Song To Woody

In keeping with the beautiful language motif, I was listening to the song "Song to Woody" by Bob Dylan. As I was listening I was reading the lyrics, I got to thinking about how Dylan used names in his song like Woody Guthrie, Cisco, Sonny and Leadbelly. Dylan is directly speaking to these guys and using their names in the song. I think that the song and its lyrics are just beautiful, but then I thought about what a statement of respect Dylan was probably offering to these men by including, not just alluding to their names. All the names are of musicians that probably meant something to Dylan and it's just so cool to see him using them in his song. The grammar rule that applies here is of course using proper nouns and capitalizing to show use. On English-club.com the rules is stated: We always use a Capital Letter for the first letter of a proper noun (name). This includes names of people, places, companies, days of the week and months. It's a pretty simple rule, but to me, using these names in the song signifies importance I think. We grow up hearing and using this rule, but something really struck me while I was reading the lyrics. The names are important to Dylan, and the capitalization almost alludes to them being important. Its an interesting point of respect for a song writer to do so.


I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walking a road other men have gone down
I'm seeing a new world of people and things
Hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song
About a funny old world that's coming along
Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's dying and it's hardly been born.

Hey Woody Guthrie but I know that you know
All the things that I'm saying and a many times more
I'm singing you the song but I can't you sing enough
'Cause there's not many men that've done the things that you've done.

Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

I'm leaving tomorrow but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hitting some hard travelling too.