Origins: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 01:36 PM

So do I, Dick. It's a good song whatever interpretation you want to put on it.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 01:31 PM

i like singing the song

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:51 PM

For info -- I have started a new thread, referring back to this one, about the rare occasions when I think it might be appropriate to suggest "hidden meanings". It is called Hunting Hidden Meanings.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 04:35 AM

Absolutely. There are few enough of us around to start falling out over nothing. Best wishes.    Steve

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 11:24 PM

Good morning, Steve.

Mainly because of your constant accusations that I was continually pursuing hidden meanings, a practice I kept reiterating that I dislike generally, when all I had done was cite one other person's opinion on them just once. So, now you appear to have apologised for having done so, let's stop arguing, shall we?

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 06:09 PM

Michael,
I apologise also for contributing to your outburst.

My comment doesn't imply at all that the phrase was in common usage, just that it was being used more than once in several song titles for whatever reason.

If you're not pushing hidden meanings then why are we arguing?

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 11:57 AM

...and unmannerly. I cool down, and apologise unreservedly for such an outburst; to Steve and everybody.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 11:52 AM

And I am NOT 'pushing hidden meaning'. I merely referred once to a work in which one such was suggested by someone else, written some years ago so perhaps unknown to the next generation ~~ piece of info that I thought might be of interest to some reading this thread who had not come across it before. That's what Mudcat threads are FOR, isn't it?

Why this had made me such an object of obloquy & attack and INACCURATE denunciation from Mike Y ("why, oh why", "spouting", "rubbish") & Steve G ("desperate", "pushing hidden meaning"), I am utterly at a loss to say.

But I will say that I regard it as spiteful and derogatory and unnecessary, and should be much obliged if you would desist. It is distressing me, I do not mind telling you ~~ and I do not normally suffer from a paranoid personality.

"Pushing hidden meaning" up your drivelly rectum, Gardham. Which, as regulars on Mudcat should recognise, is a far-out extreme of abuse for me, who generally avoid such locutions altogether, as unworthy & counterproductive.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 11:25 AM

"I haven't said anything about it being a phrase in common usage

So what's this then?

Michael, why can't you just accept that in the late 18thc the phrase 'foggy dew' was used to describe the dew that lies on the grass during foggy conditions

A phrase claimed to have been used at a particular, specified time ('late 18thc') surely carries the implication of its having been in common use at that time. How else is one to interpret your "why can't just accept" question above?

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 09:34 AM

I saw very clearly your reply to Mike.

5 entirely different songs. See my posting of 14th Oct 3.36 pm.

You're the one pushing hidden meaning. I'm happy with literal. I haven't said anything about it being a phrase in common usage other than in the 5 songs I mentioned, but if it can be found in 5 independent titles it is quite possible that it will occur elsewhere as well, but I'm not sufficiently interested to go hunting for it.

Happy hunting!

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Joe_F
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 08:32 PM

Peter Kennedy includes the song, under the title "The Foggy Foggy Dew", in his _Folksongs of Britain and Ireland_ (Oak, 1975). The version he gives (he lists a lot of others) resembles the one quoted above from Martin Carthy, Cyprus cat & all. (I presume, however, that the "cod" offered was actually a cot; Kennedy has "crib".)

In the introduction to the chapter containing the song, Kennedy says:
"James Reeves, in trying to discover the significance of the title, suggests 'fogge', the 'Middle English for coarse, rank grass of the kind which grows in marshes and bogs where the atmosphere would be damp and misty', and this, as in _Rolling in the Dws_..., would represent maidenhead, and the dew would imply virginity or chastity. 'Foggy Dew' may be an English tongue's best attempt at the sound of the Gaelic, and derive from 'Oroce dhu' meaning a black or dark night. Robert Graves proposed a theory that it stood for the black pestilence of the church and that the girl was really being protected from entering a nunnery. There seems to be no end to what can be interpreted from the lines of folksongs."
For this last statement there seems to be plenty of evidence.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 11:44 AM

Can you be more specific as to your 4 songs, Steve? Variants or entirely different songs?

But, even then, you have been claiming the phrase as a commonplace of C18 usage to explain how it infiltrated the song in place of misunderstandings of Bugaboo. It is the existence of the phrase in this sort of common usage which I dispute. You have not produced a single example of it used, except as a title and part of the eponymous text of some songs. Put up or...

And will you take on board that finding hidden meanings is not something I do: I hate the idea. All I did was direct people to some suggestions by someone else which I thought those interested in the history of this partic song should like to know about --

PLEASE SEE MY REPLY TO MIKE Y 14 Oct 0416 am

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 09:09 AM

I always assumed semen.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 08:55 AM

Michael,
I've found 4 more songs that use the phrase in the title. Possibly/likely others that use the phrase somewhere. If you are so desperate to find hidden meanings then you must search further yourself.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:13 AM

Because, Steve, I know of no other uses of the phrase, C18 or other. And I don't believe you or Dick do either.

Many many refs in verse, and lit in general, to dew, C18 and before & after, up to Sidney Carter's "The youth of the heart and the dew in the morning"; a commonplace image for ephemerality. Probably fewer, but certainly some to fog - notably Bleak House in C19. But, as the common combo which you seem to be urging, can think of none but this one under question.

Can you?

Till you cite me one, I see no reason for the disputative, contentious [and perhaps a bit patronising] tone of your "why can't you just..."

I can't because the phrase just was not so used with the regularity implied by the tone of exasperation evident in your question.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:01 PM

Michael, why can't you just accept that in the late 18thc the phrase 'foggy dew' was used to describe the dew that lies on the grass during foggy conditions and thereafter, as Dick simply states?
It may somewhere along the line have had some other significance but without any direct proof there's not a lot of point in prolonging the agony.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 03:52 PM

But even if that the case, Steve ~~ the phrase must have come from somewhere, had some meaning or referent for someone... And why should the [sort-of] mondegreen you postulate here have so universally caught on that this song under this title is as recognisable in some version, or at least as a title, to practically everyone, as those I cited some posts back, 12 oct 0517 pm: to which one might add e.g. Waltzing Matilda, Vicar of Bray, John Peel ... Oh, you know what I mean.

I agree with what I take to be your point that the evidential value of the Irish rebel versions under the title is scant, as they were clearly just recycling a phrase which had reached cliche status because of the older song.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 03:43 PM

It would probably be illuminating to compare the 17thc version with the Goggin text and then with the earliest TFD text but I'm a bit snowed under with projects at the moment.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 03:36 PM

Okay, first step, there are at least 5 songs with the title 'The Foggy Dew' which to me at least suggests the phrase had plenty of currency. I think the 2 Irish ones have known authors and are relatively recent though I'd need to check that.

Of the 3 English songs I would say the likely earliest is very likely a product of the late 18thc pleasure gardens due to its pastoral nature and flowery language. On a Bloomer, Birmingham broadside it is called 'The Brindled Cow' though this version shows some signs of having come from oral tradition. On all other broadsides I have it is called TFD or Foggy Foggy Dew. It is concerning courtship though there is no symbolism obvious. First line in 5 double-stanza fuller versions is 'What shepherd was like me so blest'.

The 4th song I have only versions printed by Pitts prior to 1819. This is a little more risque and is probably contemporary with the printing and a one-off. It starts 'When I was a farmer's son I kept sheep upon the hill' and has 8 3-line stanzas. It is somewhat garbled and typical of a quick hack production of which there are many examples of the period.

Our TFD was widely printed by all the usual suspects around the country, the earliest English copy probably being Pitts but at his post-1819 address. A Scottish version was printed in Kilmarnock 'The Roving Bachelor' round about the turn of the century, but the earliest version I have of the period was a Buga Boo title printed by Wm Goggin of Limerick c1780. Incidentally Haly of Cork printed the longest version of 7sts c1860 and Sanderson of Edinburgh printed a BugaBoo version which I don't have a copy of and his family were printing throughout the 19thc and well into the 20th.

FWIW, and this is my honest opinion, a hack got hold of the Bugaboo version, decided that bugaboo had no current meaning in his area and simply changed it to a popular phrase that also rhymed and was current in other songs at the time.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 02:11 PM

http://mysongbook.de/msb/songs/f/foggydw1.html

Susanne seems to have a scholarly presentation at that link. (That site is both easy to read and wonderfully helpful. Thank you, Susanne.)

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 02:06 PM

Thank you, Steve. Much appreciated!

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 02:01 PM

Mike/Michael,
I've had a good read of JR's 14 pages, mostly taken up with different versions and to be fair he states several times that he's not sure about the suggested symbolism. He obviously put in a fair amount of research but had nothing like the access we have today to broadsides, multiple international variants. He was doing the best with what he had to go on. There are several other songs which use the phrase 'foggy dew' for instance which he was obviously unaware of. I'll check out the earliest version of TFD as opposed to Bogalmaroo and compare this with other known Foggy Dews and report back.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 04:16 AM

Have no special take on that, Mike; shall have to give it some thought.

But, a caveat or maybe a defence ~~ your asking me suggests that you think I find symbol-hunting enjoyable and rewarding, and spend my time looking for them. Not so: like you & Steve, I find many such claims unconvincing and their pursuit and exposition tiresome. (I, don't forget, am he who interviewed the Opies for Folk Review and put into wider circulation Peter's dismissal of the 'plague' interpretations of Ring-o'-Roses, which I have always thought a real 'bright idea' of C19 fakelore, as "folklore about folklore".) It was just that I was an itsy-bitsy bit incensed at the vehemence of your taking me to task for having had the temerity to cite one such suggestion from one who seemed to me a reasonably competent and respectable authority, which I thought that those who had troubled to click on this thread might find of interest if they were not previously aware of it, as perpetuating "rubbish".   I do not necessarily urge symbolism in 'foggy dew'; I simply decline to discount the very possibility of it quite so absolutely as you & Steve would appear to have it, and still fail to find myself in any way at fault for having mentioned it. & please don't again deny any such implication ~~ "Why, oh why" right back to you.

Best as ever

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 03:20 AM

A quick Google, which I should have done before, shows that it is a verse from a version of "Dives and Lazarus":

Oh, hell is dark, oh, hell is deep;
Oh hell is full of mice,
It is a pity that any poor sinful soul
Should depart from our saviour, Christ.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 03:17 AM

Good Morning Michael, I am clearly not going to be able to convince you about the Bugaboo/Foggy Dew origin. So I am not going to spend any more time trying. But, as you clearly relish this sort of thing, what is your take on the line "Hell is full of mice" which occurs in one of the early folk carols (sorry, can't remember which one off the top of my head).

Steve. Have you read the Tashen book, "The Book of Symbols" by a team from the "Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism". It is a fascinating read and I find myself dipping in and out of it all the time.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 12:50 AM

... or Hieronymus Bosch or Millais's Bubbles or The Rake's Progress or the Tarot pack or The Dunciad or cont p 94...

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 06:04 PM

Ah. "Fakelore"; good concept ~~ useful word to crush opposition down with. But has it perhaps had the counterproductive effect that any attempt at interpretation of any subtext is liable to be summarily dismissed as "Fakelore"? which is perhaps just as foolish an assumption as the one it was first postulated by good old Richard Dorson, & echoed by Dave Harker in Fakesong, to combat, of everything having some sort of Fraserian or whatever undertone? As the moral to one of Thurber's Fables For Our Time put it, "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards".

If there is no symbolism at work in this case, what precisely, I ask you again to consider please, is the Foggy Dew, so near-universally [maybe 0·1% bugaboo to 99·99% Foggy Dew] adduced in all the versions that real people have heard of. I repeat ~~ dew is not foggy. If you are not backtracking, what was the point of your crack about kangaroo making more sense?

What, moreover, Steve, do you regard as "genuine use of symbolism"? Moby Dick? Macbeth's Weird Sisters? Tristram Shandy? Ghost Riders In The Sky? Frankenstein or The New Prometheus? Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde? Everyman? And what your qualifications to judge infallibly when its presence may be admitted?

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 04:37 PM

Now you really have lost me, Michael.

I'm not aligning myself with any disdain. I simply believe that there is no symbolism at work in this case, and with many of the other fakelore suggestions or pronouncements. However, I am highly interested in genuine use of symbolism.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 11:20 AM

Sorry ~~ He was a Shavian lawyer, not a Dickensian one: Mr Bohun in You Never Can Tell [1897], who kept telling people that they didn't know their own minds or intentions -- "You think you will, but you won't".

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:49 AM

You seem to have shifted ground a bit, Steve, and dropped your claim of 'literalism'? Does that mean that you no longer align yourself entirely with Mike Y's disdainful and [whatever he may claim] scornfully scouting denunciatory horror at the though that there might be some sort of symbolic dimension [that suggested by Reeves or some other] involved in a possible interpretation of the song under question?

I really can't see why he is getting so heated at the thought. (In that indispensable formulation of that Dickensian lawyer, "He thinks he isn't but he is").

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:24 AM

Ta, Dick, but wouldn't that be the dewy fog? But of course this isn't quite so easy to rhyme! However dewy the fog is or however foggy the dew is it still fits better than a word you've never heard of. Come to think of it 'kangaroo' fits better and makes more sense!

I'll get me coat!

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 05:02 AM

when the fog is hanging low to ground level it produces wetness on the grass much like dew

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 07:31 PM

It's quite likely that 'Foggy Dew ' simply arose ...

no evidence even to suggest that 'foggy dew' in this instance is anything but literal
.,,.

'Simply'? Bugaboo universally transmogrified into foggy dew 'simply'?

I know what fog is. And I know what dew is. But in what way can dew 'literally' be foggy, please?

I find your conceptions of 'simplicity' & 'literalness' somewhat equivocal I must say, Steve.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:55 PM

Is there anyone here NOT accepting that it's a good story? The earliest extant version was a good story and it still is today even though some of the point has been changed and the meaning is a little more obscure.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: JohnH
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:13 PM

Why can you not just accept that it's a good story??

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 01:53 PM

Steve,
I agree with everything you say.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 01:23 PM

MikeY,
It's quite likely that 'Foggy Dew ' simply arose as something that made sense to people who had never heard of a 'bugaboo' or 'bogul maroo'. Though the latter survived in a few versions it does come to us from a 17thc broadside. Similar words of course are still in common use, 'bogeyman' for instance.

Michael,
Unless you know otherwise there is absolutely no evidence even to suggest that 'foggy dew' in this instance is anything but literal. However, of course it is fun to speculate. But that's all it is, fun.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:17 AM

That won't help you in the test I suggested to you, tho, I betcha plenty 6 to 5!

Point is, seriously: The Foggy Dew, thus titled, has crossed over, broken out, from just folk to one of those songs of which one can say, with at most moderate hyperbole, "'Everybody' knows" (or at least has heard of): like My Old Man Says Follow The Van, say, or Twelve Days Of Christmas (which the Coppers call[ed] by another title, but nobody would recognise that either!), or Land Of Hope And Glory... cont p 98

Honest, now. I am sure you see what I mean.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:03 AM

Michael, a quick glance through the Roud index shows at least seven collected versions of "Bugaboo" in "furrin parts".

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:42 AM

And you are surely being disingenuous about my claim as to the universality of the title. So you came across one exception in furrin parts? Big deal!

A test for you ~~ mention a song called Bugaboo to anyone and see what kind of blank reception you get. But mention Foggy Dew to anyone [folkie or not! and I will guarantee you at least a 90% instant recognition. Much due [no pun!], no doubt, to that bloody ole Britten/Pears version; but that doesn't alter the fact as to the universal recognisablility of this standard title.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:19 AM

... and how would you estimate the tone of "Why, oh why..."? Neutral? Moderate?

I think not...


Sorry, tho ~~ I most unmannerly did not return your greeting. Good Morning right back to you, of course...

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:09 AM

"Michael, why, oh why, are you still sprouting that Reeves rubbish about the symbolism of dew?"

"I am always intrigued by how people are drawn to pseudo-facts"
.,,.
Do you really not find any tone of denunciatory scouting scornfulness in the above, Mike? "Rubbish"; "pseudo-facts": scarcely the usages of moderate rational argument, it seems to me. If they are not scoutingly scornful, then I reckon they will do till some scouting scornfulness comes along.

I didn't claim to "know" anything; this started because I simply referred to someone's (Reeves') speculations as I thought some might not have come across them and might find them interesting: which you proceeded, without further provocation of any kind, to denounce [I use the word advisedly] as "rubbish". And you didn't realise you might appear to be scouting scornfully? Oh, come on!...

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 03:13 AM

Good Morning Michael. Sorry, but "Foggy Dew" is not "the only, and universally accepted title for this particular song". Have a look at the version that I recorded from Dan Tate of Virginia (Musical Traditions double CD "Far in the Mountains" vols 1 & 2). Dan still called it "Bugaboo" and knew that the word referred to a ghost. Presumably Dan's version was taken to the States before the later broadsides began calling it "The Foggy Dew". And this brings us to an interesting point. Why did this title replace the earlier one? Was it a mis-hearing? Or did somebody see some underlying play on words? Words such as "dew"? I just don't know. Nor, I suspect, do you. But we do have the broadside texts to show how the song started and that it what I am basing my ideas on at the moment. Though just how you can see this as being said in a "denunciatory tone of scouting scornfulness" is beyond me.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 01:10 AM

To be strictly accurate, which I regard as essential, I find I have made a mistake in attributing above quotation to Steve Roud; it is actually the work of his music co-editor Julia Bishop. But I would nevertheless urge it as typical of what I have described as the work's 'scholarly-tentative' approach in general.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 12:58 AM

E.g., re his speculative tone, he ends a section of his introduction, on the relationship of tunes with words in varying versions by explicitly stating, "Alas, it is difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate these speculations"(p lvi).

In the present instance, thinking further: although one can see how "bugaboo" could, in some mondegreen-ish mishearings have become corrupted in some renderings as "foggy dew", it is surely astonishing that this should have taken so firm a hold that the rendering became, it is no exaggeration surely to say, universal: to the extent indeed that this is now the only, and universally accepted, title for this particular song. For this to have happened, it is at least surely arguable, and reasonable to think, that some association in the popular consciousness with the concept of "dew" should have been at play to produce this universal effect ~~ as, perhaps, some symbolic association of dew with virginity in some sort of traditional consciousness, such as to give rise to Reeves' (and others') speculations; which you nevertheless persist as taking as so unacceptable as to render them necessary, judging by your denunciatory tone of scouting scornfulness, to be declared as thoroughly out of court.

Would you care to comment on this?

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 03:02 PM

Yes, I have the New Penguin book, indeed. Fine compilation. And his 'presumably' [which I appreciated your leaving in] is typical, in that he writes in the style I should call 'scholarly-tentative' on matters of interpretation: as in general I always think of your doing in your notes &c which I have always admired; which why I have been somewhat taken aback by your tone of definitive finality here.

Re the milkmaids BTW: one doesn't exactly wash one's face by rolling in the water, does one!? The 'rolling' surely bespeaks more than care of the complexion.

~M~

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 02:46 PM

Michael,
sorry to take some time getting back to you, but I have had a lot of words to look up in the dictionary. Sorry, but I forgot to mention Steve Roud's notes to "The Foggy Dew" in the New Penguin book, but you can probably guess what he says. As regards "presumably", I did think to omit it from the quote, but in the interests of fairness I left it in.

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 01:26 PM

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: Reinhard - PM
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 05:58 PM

What Dick posted above is a mixture of A.L. Lloyd's and Martin Carthy's versions of The Foggy Dew.
Really?I dont think so, unless bert wrote it, have alook at berts version again

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 12:47 PM

And, looking again, you have neglected to take on board Steve's most vital proviso - "presumably", haven't you?

Subject: RE: The Foggy Dew[East Anglian Version]
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 12:44 PM

No harm in deferring to an expert ~~ what experts are for ~~ so long as one recalls that their pronouncements, on matters aesthetic or interpretive, are not necessarily final statements on the matter, never to be gainsaid by any alternative theory, or augmented by any additional one. I am sure Steve Roud is right about that particular superstition ~~ but maybe the stuff, in other theories or traditions or manifestations, can have some further FX. It's your insistence on regarding the laws of anthropology and traditional belief as entirely monocratic, autarchic, analogous to the Laws of Gravity or Thermo-Dynamics, that I am finding so perplexing.

~M~