The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #120454   Message #2621313
Posted By: Matthew Edwards
29-Apr-09 - 01:03 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Irish Captain's Garland
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Irish Captain's Garland
Thanks, Fergie, for adding this song.

As camels, whether taken with one hump or two, are rather rare in Irish folklore to have them turn up twice in the same line seems a little excessive. I wonder if the lines in the second verse were misprinted by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. They would surely make better sense as:-

His stature it was tall
As a cameleopard or dromedary, O


A "cameleopard" being an old term for a giraffe - not that they feature much in Irish folklore or history either. Although wasn't there a story of a Dublin man who took a young lady to the Zoological Gardens to show her the neck of the giraffe but he was spotted?

Matthew Edwards