Audience members, those waiting to present their own tales of woe, listen avidly, sometimes expressing sympathy or offering unsolicited suggestions.
Letters poured in from provincial towns and rural communities that faced comparable, if not worse, infrastructure woes.
Throughout the ages, political entrepreneurs have sought, often with considerable success, to deflect blame for their country's woes to powerless groups.
Could the mass recitation of woe also be understood as a form of self-exculpation?
Most of the words in the list seemed totally innocuous consider the last ten: windpipe, wire-drawer, witchery, woe, wooden, wooly, worrier, wren, wrong, young.
However, woe betide any shepherd who thought that his past status would be forgotten.
It is doomed to wander the world - oh, woe is me!
After a point, the tale of woe becomes repetitive.
