Category Archives: Yellow

The Yellow album was completed and made available for download a little while ago. Here’s the link, and here’s what you get.

1 The crow on the cradle (Sydney Carter) (3:34)
2 Son Davie (3:19)
3 Two pretty boys (2:09)
4 The valiant sailor (5:38)
5 The Dolphin (2:58)
6 The lofty tall ship (4:21)
7 The ghost song (3:00)
8 William Taylor (3:56)
9 Lowlands (4:06)
10 The lowlands of Holland (3:25)
11 Shirt and comb (Peter Blegvad) (2:23)
12 High Germanie (2:20)
13 The weary cutters (1:54)
14 I would that the wars were all done (2:42)
15 The dark-eyed sailor (4:12)
16 Sweet Jenny of the moor (3:50)
17 Whitsun Dance (Austin John Marshall) (2:51)

Seventeen songs of death and destruction, mostly (but not exclusively) with a wartime setting, and mostly (14 out of 17) traditional. Some unaccompanied, some with vocal harmonies, some accompanied – mostly on English concertina and drums, with various other instruments (melodica, zither, recorder, whistles (D and C) and a bit of flute).

The crow on the cradle, an album-only extra, is probably the most powerful anti-war song ever written – up there with 10,000 Maniacs’ “My Mother the War”. War is over, if you want it. (Quite pleased with the drumming on this one.)
Son Davie, a.k.a. Edward, is a Child ballad on the theme of guilt and remorse. Some of the most powerful ballads seem to centre on the sense of actions being irrevocable – tragic and horrible actions especially. I like the sound of the C whistle on this.
Two pretty boys isn’t – or wasn’t – connected to the previous ballad, although you could say that it tells an earlier part of the same story. Sung unaccompanied and strongly influenced by Peter Bellamy, who learnt it from Lucy Stewart. (Is there any other way of being influenced by Peter Bellamy?)
The valiant sailor was the first song for which I worked out concertina chords. There’s a doleful, chapel-harmonium thing going on there, partly as a result of my novice status on the instrument; I rather like it. My interpretation was inspired by John Kelly; it’s not a patch on his version, of course.
“This song is called The Dolphin, which is the name of the ship what the pirates were in. It’s also the name of a pub in Wakefield that used to have right rough strippers on.” Thus (and much further in the same vein) Tony Capstick, before nailing the song to the back wall (on the sadly unavailable Does a Turn). Sung to melodica drone, drums added later (which is why they scramble a bit in a few places).
The lofty tall ship features concertina drones; after hearing this back I more or less abandoned the melodica. The timbre you get from the concertina reeds is extraordinary.
The ghost song, also known as The cruel ship’s carpenter, is an English murder ballad (a relatively uncommon theme). In terms of interpretation, this is another one taken straight and heavily influenced by Bellamy, who in this case was following Sam Larner.
William Taylor is another song of enlistment, desertion and death, although not in the usual combination. Accompanied on drums and zither, giving a rather nice quiet, spare effect.
“Lowlands away, my John…” Another quiet arrangement – after Shirley Collins – with vocal harmonies and minimal percussion.
The lowlands of Holland is a strange, dreamlike song; nothing about it, from the initial bedroom encounter to the paradisiacal description of Holland, quite makes sense. Beautiful, though. Here it’s taken straight, unaccompanied.
Shirt and comb is a song by the great Peter Blegvad (although I’ve mangled the tune slightly). It essentially takes the basic situation of the previous song and looks at it from the inside: how did it feel to be enlisted and forced to march away from your loved ones? Accompanied with drums, concertina chords and the under-used C whistle.
High Germanie continues the twin themes of enlistment and approximate European geography. Drums, concertina drones and a slightly peculiar-sounding D whistle.
“O the Weary Cutters have taken my laddie from me…” Quiet, sad, with vocal harmonies. Not much like Maddy Prior’s version with Steeleye Span, although that is where I learned it.
I would that the wars were all done is another quiet, sad one. It’s accompanied with spare concertina I/V chords and a bit of recorder, and was partly recorded in the open air.
The dark-eyed sailor and Sweet Jenny of the moor are both ‘broken token’ songs, and were both clearly intended for an audience which knew the set-up; they both get through the big reveal very briskly. “Sailor” is accompanied throughout on concertina drones, C whistle, drums and zither; “Jenny” is mostly unaccompanied, with a bit of melodic reinforcement from concertina and C whistle.
The album’s second download-only extra, Whitsun Dance, probably needs no introduction. It’s always struck me as a dark, bitter song, all the more so for its sunny surface. I’ve recorded it with different combinations of instruments – recorder/zither, zither/drums, drums/concertina – over a flute drone, which I think brings out some of the changing moods of the song. You can hear both it and The crow on the cradle here – although if you want to download either of them you’ll have to go here.

Like the other downloads in the series, the Yellow album comes with a PDF file containing full lyrics, notes and artwork. And, like the other downloads, it has a minimum price set at a symbolic 52p – although you’re welcome to pay more!

Download 52 Folk Songs – Yellow.

For the final week of the Yellow album, here are two nineteenth-century “broken token” ballads.

The dark-eyed sailor: learnt from Tony Rose’s recording, recast in a fairly definite 3/4 and with instrumentation, frankly, out the wazoo.

Sweet Jenny of the Moor: also learnt from Tony Rose’s recording, and played exactly as he played it, only without some of the good bits.

Week 38 eh? Where does the time go? (There’s a song there somewhere.)

Three conscription songs this week. The most sentimental & the most “written”-sounding is I would that the wars were all done; I’m not that keen on the verses, but the refrain makes up for it. Accompanied with two-note concertina chords; partly sung in mid-air.

High Germanie continues the recent sub-theme of sketchy European geography. (As I understand it “High” Germany was roughly what we now call Germany – Low Germany being the Netherlands – so the relative elevations are at least consistent. I don’t know which wars these were, though – or whether they were two separate conflicts or one that spread across the whole area.) I followed Pentangle in this version, perhaps too closely; I might try it again more slowly some time.

The weary cutters, lastly, is a short, sad song, sung by a mother whose son has been conscripted (“They’ve pressed him far away foreign”). Unlike most of these songs, I’ve known this one for, basically, ever; I’m fonder of it than I realised. Sung with (self-composed) harmonies.

Conscription songs this week – in fact, two closely-related conscription songs.

The lowlands of Holland is a strange, almost dreamlike song – a great example of the way the folk process polishes away extraneous elements of a song (like the bits that make it all fit together) leaving only words and sound. After Martin Carthy; sung unaccompanied.

Shirt and comb, my first non-traditional song in a while, is a song by the great Peter Blegvad on a very similar theme; a kind of contemporary answer-song, in fact. Sung with drums, C whistle and I/V chords on English concertina.

For week 36 I’m staying with violent death and going back to Child ballads.

Two pretty boys, generally known as Two brothers (Child 49), is a song about senseless violence. Almost everything in the story is left unexplained; it’s been suggested that it may go back to a sixteenth-century shooting. It’s sung unaccompanied (and after Bellamy).

Son Davie, more widely known as Edward (Child 13), is all about the aftermath of a killing; it’s a song on the general theme of “murder will out”. Some variants of Two brothers feature the distinctive “what’s that blood?” verses, creating the impression that these two might have originally been part of a single ballad telling the whole story of a murder, but this is misleading: older versions don’t have these extra verses, suggesting that they drifted in from this ballad at a later date. The tune used here is after Nic Jones; it’s sung with whistle, drums and (briefly) concertina.

More songs with sea voyages (or at least trips to the coast) and deaths.

William Taylor dumps his fiancee to enlist for a sailor (although as far as we can tell he never actually makes it as far as the sea). She’s not pleased. The last verse appears to derive from a later, comic version of the song, but I liked it enough to keep it in. Learned from John Kelly’s recording; accompanied with drum and zither.

The ghost song (a.k.a. The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter) is a murder ballad of sorts: another William, also keen to go to sea, kills his (pregnant) fiancee. She’s not pleased either. A fairly chunky narrative with an extraordinary tune, learned from Peter Bellamy’s version, which itself derived from Sam Larner; sung unaccompanied.

We’re still at sea for week 34, and still suffering losses.

The lofty tall ship is a surprisingly laconic ballad about an episode in the life of a pirate; it’s one remnant of a much longer ballad, about a real (sixteenth-century) pirate, which ended with his execution. Featuring concertina (in drone mode).

Lowlands is about a haircut. A ghost, heartbreak, seaweed and a haircut. Based quite closely on Shirley Collins’s version, and featuring improvised harmonies.