Fiddler's Green
Fiddler's Green is the happy land imagined by sailors where there is perpetual mirth, a fiddle that never stops playing and dancers that never tire.
It features in an old English legend:
They say that an old salt who is tired of seagoing should walk inland with an oar over his shoulder. When he comes to a pretty little village deep in the country and the people ask him what he is carrying... he will know that he's found Fiddlers Green. The people give him a seat in the sun outside the Village Inn with a glass of grog that refills itself every time he drains the last drop and a pipe forever smoking with fragrant tobacco. From then onwards he has nothing to do but enjoy his glass and pipe and watch the maidens dancing to the music of a fiddle on Fiddlers Green.
It is also the subject of numerous songs, including this Irish sea chanty "fiddler's green" about a seaman who is dying at sea.
- Chorus
- "Wrap me up in my oil skin and blanket,
- No more 'round the docks, I'll be seen,
- Just tell me olde shipmates,
- I'm takin a trip mates,
- and I'll see ya some day in Fiddler's Green"
In Neil Gaiman's Sandman novels, Fiddler's Green is a location in the mystical landscape of the Dreaming.
It once spent a few years as a human being, just for a change of pace, basing its appearance and personality on the writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
Referenced By
Fables and Reflections
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