I can't find it now, but I'd understood that there are many more references to Dublin places buried in the poem than just Raglan Road and Grafton Street. I'm sure someone said elsewhere that the The Queen of Hearts was a pub as well as a reference to both the nursery rhyme and the lady in question. I think also The Ledge was a ginnel as well as a metaphor for a dangerous path and The Ravine was a place within a park - and I believe there is a reference to a bakery somewhere - sorry not to be more specific.

I think we all understand the overall message in the poem, Steve. But Kavanagh has obviously chosen his words very carefully indeed, and there are lots of places where it's not immediately obvious what he meant. That's as it should be in a poem - the listener/reader makes up his own mind. Songs tend to be slightly more direct than poems, as a rule, but the listener still has to make up his own mind. In both cases that choice is personal and private.

But if you are a singer who is planning to re-write someone else's words, you are taking on a big responsibility - specially if your version may be widely heard. So you need to engage much more deeply which what the original writer was trying to achieve - just as you would if you were planning to take a chisel to a statue. If you don't, you could wind up making a pigs ear out of a silk purse.

That's my problem with Raglan Road. There are lines which I think sound wonderful to that tune, but others where the tune makes the words hard to understand, or even quite ugly - when they were beautiful on the page.

So that's why so many people opt to make changes - and I agree that changes are necessary if the song is really to speak properly. The trouble is that some people's changes diminish the original work, instead of supporting it, which is shame. For example, I'd prefer there to be a better way of resolving the words/hint conundrum that doesn't banish the four arts - because i think they are a core idea in the poem - IF I understand what Kavanagh was 'driving at.' But i can't resolve it, which is one of the reasons I've stopped singing the song.

I've heard many other versions where people have tried to knock off the corners because words and tunes don't sit well, but I seldom find them an improvement. And Loreena's decision to change the sexes undermines much of the power of Kavanagh's original imagery, which again I think is a pity.

Maybe it's just because I'm a writer myself that I want to respect other writers' work. I have no problem changing trad songs, because the writers are long gone. I have no problem altering the work of living writers, because I can ask them first if it's ok and then get their approval for the changes. But Kavanagh is different. I know who he was, I hope I can understand him a little from the original poem and his other works, but I'm not comfortable with Raglan Road. I want to make changes, but his presence is still too strong, too alive. But also I can't talk to him and delve further in search of a really good solution.

You see?

Tom