> I have no idea what the construction "a-mouldering" is called.

I don't know what it's called, but in this case the "a-" is, to me, merely a syllable added to enhance (or perhaps more precisely enforce) scansion. With the a in place you have "JOHN Brown's BOdy LIES a MOULDring IN the Grave." If you take out the a it would be "JOHN Brown's BOdy LIES MOULDERring IN the GRAVE," which does not have the same "foot" print.

I suspect a poet or songwriter would know a word for this added syllable, just as I suspect there really is such a word. After all, we've found a word for just about everything we've ever looked at, thanks usually to tsuwm.

On the subject of John Brown, I lived near Harper's Ferry at one time, and absorbed a bit of the history of John Brown and his ill-fated raid on the armory there. His short-lived rebellion ended in a hanging at which Robert E. Lee was commanding officer of the Army detachment involved in the hanging. Lee was in the US Army at the time, and I'm not certain what his role was, since if I remember correctly the charge for which Brown was convicted and executed was treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Government was only peripherally involved.

I attended an auction in WV about 20 years ago at which there was up for sale the wooden chest Brown sat upon while being transported to his hanging. I actually put in the first bid ($1,000), but it went for far more than that. This auction will figure somewhat peripherally in the plot of my next novel, entitled The Great Copter Caper, though the item up for sale in the story will be not the chest but the wagon itself. In real life the wagon is in a small museum in Charles Town, now West Virginia rather than Virginia.

Iamb your humble correspondent

Ted


TEd