I started off with Stan Rogers because Field Behind the Plow was what I had been listening to. That may have got people off on a singer-songwriter tangent.

I'm a traditional music lover myself, and I find a lot of singer-songwriters to be pale imitations of the real thing - BUT there are some who have the gift, Stan Rogers being very notably one of them. He did have his off days, and some of what he wrote could be described as well meaning effusions, but with Field Behind the Plow he reached the summit.

Ian Tyson is another great writer. His lines quoted above are just about perfect:

"And the hookers standing watchfully, waitin by the door" - no attmpt to be "poetic", but with just a few words he puts you right there on the street.

Ian Tyson had the same gift with that song that Kipling had in so many of his poems:

"Oh the young recruits are shaking, and they'll want their beer today
After hanging Danny Deever in the morning."

Thank God for Peter Bellamy. Would we ever have realized what a great songwriter Kipling was without him? I know he was very far from being the first to set Kipling to music, but none of the earlier songs have the same impact as his do. Compare his version of the Road to Mandalay to the old favourite, for example.

Here are some trad lyrics that do it for me, from Sam Hall. I've never heard anybody sing them except me:

I have candles lily white, hanging high, hanging high
I have candles lily white, hanging high
I have candles lily white, and I stole them all by night
They shall fill my room with light till I die, till I die
They shall fill my room with light till I die.