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Hello! I'm making this post in hopes of someone being able to help me interpret Leonard Cohen's handwriting on the draft of lyrics to Joan of Arc found from the leonardcohenfiles site. I can make sense of the alternative last verse and rest of the notes, but the first three handwritten words in the upper left corner have left me dumbfounded.
Instead of the opening line as we know it (Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc ) the word "flames" seem to have been changed into alternative three words.



To me it looks like "The --- fire", but the middle word is something I can't make sense of. The only logical guess of the word I can come up with is "bridegroom", but this handwritten word does not seem to end with -m.
Would anyone have an idea on what it says?

The source: https://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/joadraft.html
Another sample of Cohen's handwritten lyrics: https://leonardcohenfiles.com/strdraft.html

Hi hedvig, firstly welcome to the forum!
And secondly, I also have been pondering your question intermittently for some years now
....and still haven't come up with a definitive answer! Hopefully others can do so.

A thought says because he hasn't changed the plural, "they" when referring to "flames" it would follow that it should also be the plural, "fires". Therefore making it "The bridegroom fires they followed Joan of Arc". That makes sense because Leonard has often introduced this song at the early concerts titling it as "The Marriage of Joan of Arc".
But as you have already said it doesn't look like "groom" and I can see why. Maybe it's a made up word, "bridegroomed". You know, when I first saw this way back then I also considered it could be another title for the song!
Or it could be in the possessive case without the apostrophe visibly written, "The bridegroom's fire/s ".
It actually looks like "brideground" but that doesn't make sense to me!
........and now we're back to square one

at first glance it reads to me as "brideguard"

hope this helps.
LD

EDiT: Had a closer look at the lettering of the other notes. If you compare the seperate letters, then the letters following "bride“ can neither mean groom nor guard. The "g“ could be a "q“ but there is no other q to compare it with on that page, and as the second letter is most likely an "r“, that rules out a q.
The third letter is certainly an "o“. With the last letter very much looking like a "d“, one can start guessing,
and I come up with "ground" too. This would fit with the very indistinct way other "u" and "n" are written within a word (not at the end as last letter) on that page.

As to interpretation what "brideground" or "bride ground" could mean:
The bride is walking on fire (not water), which is not just any ground but only her ground to walk upon.
And if it actually is the plural "fires" then it stands for many dangers along her path, not only the final walk.

my twopence.