepts in such songs in traditional idiom; that about Lent and Easter, the ?Sloe-bush &c, and the folk-wisdom, perhaps, of "who was ever able for to harrow with a plough".