I'm copying the following message which I think belongs here rather than in the DTStudy thread. The DTStudy thread should be kept shorter and include the more concrete background information.

RE: DTStudy: Making Babies By Steam
From: EBarnacle
Date: 26-Jun-02 - 12:04 PM

I wonder whether this is related to the Somerset Steam Engine, which I have never heard attributed. I have been singing it for about 30 years.

Oh, way down in Somerset or so I hear tell,
there lived a young lassie,her name it was Nell,
Oh, high, wide and handsome and just seventeen,
And she longed for a ride on my Thrashin Machine.

'Twas early one evening in the merry month of June,
When most courtin' couples were lookin' at the moon,
I said "Come to the barn, Nell, where us won''t be seen,
And I'll show you the works of my Thrashin' Machine.

All the flywheels and pistons wuz spinnin' around
When out of the cylinder came a strange sound;
I reached down below for to shut off the steam,
But the chaff had been blown from my Thrashin Machine.

'Twas nine months later, on a February morn,
The pride of its nanny, a baby was born;
And under its nappy could plainly be seen
A brand new, twin cylinder, Thrashin Machine.

reply
well, EBarnacle, that wouldn't have been a train but a threshing machine. Though as you point out, it also used a steam engine. There are lots of songs about courting at the hay-making. The steam engine really could be the making of future generations!

And I don't actually see any train referred to in the Daniel O'Connell song, but the thrashing machine didn't do away with the peoples' diversion.

I have heard the Thrashiing Machine song before, never made any link in my mind with Daniel O'Connell's steam engine.