G'day BillyBoy,

There are a number a Scottish songs in the Fatal Wedding category - usual with haunting minor or modal tunes. One of the best-known starts at the wedding feast where they:

"... sat down to dine
I sat down beside her and poured out the wine
And drank to the one who should have been mine
But she's gone to be wed to another."

Later he wanders in the forest and is taunetd by the local lads:

"The boys of the forest, they askit of me;
How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?,br> I answered then, wi' a tear in my ee;
"How many tall ships sail the forest?"

I have seen a second set of words (under the name The Lambs in the Fields), that obviously fits in with these. In combination, one ends up with a song that shows the man leaving rural Scotland to make his fortune abroad, at sea. When he comes back to marry his childhood love, she has grown impatient and is marrying another and the song is about the way that their worlds are now so far apart that they might as well live on separate planets.

Regards,

Bob Bolton