We mark the end of the Christmas period – and approach the end of the white album of seasonal songs – with two house-visiting songs.
The King is a song from the old post-Christmas custom of shooting a wren and displaying its body for luck. (The past is a foreign country.) Sung here in four-part harmony.
Poor old horse is a house-visiting song from the north of England; the ‘old horse’ would collapse and die towards the end, then spring back to life (and go on to the next house, presumably). Sung here without any harmonising, but with quite a lot of multi-tracking. The tune at the beginning and end is Scan Tester’s The Man in the Moon.
Fifty-Two Folk Songs 