Someone was trying to persuade me lately that I sang an incorrect version of one of my very own favourite Elvis songs.

We had a heated argument, and anyone that knows me will agree that in my youth (in the last century) I bore an uncanny resemblance to the King. Other than the fact I had foxy curly hair and a freckled face, I think one could see certain similarities in our facial profiles and muscular formation.

Anyhow, my friend scoffed at me when I crooned ‘Love me tender, love me true, all my dreams fulfil…’ saying it was ‘Love me tinder…’

Will ya go way with yourself - in my youth and in Elvis’s adolescence the word tinder meant something very dry and easy to burn.

In Ireland, we had cipín and kindling long before the fire-lighter had been invented. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, where the Presleys lived, they used sliced, dried buffalo dung to get the campfire going.

In this heat wave we are experiencing - along with most of Europe - we regularly hear warnings of forest fires, bush fires and gorse fires because of the ‘tinder-dry’ vegetation and undergrowth.

The word tinder has been with us for generations, as has the now nearly forgotten tinderbox, which was a small container, often made of metal, used to start fires before our ancestors and Maguire and Paterson came up with the idea of matches.

About the size of a gramophone-needle box, it would have ‘tinder’ or flammable material - maybe cloth, dried briars or straw, also some steel, and a little piece of flint. By hitting the steel against the flint, a spark resulted and in turn that lit the tinder, producing a flame.

I was never in the scouts, but I remember........

© Evening Echo