8 marking on piano piece

[Phil Holmes]

I'm setting the Vagabond so that I can practice singing it, and I'm confused 
by a marking on the piano piece - see the attached image.  It looks like an 
ottava marking, but doesn't make much sense as that if you follow the 3rd 
and 4th bars of the image supplied.  I've also listened to recordings and 
they definitely do not drop by an octave here.  I'm also rather confused as 
to how this would be played - the first bar in the image appears to require 
a span of 2 octaves....

Any advice welcome.

--
Phil Holmes

VagabondQuery.png
Description: PNG image