Talk:Back Home in Derry

"We cried for our wains" - Meaning?

Line 7-8 in the first couplet go:

In the rusty iron chains we cried for our wains

Our good women we left in sorrow.

According to Wiktionary, a wain is a horse carriage (apparently cognate to German "Wagen"), no alternative meanings are given. This this really what they are crying for? Before deploring the separation from their loved ones? I'm confused. --Johannes Rohr (talk) 08:14, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Good question. Seems like a case of not letting the meaning get in the way of a good rhyme. My alternate explanation based on the song's structure is that 'wains' would be a kind of neologism contraction of 'wee ones' (which is to say, children, which logic calls for in this place in the lyrics in parallel with the 'good wives' in the next line) but actually the internet did not seem to have this as an actual definition anywhere that I could find. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.204.101.52 (talk) 10:29, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Interesting that you call dialectal speech a neologism. The term is actually 'wean' (which just so happens to sound like wain in scots and irish accents) and is, as you guessed, a contraction of 'wee one'. Typheuss (talk) 19:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)