I saw Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman at a house concert yesterday. They sang "Old Fid" with a different word in the second verse. The line in question is:

Whether spices from Java or copra from Yap

The version in Digitrad has:
Whether spices from Java or copra from Yat


When I learned the song originally (transcribed from a tape), I thought Dave and Anni were singing "cobras from Yat." Copra, it turns out, is the dried meat of the coconut, eaten as a food, and the source of a yellowish oil, called copra oil, used in making soap, candles, etc. Jap is an island just north of Timor, somewhere between Borneo and New Guinea, according to the Times Atlas of the World.

Radriano
^^