The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #3116   Message #49347
Posted By: David Ball
13-Dec-98 - 09:38 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Whiskey In The Jar
Subject: RE: Whiskey In The Jar
I used to study Greek and Latin and when I learned the rhetorical figures -- metaphor, simile, etc. -- I was struck by how they all could be found in even the most unpretentious songs. I particularly noticed that the last verse of "Whiskey in the Jar" is a priamel ("some like...some like...but I like..."), a form already well established when Sappho was writing (about 7th century BC). It's also a tricolon, a series of three, which is of course a favorite of everybody's.

Anyway, I've heard it as "...and bid farewell to this tight-fisted town," which I like, if only because it doesn't contain any names of places I've never visited.