anyway, much to think about in this thread.

someone mentioned the word "Thee". I always feel a bit ridiculous singing this word. It's not so much that it's ancient and anachronistic (qualities that are sometimes a plus!), it's more there's a ring of pomposity to using it: for me it's almost like a word in a different accent. So I almost always change it to 'you'. Which means, if it's a rhyming word, I then have to find an "oo" rhyme for the next line. And before you know it, you're folk-processing....

Been singing 'The False Bride' around the house, and I always feel a bit ambivalent about the line "Oh, when that I saw my love sat down to meat, I sat myself by her but no thing could eat ". It has a slightly base, grotesque note in today's terms, which can make it sound faintly ridiculous. It is of course, in its historical context, entirely appropriate: eating meat would have been more of a luxury, making loss of appetite more of a big deal
And poetically, too, it's in keeping with the song: it's fitting that the *carnivorousness* of his former love is being emphasized, as if she's eating his heart.

But I'm a vegetarian. Maybe "Piled my plate high with soya-based treats/I sat myself by her but no thing could eat"....