Talk:Fiddler's Green

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A reference to Tom Bombadil?

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In a word, "no". --- The LOTR books were not published until 1954-55, and the Hobbit was not published until 1937. This US-CAV ballad was published in 1923. Case solved. V. Joe 14:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

From Jerry Kacirk's The Word Museum:

fiddlers' green The place where sailors expect to go when they die. It's a place of fiddling, dancing, rum, and tobacco, i and is undoubtedly the "Land of Cocaigne" mentioned in medieval manuscripts. [Hotten] A sailors' elysium (situate on the hither and cooler side of hell) of wine, women and song. [Farmer]

Given the content of the two quoted songs and the cross-referenced definition Kacirk provides, I think the 'adjacent to Hell' thing ought to be added to the initial summary. I also want to say there's a sort of subtext of 'no good sailor/soldier goes to heaven' (because they are awful or restless occupations) 'but here they can still achieve their rest by shirking in a pleasant purgatory short of hell' going on... but I may be reading that into the material.

Kacirk also wrote Forgotten English, a collection of disused bits of english phrase and idiom. -Derik 02:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

"O Fiddler's Green is a palce I've heard tell, where fishermen go , if they don't go to hell".Pustelnik (talk) 18:58, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Cavalry ballad sounds like Kipling

For what it's worth, the last stanza of the cavalry ballad sounds like a Rudyard Kipling verse, poorly quoted from memory, which I may have read in a Tom Clancy book:

If ever you're wounded in Afghanistan's plain And the women approach to divide the remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains And go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Chuck339 08:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Fiddler's Green as a Place of Happiness

My Grandfather was an Irishman, James O'Dougherty, who emigrated to Canada after the Great War. He was born in 1898. I remember that he talked of Fiddlers Green as a place of rest and happiness, and The Dear knows that the Irish People have a history of poverty and destitution , and persecution. If my son or husband or father or brother had been press-ganged away to the English-Wars, or had been sailing from the age of 6yrs. old, I would rather believe that they had gone to Fiddlers' Green, and were singing and dancing with their mates and brothers, that they had plenty of food and drink, were never cold or afraid again, That no man would ever have stripes laid upon their back again.I used to have almost a perfect memory, but in the last year I have sustained a concussion and pleurisy, and my memory has been sadly reduced as an after effect of illness. Grandpa said that upon coming up to the place, you would first see three men sitting on a bench outside of the door, and that a young and beautiful maiden would ask you a question before you could lay down your oar and enter.I so wish that I could remember the question. He also described what the interior is said to be like, and that all your mates and male relations would be there. It would seem to be a place that only men went to,but I may remember imperfectly, as many women were known to disguise themselves as men and escape to sea, rather than starve at home, or live the hard life of women under the Catholic Church.If their is anyone who remembrs more about Fiddlers' Green than what is written on the page, perhaps they would consider sending me an e-mail, or adding more to the page. sincerely, Joanne Battersby. joanne_battersby@hotmail.com P.S. Please forgive me, I don,t know what a tilde[[[Special:Contributions/99.247.223.67|99.247.223.67]] (talk) 15:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)] is.

Traditionally, the sailor was supposed to walk inland carrying an oar over their shoulder, and the maiden who approached them would ask what it was. That would be the signal by which he knew he had reached Fiddler's Green. There's no recorded answer that the sailor is required to give that I've ever heard of. He just sets down his oar when he hears the question and he'll be given a stool outside the local pub and a glass of grog and a pipe of tobacco that always refill themselves , and he'll have nothing he need do after that except enjoy his grog and his pipe, tell old sea stories with his mates who sit around there with him, and watch the pretty girls dancing on the green to the sound of the fiddle.

The story about carrying an oar inland till someone doesn't recognize it appears to come from Homer's Odyssey, in which Odysseus was instructed at the end of his voyage to walk inland with an oar over his shoulder till he came to a village with so little knowledge of the sea that someone would ask him where he was going with that winnowing shaft, mistaking the oar for a piece of farming equipment because they'd never seen an oar before. There, he was to plant the oar in the ground, raise a temple to sacrifice to Athena, and go home, his journey over. How it got transplanted from the Odyssey into the sailors' legend, I don't know, but the idea of a sailor wanting a place that's so far inland that they don't even recognize the tools of his trade is perhaps understandable when they've had a hard time out there on the water. Quibbitzer (talk) 13:15, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

What happened to the nautical side?

I remember when I first saw this article a ways back that there was reference to Fiddler's Green originally being an Irish/nautical legend and then it was adopted by the cavalry. Now it just says the cavalry thought of it and completely removed the Irish/sailor origins. Yet on other sites Fiddler's Green still mentions the two. There wasn't any reason given that I could find, so what gives? If this wasn't because of research done and somebody just messed with the page, shouldn't things be put back to normal? 70.88.46.190 (talk) 01:04, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Fiddler's Green

Fiddler's Green was also the name of the Enlisted man's club at the now abandoned Naval Base at Bainbridge MD. Circa 1972. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.150.118.233 (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

its also a song by Tim Hart & Maddy Prior on their'FOLK SONGS OF OLDE ENGLAND' LP — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.90.201 (talk) 11:16, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Cruft

A lot of unsourced cruft has accumulated. Any objections to me scraping a bit off? Rklawton (talk) 14:01, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

[Hoist the Colours Song by Hans Zimmer, Ted Elliot, and Terry Rossio]

How to add Hoist the Colours from Pirates of the Caribbean as a reference? 2600:100A:B014:A81:D775:DD01:BB32:F442 (talk) 05:30, 11 March 2021 (UTC)