Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'

Subject: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: Ref
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 04:45 PM

Can anyone tell me the origin of the line in the Three Fishers about the harbour bar "moaning?" Am I misinterpreting it? Does it refer to an actual sound?

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: The Vulgar Boatman
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 05:11 PM

Could well do - there is a shallow area at many natural harbour mouths, a sand or shingle 'bar' which amongst other things causes the waves to sound different from further out or, more obviously, in the calm of the harbour. Ravenglass in Cumbria has one such, and you can hear when you're approaching it. Either that or the landlord is serving bad ale to sailors again.

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: Nerd
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 07:04 PM

Harbor bars do make moaning sounds sometimes, as TVB points out. In Britain, to hear the "moaning of the bar" was taken as a portent of disaster. Hence in Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar:

may there be no moaning of the bar,        
When I put out to sea.

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: Ref
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 08:32 PM

Thank you. I'd like to sing it, and I'm sure someone will ask what it means. It's nice to know!

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: MargoMcP
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 08:53 PM

It's a Charles Kingsley (1819–75) Poem

Notes:

"the harbor bar be moaning"--This refers to an old legend from the fishing towns of western England. The "bar" is a sand bar across the entrance to a small harbor. It is this bar that keeps the water comparatively still and calm inside the harbor. More affluent towns would build up a stone wall on the bar, making a mole. In its unimproved state, however, the bar was visible above the water, if at all, only at low tide. In the days of sail, ships and fishing boats would leave the harbor as the tide withdrew. The legend was, that if the withdrawing tide made a moaning sound over the bar, that was a portent of disaster. (In some versions, the moaning of the bar was a tribute to a death that had already occurred.) The moaning of the bar is most famously used in Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar."   

From: http://olimu.com/Readings/ThreeFishers.htm

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 17 May 19 - 08:31 AM

Tom Lehrer also used the phrase in We Will All Go Together When We Go:

Oh we will all char together when we char.
And let there be no moaning of the bar.
Just sing out a Te Deum
When you see that I.C.B.M.,
And the party will be "come-as-you-are."

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 May 19 - 12:51 PM

I thought he meant don't drink too much. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Origins: Meaning of line in 'Three Fishers'
From: leeneia
Date: 18 May 19 - 01:02 PM

I have swum in lakes with sandy bottoms and heard the sand grains grinding against one another while I was underwater. I suppose that under extreme conditions, the sound of water against sand could be heard by a listener out of the water and to seem like moaning.