Foggy, Foggy Dew

The fog was already lifting when I took this picture this morning, but the dew was still heavy upon the grass. I've always loved the fog. Remember Carl Sandburg's poem: "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."? Such imagery in so few lines.


Foggy, Foggy Dew was an English ballad published around 1815 which has many versions. Burl Ives had a hit with the song during the 1940's. He once spent a night in jail in a Utah town for singing it in public. It was deemed too bawdy.

There are also two Irish versions known as Foggy Dew. The first has these lyrics:


Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o'er the dim weeping dawn
As to Shannon's side I return'd at last,
And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov'd best
Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!
While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years
Seem'd mingling their voices with the moaning flood:
Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,
My true love's shadow lamenting stood.



But the sudden sun kiss'd the cold, cruel mist
Into dancing show'rs of diamond dew,
And the dark flowing stream laugh'd back to his beam,
And the lark soared aloft in the blue;
While no phantom of night but a form of delight
Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,
And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast
Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.


The second version which is the one I relate to was written by Charles O'Neill after the Easter Uprising of 1916. Listen to Sinead O'Connor and the Chieftains perform their version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13MQFCfCYdQ

The only time I don't like fog is when I have to drive in it. What about you, do you like fog?