FS12: The two sisters

Or rather, the Two Sisters part 1. (The miller is present and correct, but his treatment of the corpse is mercenary rather than ghoulish.)

This is a simplified version of Jim Moray’s arrangement of this version of Child 10, with two extra verses which I don’t think I made up, although I couldn’t say where they’re from. (There are things I don’t like about Jim Moray’s album Sweet England, but the texts and the melodies aren’t among them.) When you first hear this song, the repeats seem to take up so much time that you think it’s going to go on for hours, but in fact it fairly whips along – and ends rather abruptly.

There are quite a lot of vocal tracks on here; by the last verse I think the total is up to eight. It’s all in unison or at most in octaves; harmonising is still an undiscovered country to me, although I’m hoping to remedy that quite soon.

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Filed under Child ballad, folk song, Jim Moray, traditional

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