The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

163 pop songs picked over by pedants (in 3,002 comments!)

I half expected a nymph to appear

What a great concept (“a true story” claims Nigel, live) – a bloke sharing his innermost thoughts with a bloke called Edward instead of his “sweet darling”. Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years is a wonderful song, although I suspect there might be one or two discussions around some of the minutiae on this one. Thanks to Eskimo Eric, Joe, gNick, Paul and Neil.

See lyrics to Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years

24 Letters Sent:
  1. dj

    i think it’s Edward McCrae

  2. grim

    It does sound rather like Edward McRae, although for a few years I realise I’ve been singing it as Edward McVeigh… which it doesn’t sound like at all. (Do I hear a rolled ‘R’ in the recording there?)

    Also I think it’s The Times who are uncontrollable; I picture incensed headlines.

  3. Neil G

    I thought it was Edward McVeigh (Vay).

  4. ive always thought it was Edward McCrabe

  5. Max Williams

    GRIM – isn’t it “I’m inconsolable, and at times uncontrollable”? That makes perfect sense to me, rather than a newspaper being uncontrollable…

  6. Well, yes, there is no dispute that it makes sense that way. To me, though, it seems to make sense both ways.

    Anyway, I so like the image of the local rag stirring up some frothingly vitriolic campaign of self-righteous indignation over exactly such a display of parish incompetence, that I’m willing to forgo the truth of the matter, and stick with that which pleases me the most.

  7. Neil G

    Just a thought regarding ‘Edward Mc whatever’. In Letters Sent, a letter is sent to a Miss McVeigh.

    Dear Miss McVeigh
    It pains me to say
    The school choir was dull
    And the blame lies with you

    Could this be a relative of Edward? It still sounds like McVeigh/Vey/Vay to me.

  8. Petrovic

    This is totally lifted from the Yahoo HMHB messageboard, so sorry for pinching the story, but…
    WRONG BODY BURIED IN SHOCKING GRAVESIDE MIX UP

  9. Matt

    It is definitely Edward McCrae. As in George, or Colin.

  10. Has anyone got any hard evidence for these various spellings of Edward’s surname though?

  11. dj

    when i was a lad one of my dad’s mates that he used to go fishing and to the snooker club with was called charlie mccrae and this is how his name was spelt which is why i spelt it that way, no other reason. his daughter was a year older than me and was quite keen on the “i’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours” game as i recall

    *eyes glaze over wistfully*

  12. dj

    apologies, this may or may not be construed as “hard” evidence

  13. Dave F.

    Let’s complain…

    Ah, but she wouldn’t know ’cause she’s two hundred metres away.

    I’m not sure dandy should be capitalized.

  14. Alan K.

    To clear this up. I reckon it is definitely Edward McVey.

    The same Miss McVey as was mentioned in the song ‘Letters Sent’.
    She stood for parliament for Wirral West at the last election & lives in West Kirby [on the Wirral] so its a strong chance she is one & the same person.

    http://www.mccannfiles.com/id113.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_McVey

  15. Charles Exford

    Clear up, eh ? Would seem strange if Esther McVey were the same person as Edward anybody…. are you suggesting an Adrian-stroke-Sophie situation ?

    Nobody doubts McVey (or another spelling that sounds like that) in “Letters Sent”, and that name may or may not be inspired in some way by the execrable Esther … but why suspect a link to this song?

    The name sounds like McRae to me.

  16. parsfan

    I’ve always sung “Edward McGrain”, and will continue to do so.

    I will, however, stop singing “I can tell from the steam…”. It never did make sense (or sound like it for that matter).

  17. Charles Exford

    Lyrics-wise the only absolute elucidation to emerge from Sheffield last night was a deliberately exaggerated enunciation of “McCrae” as if making a purposeful effort to amend the version on here.

    Oh and last night this particular true story was set in the village of Mere (the one in Cheshire, “where Graeme Souness used to live”).

  18. Charles Exford

    It is officially confirmed as “McCrae”.

    Interestingly, and somewhat obviously once you know, it’s “She” (with a capital “S”) and not “sheep”. At this particular point, NB57 is paraphrasing John Eastwood, a local Wirral writer, taking about an idyllic spot where he used to sit and read books as a lad in pre-war times. Eastwood in turn is alluding to references to nymphs in Swinburne’s poetry. And the “brushwood” may or may not be a reference to a Kipling story.

    John Eastwood of course is lauded as one of the “Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral” under the pic’s of Big Jimmy Nail on the inside cover of that album. And his writing seems to have influenced NB57 in other songs too, notably influencing some of the more rural images in “Emerging from Gorse”.

  19. “somewhat obviously once you know, it’s She (with a capital “S”) and not sheep”

    …come on then Exxo, enlighten us with a reference or something. It don’t make no sense to me, guv.

  20. Charles Exford

    I just meant it’s one of those that once you know what the word is, you can hear it clearly.

    I didn’t mean it was obvious that it should be capitalised, or obvious what it means, but take it from me “She” is capitalised in the John Eastwood passage in question (from “Wirral Born and Bred”), and I suspect from Eastwood’s next sentence, that the capitalisation has got something to do with a Swinburne poem about nymphs. I’ve got the book at home but I won’t be there for a couple of days so no page reference.

  21. Charles Exford

    OK, from the splendid little volume “Wirral Born and Bred: the Old Life of the Countryside in Wirral”, by John Eastwood, page 25 (of just 63 pages):

    “In the middle of the glade stood a wild apple tree, which gave it its name. There was a grassy bank beneath it, and when I grew older I would spend many a happy hour here with a book by R.L. Stevenson or Hardy, or Swinburne’s poems, half-conscious of the furtive movements of moorhen or water-vole in the rushy ponds,the shy summer warblings of countless little birds in the thickets of gorse or hawthorn, the deep midsummer hum of a myriad insects. If one moved suddenly a pair of wild ducks was likely to hurtle startlingly from the rushes. It was a magic place: one half-expected some nymph to emerge shyly from the brake, some not-impossible She grown from the Wirral scene (particularly after reading Swinburne). Unfortunately she never did; one had to be content with Suke Damson or Catriona.”

    Suke and Catriona are Hardy’s and Stevenson’s most alluring heroines, respectively. NB57, on the other hand, has to be content with Claire Rayner.

    To use she as a noun as in “a she”, or “some she”, is a poetic and unusual turn of phrase these days, but nevertheless a perfectly acceptable way to say “a female person” (you’ll still find it in a decent dictionary). The reason for the capitalisation is not entirely clear to me but it may come from whichever of Swinburne’s poems Eastwood is referring to here, a title for a divine nymph perhaps, a bit like the convention of capitalising He for a divinity, etc. I dunno, the capital “S” doesn’t matter really I suppose.

    To shorten the line, and presumably to take us away from any particular locality, NB57, instead of “grown from the Wirral scene”, says “from the brushwood”, which doesn’t apper in the Eastwood text, and it would be uncharacteristic of me if I didn’t wonder aloud where this comes from, putting two and two together and making loads of bollocks…

    But I’ll just say it’s interesting that Kipling has a famous story (The Brushwood Boy) in which a dream girl, the Brushwood Girl, repeatedly appears to the hero from out of the brushwood. We certainly have the words at least 3 writers (Eastwood, Swinburne and Hardy) wrapped up in these couple of lines of Blackwell, so why not a 4th – Kipling ?

  22. Blimey, it’s been an epic few days on this web site, but if there was a “comment of the week” award, that’d be it. Top work.

  23. Here here. It’s comments like that one that make this website what it is.

  24. Jan

    Lordy! Still getting my head around this classic bit of word, Mr E. I read somewhere last year that most roadies are surprisingly well-read as they have to spend so much time waiting around — enough so to make sending time with them much like a classical literary education. Here amongst us we appear to have an outcrop of the very same phenom. Any takers for a sweep on the date of publication of the first PhD thesis on HMHB?

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