Post by Quinn CPost by WhiskersPost by Harrison HillSome of you are parents of young children - others
My poor wife has had this conversation with a 6yo today.
[Waiting at a South London level-crossing as trains
pass].
Him: "What is the name of that train?"
Her: "I don't know."
Him: "You must know! It went over the hill and far
away. You must have seen it!
The run-away train went over the hill and she blew.
<http://nurseryrhymescollections.com/lyrics/the-runaway-train.html>
| The engineer said the train must halt and she blew,
I would understand this to talk about a female engineer, if
Harrison hadn't told me they don't exist.
That is certainly a possible reading of that line. I don't think
anything in the song contradicts it.
Trains are female, at least sometimes. Locomotives on their own
likewise. In BrE, we'd usually call the person driving the train 'the
driver' rather than 'the engineer' these days, but the usage in this
song may be accurate for circa 1900 (when train drivers were expected to
present as male, of course, which is no longer the case). (Reference in
the lyric to the Great Western is what makes me think the song is
British, that being one of the original big railway companies here).
It took me ages, as a child, to work out that when 'she blew' she was
blowing a (steam) whistle. I was at first sure that she exploded. I
grew up near a main railway line on a slope, up which the steam engines
worked very hard and down which they did sometimes go very fast, with
their whistles going. Each loco's whistle sounded different.
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-- Whiskers
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