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Read the original blog post2.14pm
31 March 2008
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Written by: Trad arr. Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey
Recorded: 24 January 1969
Engineer: Glyn Johns
Released: 8 May 1970 (UK), 18 May 1970 (US)
John Lennon: vocals, acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney: vocals, acoustic guitar
George Harrison: lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums
Available on:
A 38-second ad-lib recorded between takes of Two Of Us, Maggie Mae …
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11.07am
1 November 2013
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I was looking at Wikipedia and the spelling for the song was Maggie May, why did the Beatles spell it Maggie Mae ?
11.30am
17 January 2016
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Starr Shine? said
I was looking at Wikipedia and the spelling for the song was Maggie May, why did the Beatles spell it Maggie Mae ?
Maybe that's how they know it to be spelled. Or they just felt like it. 
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11.40am
14 June 2016
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Maybe it's the same reason they spelled "git" as "get"
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8.10am
1 November 2013
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William Shears Campbell said
Maybe it's the same reason they spelled "git" as "get"
So it is more commonly spelled as Mae in Liverpool?
They did credit all the Beatles as writers so was a different spelling a way to make more money?
11.17am
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1 May 2011
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Does anyone else hear John sing "Tis the part of Liverpool, dare I dare me tool?"
All the lyrics online say "This is the part of Liverpool, they returned me to" which it sounds nothing like to me.
John wondering if he should dare risk his willy when with a prostitute is some great humour.
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5.15pm
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27 November 2016
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That's interesting, it always sounded more like “Tis the part of Liverpool, she here returned me to”.
Regardless I think John was deliberately doing something funky with the lyrics
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5.49pm
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17 December 2012
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It's "'Tis the Port of Liverpool" not "part". The returning sailor on dry land again.
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7.50am
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1 May 2011
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Ron Nasty said
It's "'Tis the Port of Liverpool" not "part". The returning sailor on dry land again.
If you listen to the raw tape, John is clearly singing "part". The lyrics say 'port' but John is obviously not singing what they are meant to be, as he often did.
Maybe we could get a major argument going; folk screaming either side of the debate, eyes blinded by fingers so they cannot read any response to their furiously typed matter-of-fact opinion.
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5.24pm
2 May 2013
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John is deliberately singing in his thickest Scouser accent. I always heard:
"Tis the part of Liverpool/Where I dare me tool" - basically interpreted (by me) as the red light area where he chances intercourse with a prostitute, literally 'Daring his tool' and hoping not to catch a nasty resulting sexual disease...
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20 August 2013
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I just read about the history of this folk song.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik.....folk_song)
British sea music historian Stan Hugill writes of an early reference to the song in the diary of Charles Picknell, a sailor on the female-convict ship Kains that sailed to Van Diemen's Land,* in 1830. This indicates that versions of the song date back to the actual period of penal transportation mentioned in the lyrics as Maggie's fate. In the earliest known version, the protagonist is "charming Nellie Ray", who may have been a real transported prostitute and thief.[1] The chorus is "Oh! my charming Nellie Ray, They have taken you away, You have gone to Van Dieman's cruel shore: For you've skinned so many tailors, And you've robbed so many sailors, That we'll look for you in Peter Street no more".[3]
Sending convicts away on ships. The idea is coming back around...what's old is new again.
*Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania during the European exploration and colonisation of Australia in the 19th century.
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