Steeleye span lyrics query: "club or mell"
Fred Curtis
Steeleye Span are a favourite group of mine, but often their
lyrics are a bit hard to make out. I've recently discovered a
wonderful resource - the Digital Traditon WWW page at
http://web2.xerox.com/digitrad. It helped with the SS song
"The Blacksmith", in which every recording I have Maddy Prior
sings:
"And where has my love gone with his cheeks like roses?
He's gone across the sea, gathering <mumbled syllable> roses".
Which turned out to be 'primroses'. Thinking I was on to a good
thing, I checked out 'King Henry', to find out what the fiend's
nose was being compared to - in the song it sounds like "club or
mell". Unfortunately, according to the DT WWW page, that's
exactly what it is:
Her teeth were like the tether stakes
Her nose like club or mell
And nothing less she seemed to be
Than a fiend that comes from Hell
So, does anyone know what on earth a 'mell' is?
Cheers,
-Fred Curtis.
--
"He heard the rattling of strange bone instruments & the whine of
cursed flutes" -- Brian Lumley: "The Clock of Dreams"
jo...@netcom.com
> So, does anyone know what on earth a 'mell' is?
Just a guess: it's probably related to the Latin "malleus," hammer. We
have other words derived from that root in modern English, like "maul,"
which, when it's a noun, means a big sledge-hammer-like thing. I would
hazard that a "mell" is a large blunt striking tool of some sort.
(Wow. Four years of high-school Latin finally came in handy for
something, a quarter of a century after the fact.)
--
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-__ __ /_ Jon Berger "If you push something hard enough,
//_// //_/ jo...@netcom.com it will fall over."
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GreeneKing
Martin Carthy's "King Knapperty" from the Crown of Horn LP: "his teeth
they were like tethering stakes, his nose was three foot long..."
John Peekstok
: Steeleye Span are a favourite group of mine, but often their
: lyrics are a bit hard to make out.
: Thinking I was on to a good
: thing, I checked out 'King Henry', to find out what the fiend's
: nose was being compared to - in the song it sounds like "club or
: mell". Unfortunately, according to the DT WWW page, that's
: exactly what it is:
: Her teeth were like the tether stakes
: Her nose like club or mell
: And nothing less she seemed to be
: Than a fiend that comes from Hell
: So, does anyone know what on earth a 'mell' is?
I've always assumed it to be an old and/or regional pronunciation of the
word "maul" which is a large hammer used as a weapon.
--
_______________________________________
John Peekstok john...@cyberspace.com
"If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?"
m...@wpo.nerc.ac.uk
>Subject: Steeleye span lyrics query: "club or mell"
>From: fr...@cs.su.oz.au (Fred Curtis)
>Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 00:08:38 GMT
The Oxford English Dictionary defines mell as:
"A heavy hammer or beetle of metal or wood; a mace or club; also a chairman's
hammer", and lists 8 quotations using it from 1300 to 1897.
And before anyone asks, OED lists beetle (apart from the creepy variety) as:
"Implement consisting of a heavy weight or 'head' usually of wood with a
handle or stock, used for driving wedges or pegs............"
An alternative spelling of mell is mall, which is defined as "mace or wooden
club......."
All clear now I trust!
Mark Venn
Graham Taylor
"Her teeth were like the tether stakes,
Her nose like club or mell"
appears in King Henry on Below The Salt (from the lyrics on the
sleeve). It sounds a variation on the same song. Unfortunately I too
have no idea what they mean.
Graham Taylor
James Prescott
: Fred Curtis (fr...@cs.su.oz.au) wrote:
: > So, does anyone know what on earth a 'mell' is?
: Just a guess: it's probably related to the Latin "malleus," hammer. We
: have other words derived from that root in modern English, like "maul,"
Hole in one.
Maul it is.
James Prescott (ja...@nucleus.com)