"Fogarty's Cove" comes across very differently if you have electric coils

[rachelmanija]

Poll #20813

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 113

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If someone is described as having "eyes like the top of a stove," their eyes are...

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Orange, like a flame.
20 (17.7%)

Blue, like a flame.
12 (10.6%)

Green, like a flame.
0 (0.0%)

Red, like electric coil burners.
32 (28.3%)

Black, like iron
36 (31.9%)

Silver, like steel
1 (0.9%)

White, like enamel
5 (4.4%)

Some other color related to the top of a stove
7 (6.2%)

Comments

[philomytha]

I always parsed that as warmly expressive eyes rather than being about eye colour. If it was the colour of my stove, it would be a blue gas flame, I guess.

[rachelmanija]

That makes so much more sense. I always pictured them orange as my stove flame (which is otherwise white enamel), and while I knew that couldn't be right, it gave me the most amazing mental image.

[mrissa]

That's astonishing, because my stove is one of the least expressive things I own. It can be quite hot and you'll never know to look at it.

(I would have laughed immoderately at this simile and been thrown out of the prose a bit.)

[rachelmanija]

Fogarty's Cove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1bB8hU_pzs

[sholio]

I'd picture glowing hot metal, so something in the orange to red range, which isn't precisely covered by the poll. (More like "red like electric coil burners" than anything else, but ... that thing metal does where it glows orange-white-hot, I guess.)

I have no familiarity with the canon, though.

[rachelmanija]

It's a very pretty song about a sailor's love for his wife:

My Sally's like the ravens wing
Her hair is like her mother's
With hands that make quick work of a chore
And eyes like the top of a stove
Come suppertime she'll walk the beach
Wrapped in my old duffle
With her eyes upon the masthead reach
Down in Fogarty's Cove


She will walk the sandy shore so plain
Watch the comber's roll in
'Til I come to Wild Rose Chance again
Down in Fogarty's Cove

[sholio]

Hahaha, well okay, in context that's COMPLETELY different than what I was picturing! "Warm", I guess? Glowing orange eyes is a very different mental image and suddenly I see what you mean about modern stoves making a difference. XD

[graydon]

It's a pre-electric kenning.

[muccamukk]

Knowing the era that song refers to, I'm picturing a cast iron wood stove like the folks who lived in the woods always had. Which would be black unless you were on verge of burning the house down.

[the_rck]

Looking at that context, I'm not sure the simile is meant to be visual. It may simply be warmth/heat which can go to affection, life, sexual attraction, temper, and a lot of other things.

[sholio]

Context honestly makes all the difference here.

[rachelmanija]

I always had the context, and yet every time I hear the song, I picture her with flaming demonic orange eyes.

[genarti]

Ah! Not a song I knew, either. In context, I'd take it to mean "smoldering with heat [when we look at each other]," rather than anything about color or appearance.

[marycatelli]

Methinks the poll would be improved with "that simile conjures up no image whatsoever."

[radiantfracture]

Perfectly round w/psychedelic spiral interior. Or else covered with grease.

[isis]

This is what I thought of at first, too.

[radiantfracture]

I would have been baffled by that line forever without this discussion.

[jesuswasbatman]

I'd have guessed red like burning embers, or maybe just a metaphor for the fierceness of their stare.

[the_rck]

For an electric stove, I would assume spirals instead of a particular color. For all the gas stoves I've had, I'd get stuck on there not being anything the right shape.

[julian]

What a freakin' ridiculous phrase, is my answer to this poll.

[nenya_kanadka]

Yes! Even with the context, lol.

[slashmarks]

Okay, so, with context the image that conveys to me is more like "hot, as in passion." But if I had to pick a color it would be black.

[sovay]

If someone is described as having "eyes like the top of a stove," their eyes are...

I always took the line to mean emotion rather than color: bright, vivid, glowing.

[melannen]

If I had to pick a color, black like iron because pop-pop's ancient wood stove is still by archetype, but I want to parse it more as "eyes like dinner plates" (large and round) than color.

[redbird]

I never thought of that in terms of color—I thought it was mostly about intensity (of her gaze) or brightness.

As long as you mentioned it, I just put the album on, and am listening to "Watching the Apples Grow."

(I answered based on having grown up with gas stoves, and lived with that for most of my adult life, though we have electric right now.)

[rushthatspeaks]

Kind of dingy brown? /stovetops could pretty much universally be cleaner

[genarti]

Mostly I'm parsing this as "their eyes are MASSIVE AND ROUND LIKE BURNERS," color flexible. That's... probably not what's intended!

[adrian_turtle]

I always heard that "like" as meaning "hot" rather than anything to do with color. Hot in the sexual sense, or maybe in the sense of anger.

(What really confused me about that song was all the years before I knew "duffle" could mean anything but one of those cylindrical bags.)

[laurashapiro]

"Covered in grease stains, tomato sauce splashes, and odd bits of egg like the top of a stove!"

[vicki_rae]

Not a clue. My stove has a black glass induction top so probably not what they were going for.

[tibicina]

That makes me think very black eyes in a very white face, like round black burners/grates against white enamel. Maybe with a hint of angry fire in the eyes as well.

[hederahelix]

I was listening to a rebroadcast of "Little War on the Prairie " this weekend which mentions that a MN gas company used a blue flame for "feather" of the Native person on the logo.

But as a child of the 1970s, that phrasing evokes either the Charlotte Perkins Gilman-esque dying yellow ochre or avocado green that many appliances came in back then.

I doubt either is what the author was going for.

[viridian5]

When I hear "top of a stove," I don't think burners, I think "the top of a stove," so my first thought is my home's stove so "white enamel," which I doubt was the creator's intention.

[sheliak]

I always figured it meant she had a smoldering gaze, basically! (But the color that most readily comes to mind is flame-orange.)

[larryhammer]

Blue shading to orange, like a flame.

[lemon_badgeress]

I’m going to go with ‘not correct’ for eight hundred, Alex.

[skazka]

I always get the mental image of dark and slightly glossy black eyes -- my parents' stove had big black iron burners, or rather those things that go over the burners and keep your pot off the immediate flame. But then I think of the electric stoves I've used and damn, either way I do not want to mess with Sally.

[mecurtin]

I never heard this expression before, and the first thing I thought was, "there are four of them? and they're not all the same size?"