I have A Modest Proposal...

When I was a child I always hated the religious song which starts. "There is a green hill far away, Without a city wall. " I did not understand the archaic use of the word "without" for outside, and I always thought that it sounded like a terrible tautology. Since hills with city walls are rarely green, you put city walls around houses and buildings. I also did not as a child get the metaphorical use of green, for full of promise, and thought that any fool should know that the hills of the Holy Land are bare and barren.

I know better now.

But actually I still hate that dreadful song.