This song is as is implied about a character who believes a friend of his to be a hound - dog, simply because he is crying all of the time. It is possible that if he has some sort of medical condition or mutation which means that he has no tear ducts, and if he has lived an entirely solitary life then he may not realise that human beings are capable of crying, but that he has seen a dog cry before. This is how he mistakes a human being for a species of dog, having seen very few human beings, let alone one in distress enough to cry.
It is the next section of this song that is considered the most controversial and dubious of all, as the singer refers to his misidentified subject as having never caught a rabbit and not being as friend of his. It has long been a debate amongst musicologists about whether the man who is misidentified as being a canine was not his friend to begin with, or whether being his friendship is subject to having caught a rabbit. May this debate continue for many years.
This song is as is implied about a character who believes a friend of his to be a hound - dog, simply because he is crying all of the time. It is possible that if he has some sort of medical condition or mutation which means that he has no tear ducts, and if he has lived an entirely solitary life then he may not realise that human beings are capable of crying, but that he has seen a dog cry before. This is how he mistakes a human being for a species of dog, having seen very few human beings, let alone one in distress enough to cry. It is the next section of this song that is considered the most controversial and dubious of all, as the singer refers to his misidentified subject as having never caught a rabbit and not being as friend of his. It has long been a debate amongst musicologists about whether the man who is misidentified as being a canine was not his friend to begin with, or whether being his friendship is subject to having caught a rabbit. May this debate continue for many years.