Martin Ryan's comment that the chorus if one knows that "fly" means a demon - "gives the game away", gives me an excuse to air an idea I have about the absolute nature rather than the "relativity" of versions. By this I mean that each version should be considered in isolation; in traditional terms each one has its own validity because it usually exists in isolation from other versions. It's only quasi-scholars like ourselves who insist on viewing what are actually autonomous songs as if they represent a continuum. Archie McKeegan, a wonderful stylish singer from north Antrim (in Ireland) and recently dead, sang a song which any of us would have said was a confusion of The Stately Southerner and The Banks of Newfoundland - that indeed was how it came about, but it was actually a wonderful song in its own right. I suppose I'm talking about artistic rather than historical integrity.

Thus it is that the False, False Fly version of the "False Knight on the Road" has a final verse about it being the devil only and precisely because the meaning of the chorus has been lost. If the term fly is understood then there is no need for an explanation - the child doesn't need to say "'Twas the devil in disguise" because everybody has known that all along.

The question is - are there any false false fly versions which lack the explanatory verse? Also, is there any mileage in assuming that the false fly is more "archetypical"; that versions with only the final explanation have firstly gained the explanation because the 17th century meaning of fly has been lost and then have lost the false fly chorus because it had no apparent point.

John Moulden