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To: bvw
It's a "lap stone" - the cobbler's tool. Other than that, the song is as I learned it years ago.

Murder ballads like "The House Carpenter", "The Twa Brithers", and "Oxford City", as well as bawdry like "The Little Ball of Yarn" and "Ten Nights Drunk" are sung by the tinkers but also by house-people. They also sing songs in the Gaelic, esp. love ballads like "The Red-Haired Man's Wife".

The only other songs I know about tinkers are "Robin Hood and the Tinker" - a very old (and very long) song, and "The Jolly Tinker", but that's exceedingly bawdy and not fit to repeat (until we've all had a coupla beers).

143 posted on 09/23/2002 7:23:33 PM PDT by AnAmericanMother
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To: AnAmericanMother
When I heard it long ago on the "Lark in the Morning" field collection album I thought it sounded like "rubstone" -- actually "me rubstone keeps baiting away", meaning a sharpening stone biteing into a metal blade to sharpen it.
144 posted on 09/23/2002 8:19:50 PM PDT by bvw
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