Talk:Freedom Come-All-Ye

"Translation"
I think this would be much better with an actual translation rather than an explication of the figures of speech. The allegorical meaning of a black guy from beyond Nyanga knocking down the evil gallows (if I got that right) seems obvious, or if not it can be explained in a note. The translation of the first verse could be a model for the rest. &mdash;JerryFriedman 01:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Additional comment by Dick Gaughan
(moved into correct sequence)

Edits made by unregistered user: McConnell on 02/01/08
Some of the above edits add some interesting links and context to the article, however the majority make the article encyclopedic and impossible to read. The user appears to be ignorant of wikipedia editing convention, the function of the discussion page and simple html formatting. The arrogance with which the user denounces the article as poorly written (I haven't contributed thus far btw) I presume can only come from being a learned scholar on HH but nonetheless the end result was an unreadable article.

I had come to the page to add to what I already knew of the song not to brandish my own knowledge for all to see.

Where I have preferred McConnell's translation I have (correctly) substituted it for the original.Neil McDermott (talk) 11:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Apology and comment
My apologies for having placed my earlier comment out of sequence, I'm still inexperienced with Wikipedia editing. I've moved it to below.

Most of the "translation" has been lifted almost verbatim, with a few modifications, from my website where I describe it as an "Interpretation in English", not a translation. It would have been polite had the writer credited the source.

The original is at http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/songs/texts/freecaye.html

Dick Gaughan (talk) 13:51, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In which case it ought to either be quoted verbatim in the article and properly credited, or removed if a copyright violation. Mutt Lunker (talk) 00:28, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Loanin
To describe a loanin as simply a path misses the point of the choice of that word and makes little sense in the context of the lyrics. A loanin is most specifically a combination of a route for driving livestock, containing pasture for them. This is well summed up at DSL as "a piece of pasture land, on which the cattle might be collected and by which they could be led" and in the Concise Scots Dictionary "a grassy (cattle-)track through arable land, freq leading to (common) grazing and also used as pasture, a milking place, a common green etc".

In the translation to say "pastured track" or the like, though literally correct would obscure the metaphor. Apart from the tautological aspect of a rendering the line as "Take the road to seek other paths", if the path aspect of "loanin" was the crucial one, why was "loanin" Henderson's choice when he had the choice of peth (simply), get, gate, gang, rod(din), bauk etc.? Of all these he specifically chose a word which indicates pasture and this is crucial to the metaphor: to take the road to seek new pastures for their ploys, not to take the road to a road for their ploys. Mutt Lunker (talk) 00:46, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

...and I forgot to even mention, the rendering of loanin as "pastures" is from Dick Gaughan's interpretation in English. Mutt Lunker (talk) 02:56, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Change of transcribed version
The change of transcribed version from that largely or entirely based on Gaughan's to that from Ross in the collected works introduces some questionable changes, some of which I would say are plain erroneous. Gaughan's version does not match Henderson's own audio rendition entirely but is overall superior to the current article version in a number of aspects. Henderson sings "It’s a thocht that wad gar oor rottans", per Gaughan, and not "will" as the article has it now. The new version in the article has added numerous deprecated apologetic apostrophes, not in Gaughan's transcription either. "Thae rogues" (those rogues) has now been rendered, plainly incorrectly as "they rogues". Do we know if Ross based his rendition on a written version by Henderson or is it his own transcription, the questionable aspects his own? Either way, unless there is some compelling reason per WP:MOSQUOTE these should probably "simply be corrected", again. Mutt Lunker (talk) 02:19, 26 July 2014 (UTC)