The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147458 Message #3418434
Posted By: GUEST,Mike Yates
12-Oct-12 - 03:13 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
Good Morning Michael. Sorry, but "Foggy Dew" is not "the only, and universally accepted title for this particular song". Have a look at the version that I recorded from Dan Tate of Virginia (Musical Traditions double CD "Far in the Mountains" vols 1 & 2). Dan still called it "Bugaboo" and knew that the word referred to a ghost. Presumably Dan's version was taken to the States before the later broadsides began calling it "The Foggy Dew". And this brings us to an interesting point. Why did this title replace the earlier one? Was it a mis-hearing? Or did somebody see some underlying play on words? Words such as "dew"? I just don't know. Nor, I suspect, do you. But we do have the broadside texts to show how the song started and that it what I am basing my ideas on at the moment. Though just how you can see this as being said in a "denunciatory tone of scouting scornfulness" is beyond me.