Massive Attack and Caroline Lavelle! I ADORE this song. The meaning is pretty straightforward, I think. Sung from the perspective of a wife whose husband is a whaler who is hunting a sperm whale. (The elusive white whale!) He's away for months on end. She's depressed about it. He never returns, presumably because he dies at sea (thus, sleeping without a headstone).
I believe the correct 3rd stanza is:
All ye ladies that smell of wild rose
Think you for your perfume of where a man goes
Think you of the wives and the babies that yearn
For the man ne'er returns sleeping without a stone
(Or that might be from another version of the song.)
Massive Attack and Caroline Lavelle! I ADORE this song. The meaning is pretty straightforward, I think. Sung from the perspective of a wife whose husband is a whaler who is hunting a sperm whale. (The elusive white whale!) He's away for months on end. She's depressed about it. He never returns, presumably because he dies at sea (thus, sleeping without a headstone).
I believe the correct 3rd stanza is:
All ye ladies that smell of wild rose Think you for your perfume of where a man goes Think you of the wives and the babies that yearn For the man ne'er returns sleeping without a stone
(Or that might be from another version of the song.)