The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #104076   Message #4058258
Posted By: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
08-Jun-20 - 08:39 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Isle of St Helena
Subject: RE: Origins: Isle of St Helena
A couple more points: first, in addition to the use of a characteristically Scottish form, "winna" for the English equivalent "will not" (discussed above), at times in the Scottish printings the form " a' " is used, not unusually, for "all" (as in the lines about waves dashing on rocks). Thus, the rather clumsy phrase about "the scenes he has seen a'" signifies "all the scenes he has seen"; the variation "sights" is understandable, and the line works better - at least for a Scot - this way rather than with the final "O".

Secondly, that damned "Prince of Gehenna" again: despite the statement in "Remembering the Old Songs" that this means the Devil, it appears that Gehenna is a place of [?eternal] punishment, in Judaism, and the Prince of these infernal regions is often identified with some angel with a name like Asriel(?). This Prince ushers souls into Gehenna, and whoever later added this part, he clearly expected his contemporaries to understand the allusion, however they might interpret it. I doubt if there would be such knowledge today. Hope this will be of some interest; no doubt there's more could be made of this detail, but I'm still going to sing "Vienna". Goodnight.