The Foggy Dew

The Foggy Dew

This is a true-life story known in many forms. Sometimes the girl is frightened by a ghost, sometimes she is disturbed by the weather; the foggy dew. In either event, she comes to the old bachelor for comfort, and gets what she came for. The Irish have it as a sentimental piece of blarney. The Scots have it briefly as a bawdy guffaw. The East Anglian ploughman has it straightest... he sings it without a laugh or a tear, just as it happened. But the vital information he respectfully keeps to himself. The Foggy Dew is a song known all over England yet rarely seen in print except with the words bowdlerized, for this is surely the age of censors.