Talk:Fiddler's Green
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A reference to Tom Bombadil?
In a word, "no". --- The LOTR books were not published until 1954-55, and the Hobbit was not published until 1937. This US-CAV ballad was published in 1923. Case solved. V. Joe 14:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
From Jerry Kacirk's The Word Museum:
- fiddlers' green The place where sailors expect to go when they die. It's a place of fiddling, dancing, rum, and tobacco, i and is undoubtedly the "Land of Cocaigne" mentioned in medieval manuscripts. [Hotten] A sailors' elysium (situate on the hither and cooler side of hell) of wine, women and song. [Farmer]
Given the content of the two quoted songs and the cross-referenced definition Kacirk provides, I think the 'adjacent to Hell' thing ought to be added to the initial summary. I also want to say there's a sort of subtext of 'no good sailor/soldier goes to heaven' (because they are awful or restless occupations) 'but here they can still achieve their rest by shirking in a pleasant purgatory short of hell' going on... but I may be reading that into the material.
Kacirk also wrote Forgotten English, a collection of disused bits of english phrase and idiom. -Derik 02:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cavalry ballad sounds like Kipling
For what it's worth, the last stanza of the cavalry ballad sounds like a Rudyard Kipling verse, poorly quoted from memory, which I may have read in a Tom Clancy book:
If ever you're wounded in Afghanistan's plain And the women approach to divide the remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Chuck339 08:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
