Folks, I would like your suggestions if you're willing, and hopefully this can turn into an interesting thread.

I'm posting this based on the observations of two songs: "Mary from Dungloe" and "The Soldier's Fairwell".

I dearly love both of these, and yet while "Mary from Dungloe" seems to go down OK to a pub audience, it doesn't generate much in the way of comment. On the other hand, "The Soldier's Fairwell" AKA "The Blue/White Cockade" often attracts comments along the lines of "play that song again". Of course it could just be the way we play 'em :-)

I'm thinking though that there's something about the lyric to the Soldier's Fairwell: especially the um "venom" in the penultimate verse that gets folks attention:

Oh, may he never prosper
Oh, may he never thrive,
Nor anything he takes in hand
As long as he's alive;
May the ground he treads fall under him, the grass he bends ne'er grow
Since he has gone and left me
In sorrow, grief and woe.

So has anyone else noticed specific songs that grab folks attention like this?

Regards, John.