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Got it, I looked in Chambers, Merriam Webster Online and The Free Online Dictionary and it's only given as a name, but if it's in the OED that's good enough for me - I can rub out the last remaining question mark in this puzzle:-)

Good point Quisling, I'd forgotten about the name for the Notre Dame founder.

Saw the surname (as in supergroup) - My medical dictionary gives it as the common name for a liver disease - just wondered if there was another meaning...

Thanks to those who helped, got full grid yesterday evening. Have not yet started search for song. I should have twigged that rows 5 & 9 had no original entries.

O happy day! (four years later but still very much my era); I have had a good run one this one. The inevitable however...

Should all the clues uninterrupted by a broken line include a word from the theme passage. If so I cannot find them in the clues beginning BITTER, GOLFER, MAKE OLD and WHAT MOUTHS?

Also can anyone explain where 'pound' fits in on the MAKE OLD clue.

I presume that a punctuation mark is required at the end of each of the three words to get to 15 letters.

Incidentally the source passage is an excellent reading for a funeral - it is acceptable to those without a strong faith or indeed any faith.

Thanks again to the people who contribute to this thread. It has kept me fully engaged and out from under Mrs Seal's flippers in our kitchen

Should all the clues uninterrupted by a broken line include a word from the theme passage. If so I cannot find them in the clues beginning BITTER, GOLFER, MAKE OLD and WHAT MOUTHS?

All those answers [Racer etc] extend to the dotted areas so their clues don't have the noun/verb from the song

Also can anyone explain where 'pound' fits in on the MAKE OLD clue.

Poetic form of Afresh and Ezra Pound was a poet

I presume that a punctuation mark is required at the end of each of the three words to get to 15 letters.

!

williamseal, you are correct about the punctuation mark. Pound is Ezra, the poet, to indicate that it’s a poetic usage. The clues you mention do not include a word from the source material, and I think that’s because the empty cell appears at the beginning or end of the answer in each case. In the final grid the bars are drawn so that the empty cell is included in the answer. So AGEN becomes AGENT, with the bar after the T. Compare that with NAPA, where the bar comes after the A and not the following M, thus there is no empty cell, so it includes the word “laugh” from the source. There are 10 clues in each group, and none of the ones containing source words contain cells in the dotted areas in the final grid

Hi Williamseal,

The examples you give, (bitter, golfer etc) don't have a word from the passage because the dotted cells fall within their set, as it were. For example, the bar in the 3rd column comes at the bottom of the 5th cell, so, even though the answer is only 4 letters, there are 5 cells in that run, one of which is a dotted cell. And for 'golfer', again the answer is 4 letters but the bar comes after the 5th cell, so again, there is no word from the passage.

I took "pound" to be a reference to 'Ezra' indicating the answer is poetic - but I could be wrong.

So sorry to post an answer on this thread. I thought I was on the other one. Mea culpa

Many thanks Brendan and Quisling

This one was about the right level of difficulty for me so thanks to the setter.