Talk:Widecombe Fair (song)

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Tom Pierce is a young talanted boy at the minser school

--92.235.129.66 (talk) 16:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC) The article states that it is not known if the song refers to real people. In my view it does, the majority of the names can be found on headstones in the Spreyton church graveyard (Devon GR SX698968). Supposedly that is where the party travelled from. The pub in that village is the 'Tom Cobley Tavern'.

--Nice one 92.235.129.66 ! I found a number of baptism records in ancestry.co.uk which are suggestive of the same area just a few miles north of Widecombe. It would be interesting to compare notes and get an idea of the date of the song. Unfortunately I think this all comes under the heading of original research and it therefore inadmissable in the article. Am I correct here? Mike Spathaky (talk) 02:24, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

--I am deleting the sentence 'The phrase "and all" is working-class British English for "also" or "as well".' It is not appropriate for the lead section and is in my view irrelevant anyway. While "and all" can indeed mean "also" (in anyone's colloquial speech not just "working-class British English"), the context here clearly implies the meaning "all and sundry" saying that anyone and everyone was at the Fair. As the subsequent sentence says, the phrase "Uncle Tom Cobley and all" has passed into the langauge with that meaning. Mike Spathaky (talk) 23:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)