Oh dear, I've just given the Mudcat another try and I come across this thread. A lot of very strange conflicting points here.

King Brilliant suggests that as she reads the song she thinks it refers to rural men, not women, therefore its okay to keep the original wording just as you would in a song about women spinning wool. In this discussion about the same song others say that you should keep the wording as written because 'man' in this context means both men and women and that is regular usage. So has everybody who has written to this thread read the lyrics to the song or are they spouting out without knowing what they talk of? What would happen if we had a discussion about what this particular song means and the use of the word 'men' in this particular song.

It has been suggested that keeping the present wording preserves an old song. But actually I haven't yet been able to find a date of when the song was written. It is not a very old song, possibly no older than I am and I haven't hit 40 yet.

If we all agree that it is a song about men, not women, (do you see how clumsy this particular quirk of the English is? ) then we can agree with King Brilliant's thinking. If we cannot agree that it is a song about men and only men then we can give suggestions to Tony about how he should proceed with the song.

The use of the word 'man' to mean both men and women is fading as a new generation grows up with the argument about what it means continuing around them. Personally I prefer to search for other ways to talk of the entire race of humans rather than a use a word which can mean one thing one time and another at a different time. As an experiment I asked my husband what he saw in his mind when I gave him the phrase "when we all sing" and what he saw when I gave him the phrase " when all men sing". For the first phrase he saw a bunch of folkies, men and women, singing together. For the second phrase he saw The Men of the Deep. Clearly I took the phrase out of context but I do think it is telling that the two phrases which should be synonymous do not spawn the same image.

I heard Johhny Collins sing it last Friday. He prefaced his performance of it with any apology to all who might be offended in the audience by the words. This seems a sensible way to do it: acknowldege the ambiguity and the confusion but keep the sound that seems to work. Have fun singing it.