Decko,

The 1812 lead sounds quite plausible, given the use of the word "foreign". Maybe PB is fallible after all?

It didn't even occur to me that Jimmy C might be looking for words as gaeilge (pardon my html experimentation, I try to use it as a spurious justification for hitting mudcat from work!). I'd no idea that Andy Irvine (one of whose parents was/is Irish, I gather, so he comfortably qualifies to wear the green jersey) ever sang in the first official. What's the Coimisiún um Lugainmneacha official Irish translation of Pontchartrain? Droichead na gCartúsach?

And while I'm slaggin' PB (and by the way I do actually like his music), here's a stop press news item. I had agreed with Mooman that we should be ready to do the PB version of the rocks of bawn in time for the recent Brussels Mudcat gathering, but we never got round to doing it that weekend. So we tried it last night unrehearsed at our monthly pub session. I launched into it on my concert-pitch uilleann pipes, feeling altogether very Liam O'Flynn-like. Then Mooman joins in on the vocals and realises that he (unlike PB) is NOT your standard Irish tenor, and the song is just pitched three or four notes too high to sing in the same octave and about the same amount too low to sing the octave below. So it quickly turned into an instrumental solo. Suppose I'll just have to mortgage the wife, order a Bflat set from Geoff Woof and wait twelve or thirteen years before we try it again.

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