Down By The Water

I think a lot of you are on the right track with picking up on the imagery the song uses, but you're taking it very literally. Rarely does a songwriter of Polly's caliber tell a story for the sake of explaining a series of events. It's almost always a conduit for something else.

I agree for the most part with idoubtthat. To take that another step further and discard as much literal translation as possible, I think it's reasonable to see the song with dualistic meanings. It could very well be about the tensions and conflicts of sexual maturation. From my standpoint, though, it's always partly been an anthem for difficult childhoods. I think that separate avenue of meaning might be where a lot of the connotations of rape and molestation people are picking up on come from.

Growing up with a difficult, inflexible mother in specific, whose love and reliability are contingent on other things and who sees any assertion of independence as an affront and a betrayal, you learn that you have to lie and disguise yourself from a very early age. When it comes to maternal ineptitude and loading responsibilities on a child, you mature very quickly in order to cope, at the cost of your innocence. You become the mother to your mother. These dysfunctional dynamics in the mother-daughter relationship are very difficult to change once they've been established. It fucks you up and it follows you into your adult life. Most people who've been forced to revoke their childhood and act as adults when they're children end up later on being prone to immaturity and longing to make up for their childhoods as adults.

There will always be some level of personal interpretation that differs from person to person, but I think we all seem to agree on the general framework that there's ambiguity and uncomfortable tension between the mother-daughter roles, this is a story about lost innocence in some form, and the loss is being lamented. From there, it's a Rorschach connect-the-dots blank canvas for ourselves, as most songs are. And who really wants to take that kind of purging self-projection away, anyhow?

I disagree with the people who are saying that maybe PJ had miscarried in the past. "Daughter" is symbolic as idoubtthat says. I think the daughter she is referring to is infact her younger self who was so innocent and perhaps upon losing her virginity she regrets it and yearns to return to her younger innocence ("That blue eyed girl became blue eyed whore")

The mother/daughter theroy also fits.

"Some critics have taken my writing so literally to the point that they'll listen to 'Down by the Water' and believe I have actually given birth to a child and drowned her."

I didn't quite interpret this the same way. I think that this song isn't necessarily an allusion to her daughter loosing her virginity and the mother wanting her little girl back, but something more direct. I think that the disturbed narrator killed her daughter; the music itself and the strain in her voice supports this idea. Also, I think that the singer is moving in and out of reality; one minute she knows that she's killed her daughter, the next, she doesn't.

"That blue-eyed girl/ Became blue-eyed whore"= This is what pushes the mother over the edge: she catches her daughter with a man.

"Just like my daughter/ See her again"= The girl that she killed is no longer the same girl as her daughter; she's disassociated the two people in her mind (living, innocent daughter vs dead, non-virginal girl). She's disturbed enough to think that the dead body merely resembles her daughter, and she's wondering when she'll get to see her daughter again (she thinks that her daughter is gone, not dead).

"I took her home"= A reference to the previous Jesus statement, she sent her daughter to heaven, away from her being a whore.

"Little fish, big fish swimming in the water/ Come back here man gimme my daughter"= Since she killed her near the river, she's returned to it, or another river. I think that as she's saying this part, she is more detached from reality. She thinks that the fish is the one who stole her daughter and she's asking him for her back.

When I hear this song, I picture PJ sitting dirty on a river bank in the dark, rocking and staring blankly into the water, muttering at the fish to return her daughter.

I interpret it as being about the loss of innocence... particularly when losing her virginity (whether by force or consensual). The daughter (blue-eyed girl) is symbolic of the innocent version of herself; the Mother is symbolic of herself after she looses her innocence... The "Mother" then longs for her innocence/innocent-self back.

It's really a brilliant song, and there can be many ways to interpret it, as with a lot of PJ's songs. She's a great songwriter.

i think this is about a crazy woman who finds something out about her daughter and is angry at her. she gets so mad she kills her down by the water. she heard her daughter screaming and she was telling her to stop but she didn't. she takes the body home, then realises what she's done. she killed her in the water so she is askin for the fish to bring her daughter back

Yes,like she thinks her daughter is not pure anymore...something like Carrie's mother...it has a symbolic quality nonethless...like a fairytale. And she blames it on the "fish"=sex.

I don't think it's from a mother to her daughter i think it's from a boy to his lover. It doesn't say in the song that the girl is the daughter of the narrator it says "just like my daughter" so this is what it's about; there's this guy dating this girl and they love each other a lot but somehow the girl cheats on him and that's what "becoming a blue eyed whore"refers to.. And he has to leave her as a punishment although he loves her.. That's what i had to lose her to do her harm means.. But now he believes that she has suffered enough and just like a father always forgives her daughter he will forgive the girl.

all I know about this song is that it freaked me out when I was a kid. It always had a dark, Grimm-esque fairytale quality to me.

This song is not about PJ, she is singing it from " man's point of view" Who-ever this might be. he, is where she got the ideal for this song. " Down By the Water"

I lost my heart under the bridge to " that little girl" = man's girl-friend / wife

So much to me and now i moan and now i holler she'll never know just what i found = he'd found Love and later hate

That blue-eyed girl said " no more" That blue-eyed girl Became a blue eyed whore = she said " no-more" ( didn't want him) and became a blue-eyed whore

Down by the water "I" took "her hand" just like my daughter " I'll" see "her" again = He killed her ... and like his daughter who is dead, he'll see "her" again as well.

Oh help me Jesus Come through this storm "I" had to lose "her" to do "her" harm I heard "her" holler I heard "her" moan My lovely daughter I took "her" home. = when she became a blue-eyed whore ... He lost her, and did her harm. And " just like my daughter" / My lovely daughter ... I'll see her again.

Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water. Come back here, man, gimme my daughter. Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water. Come back here, man, gimme my daughter