97-06-22 09:43 Lonesome Sparrow
97-06-22 11:05   Ben Taylor
97-06-22 21:42     catherine yronwode

From: lvdm@xs4all.nl (Lonesome Sparrow)
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
Subject: Words of Peggy Day
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 09:43:18 GMT

Here I am again asking you all to help me transcribe lyrics exactly as
they are sung. There is one line in "Peggy Day" (on the album
"Nashville Skyline") that is bothering me. It is published as "Well,
you know that even before I learned her name". I hear "Well, you know
ever even before I learned her name". Is that wat Bob sings? If not,
what does he sing? If it is, is it meaningful English (English is not
my native tongue) or are we dealing here with a mistake made by Bob,
i.e. should I have included this line in the list of mistakes I
recently posted?


From: Ben Taylor 
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
Subject: Re: Words of Peggy Day
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:05:33 +0100

Lonesome Sparrow  writes:
>Here I am again asking you all to help me transcribe lyrics exactly as
>they are sung. There is one line in "Peggy Day" (on the album
>"Nashville Skyline") that is bothering me. It is published as "Well,
>you know that even before I learned her name". I hear "Well, you know
>ever even before I learned her name". Is that wat Bob sings?

I agreed with you. It sounds to me like an error, which is why Dylan
doesn't properly enunciate the word "ever".

>what does he sing? If it is, is it meaningful English (English is not
>my native tongue) or are we dealing here with a mistake made by Bob,
>i.e. should I have included this line in the list of mistakes I
>recently posted?

It doesn't sound like correct English but it is meaningful.

Ben Taylor
--
bptaylor@laguna.demon.co.uk


From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: Words of Peggy Day
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 13:42:37 -0800
Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan

Ben Taylor wrote:
>
> Lonesome Sparrow  writes:
>
> >Here I am again asking you all to help me transcribe lyrics exactly
> >as they are sung. There is one line in "Peggy Day" (on the album
> >"Nashville Skyline") that is bothering me. It is published as "Well,
> >you know that even before I learned her name". I hear "Well, you know
> >ever even before I learned her name". Is that wat Bob sings?
>
> I agreed with you. It sounds to me like an error, which is why Dylan
> doesn't properly enunciate the word "ever".
>
> >what does he sing? If it is, is it meaningful English (English is not
> >my native tongue) or are we dealing here with a mistake made by Bob,
> >i.e. should I have included this line in the list of mistakes I
> >recently posted?
>
> It doesn't sound like correct English but it is meaningful.

At the risk of reviving the "meer" (mirror) thread, what you two (one
not a native English speaker and the other a British English speaker)
are discussing is simply Bob's Mid-Western dialect. Yes, once again, Bob
reveals his roots.

"Well, you know, even before I ever learned her name" would be the
proper word-order that a British English speaker would expect. (And, to
be truly proper, "ever" might well be deleted as redundant.)

However, the convoluted, "Well, you know, ever even before I learned her
name" is not peculiar to Bob Dylan -- and it is not a mistake.

The displacement of the word "ever," like the commonly-encountered
displacement of other time-frame words such as "nowadays," and
"sometimes" is a standard Midewestern colloqialism. It is used for
strong emphasis, and the displaced word always migrates toward the
beginning of the sentence. In doing so it may aquire shaded
connotational meanings. For instance, the forward displacement of the
time-frame words "any more" in the sentence

"Any more it don't hardly pay to raise tomatoes on this plot."

should be interpreted as

"We can no longer make a profit raising tomatoes on this plot, even
though we did so for years and i am just as good a gardenerer as i wever
was -- and i am completely disgusted by this turn of events."

The forward-displacement of "ever" is something Bob probably learned as
a child and that he knows is "wrong," so it is highly likely that in
transcribing the lyrics for publication, he corrected it to make himself
seem a better poet and less a regionaist.

catherine yronwode
The Lucky Mojo Curio Co.: http://www.luckymojo.com

The Lucky W Amulet Archive: http://www.luckymojo.com/LuckyW.html
Hoodoo Catalogue: http://www.luckymojo.com/luckymojocatalogue.html
Freemasonry for Women: http://www.luckymojo.com/CoMasonry.html
The Sacred Landscape: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html
Karezza and Tantra: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html