Lyr Add: The Twang Man

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Mar 15 - 05:42 PM

My unabridged dictionary says that 'twang' can mean 'taste, or savor,' and is related to 'tang.'

Apparently nobody's interested in actually singing the song, and I'm glad, because there's nothing funny about one man knifing another.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Fergie (sans cookie)
Date: 27 Mar 15 - 08:52 PM

leeneia,

This little ditty is a favourite song here in Ireland and is sung very often; especially in Dublin. Dubliners love songs that end with a pious moral.

So now ye've heard my story, I hope yis will all be good men,
And not go chasing the twangman's mot, or any other auld hen,
For they'll lave ye without a brass farthing, not even yer auld sack o' rags,
And ye'll wind up in the gutter, just like poor auld Mickey-de-bags.

Fergus

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Mar 15 - 12:23 PM

I see that Slanguage agrees with Patridge:

Twang (vb & n poss onomat). Fuck a woman; woman seen as sexual object. Hence twangman (n) Pimp. N.d. Anon. The Twangman: 'Come listen to my story,/Tis about a nice young man./When the militia wasn't wanting/He dealt in hawking twang.

It's unlike my mother - a dignified and elegant woman, but not one with great patience for unnecessary obfuscation - to make any mistake on something like this. It may be that 'twine' is what she herself was told as a child and young woman.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Siggi Nebel
Date: 06 Aug 15 - 01:43 AM

"Twangman" in the sense of twine dealer would fit to a twang knife and a twang cart (although I can't really tell if this was the typical equipment), but the whole setting rather suggests that the song's hero actually is a pimp. This would very well imply that he accepts sexual relations of his mot to other men on a strictly commercial base without problems, but shows malicious reactions, if they start to go beyond.

So, the expression "twang man"could be a kind of double entendre that allows to tell the story of a "cully" who falls in love with a whore and is bumped off by her pimp as a kind parody of typical broadside ballads about - if you like "innocent" - jalousy tragedies.

I wouldn't claim that this is the only possible interpretation of this song, but it seems to me that it is at least coherent.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Tom clinton
Date: 04 Feb 16 - 05:45 PM

I sang this song in the sixties. I always presumed that Billy in the bowl meant sexual intercourse. Growing up in the 40s and 50s we used the word mot all the time for girl friend. Of course we didn't pronounce the 't'. I remember a girl coming to our door once and asking me "who's your mot?" This was in Primrose st in Phibsboro.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Taidhgín
Date: 29 Sep 16 - 03:01 AM

I believe the word "Mot" came from the Irish word
"Maith" meaning: good, well. "Maith also has other
meanings not relevant to mot.
Taidhgín

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: eftifino
Date: 29 Sep 16 - 03:35 AM

My dad taught me that twang was a kind of slab toffee, ( Hence the Twangmans Mot' having a treacle factory for his source of sugar). You would get a square foot of it for tuppence, and if it didn't stick to the counter, you got your money back! So you needed a knife and/or hammer to break the slabs up.

He also said that ' mot ' was a shortening of Moth, as in delicate butterfly, but with a less than generous implication! Similarly, Midge was a delicate fly, flitting from place to place, like lots of young wans in those days!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 29 Sep 16 - 05:01 AM

Hi GUEST,Taidhgín

If you glance through the rest of the thread, you'll see that the evidence suggests that the woman had Dutch rather than Irish roots!

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Guest: Tim Martin
Date: 01 Oct 16 - 12:34 AM

I don't know where I heard it but I've always known "Billy in the bowl" to be sexual intercourse. As regards "Mot" I believe it to be from Irish: Cailín 'maith' (A good girl). I've never heard of it being used elsewhere except in Dublin.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Terry Moylan
Date: 19 Oct 16 - 04:52 AM

Haven't been aware of this thread till now. I note that Dominic Behan's alternative verse has been overlooked:

He knew the route the Bags would take along up Watling Hill,
His heart it pounded like a flute he told it to be still,
He lay in wait by James's Gate and when poor old Bags came up
With his long knife he took the life of the poor oul gatherem up.

In my opinion, the idea of twang being a kind of sweetmeat, and a Twangman a dealer therein, is just prurient wishful thinking. It's surely a sexual term.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Liam Kenny Dublin
Date: 11 Jun 19 - 10:09 AM

Ok as a born and rared Dub I will share with all you guys the meaning in this great Dublin ballad
Twang was a type of sticky toffee sold from hand carts in old Dublin

He lay in wait by James's Gate Jame's Gate is a gate of Guinness's Brewery in James's Street Dublin.

Playing "Billy in the Bowl"
"Billy in the Bowl" was a "serial killer operating in around the Stony Batter district he was handicapped and couldn't walk and propelled himself around in a large metal bowl and would lure his victims by asking for directions and pretending he couldn't hear then getting them to bend over where he would use his very powerful arms to strangle and rob them.
The poor oul "Gather em up" "A gather em up"was a person who supplied the College of Surgeons with cadavers for training in anatomy classes the origin of these bodies was often very questionable but would probably have been as a result of grave robbing Oh yes a Midge is a little pond insect and His Mot is his girlfriend

Hope this goes some way to explaining

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: GUEST,Guest 1013
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 12:20 PM

I'm also an old born and reared in Dublin and agree with everything Liam Kenny said above.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Twang Man
From: leeneia
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 03:51 PM

There's nothing funny about a knifing, no matter how clever the rhymes or how jolly the tune.