Category Archives: Albums

Three more maritime songs to round off the penultimate album.

Dogger Bank is a traditional song that escaped from the music-hall and went native. It’s rapid-fire nautical nonsense, with no real artistic merits except that it sounds good and it’s fun to sing. Which isn’t nothing.

And two more Kiplings. Poor honest men is a kind of rhetorical exercise in pushing irony until it snaps. It’s accompanied here on concertina and drums.

Big steamers is a Young Person’s Guide to British Imperialism, starting from the question of where your bread and butter come from; you could write something similar these days and call it Food Miles.

The original idea for this selection of songs was to do Ford o’ Kabul River together with a traditional song about somebody drowning in mid-stream. But I couldn’t find a traditional song I liked, so I decided to do Follow me ‘ome together with a traditional song about somebody lamenting the loss of a close friend. Then I couldn’t find one of those either – apart from the ‘poacher’ songs of which Bill Brown is an example – so I decided to group these two together as songs of bereavement, with “Trees” as the obvious traditional candidate. And here we are.

The trees they do grow high is one of my favourite songs, traditional or otherwise. There are at least four distinct versions that I know of; I think this is the best.

Follow me ‘ome, a Kipling poem with a Bellamy setting, is about bereavement within a male – and presumptively non-sexual – friendship. It’s still bereavement, though. Accompanied here on English concertina.

Ford o’ Kabul River is another Kipling/Bellamy and has similar subject matter. It’s set during the Second Afghan War (1878-80); I wonder what number we’re up to now. Accompanied on vocals and squelchy percussion.

We’re staying nautical this week, and featuring an original composition by Peter Bellamy as well as one of his settings of Kipling.

Come down you bunch of roses is the shanty which is now much better known as “Blood red roses”. Thanks to Gibb Schreffler for some excellent textual archaeology on this one. Sung in two-part harmony, accompanied by percussive domestic noise.

Anchor song is a two-minute barrage of sailor-speak from Kipling, very ably set to music by Bellamy. Not easy to understand – and not at all easy to learn – but surprisingly exhilarating.

Roll down is one of Bellamy’s chameleon-like impressions of traditional song from the Transports, this one in the form of a shanty. Voices only, but lots of them.

Week 42’s songs were delayed owing to football; watching a nil-nil draw settled on penalties after two full hours of play somehow seemed like a much better idea than putting the finishing touches to this week’s songs. I don’t know what I was thinking of; it won’t happen again.

There are three thematically-linked songs this week, one traditional and two by Kipling and Bellamy; they’re all sea songs, and they all focus on South America in particular.

Rounding the Horn – a.k.a. The gallant frigate Amphitrite – makes rounding the Horn sound like a thoroughly good idea, as long as you don’t get lost on the way. Accompaniment: drums, recorder, English concertina.

Frankie’s trade is Bellamy’s take on Kipling in praise of Francis Drake, and by extension in praise of English seamanship and England in general. The idea seems to be that Drake could never have been the seaman he was if he hadn’t cut his teeth as a marauder across the cold North Sea. I defy anyone not to get a bit patriotic towards the end.

Roll down to Rio, lastly, is a jokey, dreamy little poem from the Just-So Stories, accompanied here on English concertina.

We continue the Kipling-and-others theme with two songs about Richards.

Earl Richard is more widely known as Young Hunting, although the eponymous character has several different names in the source (Child 68). The plot is both familiar (love and death) and very strange. The accompaniment is mostly drones of various origins.

Sir Richard’s song is another of Kipling’s hymns to England, this one spoken by a Norman knight who had fallen in love with the country after falling in love with an English woman. (Sexual love first, then love of country.) The tune, the arrangement and the delivery are very largely taken from Peter Bellamy, who liked this song enough to record it twice; it’s on both Oak, Ash and Thorn and Keep on Kipling. As far as I’m aware he never played zither, though.