Oh dear. This is embarrassing.
I hadn't thought of checking the words. As this song is linked in my
mind, rightly or wrongly, with Yorkshire, I'd taken for granted Old
Towler pursued foxes.
Dru
On 11 Dec 2007, at 15:39, Colin wrote:
Er, a little more than implied. The last line of the
What does the word towler mean? I've looked it up on a couple of
on-line Scots and Geordie dictionaries, but found nothing. For me the
tune title conjures up an image of an oldster wrapped in a soggy towel
having just emerged from his bath. I'm happy to replace it with that of a
beagle or
Yes, those are the words that I have. A quick Google shows the words are by
J. O'Keefe to Wm Shield's tune, published about 1796.
To be fair, the same quick Google shows old Towler to be a common name for
a hound of any kind, so whether the songwriter was referring to a particular
stag hound
The OED says that towl is a form of toll and that a toller is A
decoy; spec.[ifically] a dog of a small breed used in decoying ducks. It
associates the word with less familiar meanings of toll, namely to entice,
decoy, allure, incite, instigate...
These semantics would seem to fit with the
