At 10:34 AM 1/4/01 +0000, you wrote:
>There's a discussion currently taking place on one of the Richard
>Thompson lists about the ballads "Herod and the Cock" and "King Pharim",
>concerning the phrase "full fences three" in the last line of this
>verse:
>
> If this be true, king Herod said,
> that you being telling me,
> this roasted fowl that's in the dish
> shall crow full fences three.
>
This is a wild guess, but maybe this mystery word could be the singer's
effort to makes sense of an imperfectly understood or remembered use of the
old stock phrase "full fain" (meaning gladly or joyfully). If so, the
original would have been something like "shall crow full fain times three".
--Jim McCulloch
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