Both "anal retentive" and "arseholish" at the same time? But I aggree - don't turn your back on us, Auxiris, just because someone's had a hard day at the office and feels likes being nasty to someone.

The first time I heard Hard Times it was Jo Freya (or Fraser as she called herself then) singing it - and I think she must included these verses, because there has always somehow seemed something missing from it when I've heard it since.

Fine verses, wherever they came from. (I'd not be surprised if it turned out that they had migrated from another somg at some point.)

Whether the song "needs" the extra verse, I don't know. When someone who sings as well and as thoughtfully as Jo Freya is singing, you can't really have too many verses.

I can't agree with people who seem to think that just because a song has a known writer it somehow ought to be immune from the folk process. It's in "the tradition" now, sung by people who have never heard of Stephen Foster, and that means variants will happen, and have every right to happen.

As for the claim that the logic of the song is messed up, because it's all about bad times having gone away... The point is that it's envisaged as being sung by people who escaped the hard times this time round, reaching out to help the people who didn't, and praying that somehow hard tiomes won't come again. But knowing full well that they will. And they have. And in fact they are always there if you look. Seen the news recently?

After all that, I suspect that I won't often sing these verses myself - I haven't got a voice like Jo Freya for one thing. Also they make the song very specific to a particular place and time - the "normal" verses could be about the South, they could be about Ireland - they could be about all kinds of places and times, today as much as then. And I think that for me, that is an important aspect of the song.