Back to Bellamy for a remarkable setting of Child 49 (“Twa Brothers”), derived from the singing of Lucy Stewart.
When I hear a really strong and distinctive singer, my style still tends to get warped by their influence – and there are few stronger or more distinctive than Peter Bellamy. This song is sung very much the way Bellamy sang it; I can’t imagine a better way of doing it.
Filed under Child ballad, folk song, Peter Bellamy
Child 13. Also – and more commonly – known as ‘Edward’, although the only source in which it has that (distinctly un-Scottish) name is a thoroughly literary version, rewritten in fake medieval Scots (Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid) by an unknown hand.
The tune and most of the words are after Nic Jones, although I went back to Child & made some modifications myself. I first learned the song from a recording by James Yorkston; he and Kieran Hebden (no less) slowed it down and gave it an eerie, sepulchral production, the better to get the point across that someone has been murdered!!1!! I don’t know; it seems to me now that this (i.e. Nic Jones’s) arrangement, with its jaunty tune and cheerily un-emotive delivery, frames the song just as well if not better. There’s a certain bluntness about a lot of traditional songs: they don’t ease you in or give you many signposts. You won’t necessarily know what you’re getting just from the tune or even from the first couple of lines – so you’d better be prepared for what you might get if you keep listening.
Accompaniment: D whistle, drums, concertina.
Filed under Child ballad, folk song, James Yorkston, Nic Jones
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.
Filed under Yellow
This is a revenge ballad, and quite a satisfying one; you can’t help feeling William Taylor gets what’s coming to him, although it is a bit rough on the new girlfriend. The “woman cross-dressing to go on board ship” trope sits rather oddly in this song; apart from anything else, the captain doesn’t turn a hair when our heroine asks after her “true love”, so either he’s quite extraordinarily broad-minded for the period or she’s changed back into women‘s apparel by this point. We also have to presume that the ship hasn’t actually left port when all this is happening – and what is William doing out walking with his “lady gay” at the crack of dawn anyway? (Coming home from a club?) Perhaps it doesn’t bear too much analysis.
My source for this was John Kelly; this is the fourth 52fs song which also appears on John’s album For honour and promotion, and may well not be the last. I considered doing the (more usual?) brisker version of the tune, but decided to try taking it at John’s pace. Instrumentation: bongoes, double-tracked zither.
Filed under folk song, John Kelly, O my name is, traditional
This is a reasonably slavish copy of Peter Bellamy’s rendering of this song, which I think was based fairly closely on how Sam Larner sang it. It’s also known as “Pretty Polly” and “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter”, but Sam Larner called it “the ghost song”, so I’m sticking to that. It’s an extraordinary tune, which took a fair bit of learning.
The lyrics are unusual, particularly in the English tradition; it’s a murder ballad (not a particularly thriving genre on this side of the Atlantic), but one with a supernatural ending. The belief that a ship could not make way if there was a murderer on board was widely held – see also “William Glenn” – and in any case made a good plot element. The apparition of Polly at the end seems quite corporeal; I get the impression that the idea of ghosts as insubstantial phantasms is quite a modern one, perhaps only dating back to the rise of spiritualism. To judge from songs like the Wife of Usher’s Well or the Suffolk Miracle, pre-modern ghosts might appear and disappear unpredictably, but they would seem quite solidly human in between times.
Filed under folk song, Peter Bellamy, traditional
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.
Filed under Yellow
Child 250, or similar; from the singing of Sam Larner, filtered through Martin Carthy.
The phrase ‘lofty tall ship’ crops up in the Dolphin; at one time I imagine most ships in song were both lofty and tall. As far as I know this is the only one that makes it into the title of a ballad, though. This is one of the shorter folk-processed versions of the ballad of Henry Martin, which is itself a pruned and folk-processed version of an enormously long ballad about the sixteenth-century pirate Andrew Barton; Peter Bellamy sang a version of Andrew Barton as part of his Maritime England Suite.
Concertina update: I still can’t play it (the instrumental break towards the end is played on melodica). But it does produce a very nice drone (Bb and Eb on this occasion).
Filed under Child ballad, folk song, traditional
This is only the second song here (after Searching for lambs) that I learned from Shirley Collins’s wonderful Anthems in Eden. The arrangement – voice and not much else – follows Shirley Collins’s, although the harmonies are my own.
Perhaps not the saddest song I know, but certainly the saddest song about a haircut.
Filed under folk song, Shirley Collins, traditional
With week 33 we leave the songs of love behind and begin the Yellow album, which (despite the name) is going to be mostly warlike. There will be deaths. There will also be non-traditional songs, but not this week.
The valiant sailor (a.k.a. Polly on the shore) is a song from the Napoleonic wars with an interesting narrative standpoint. Sung with concertina, and with thanks to John Kelly. (I recorded the concertina separately, but give me time.)
The Dolphin goes back to an incident in the eighteenth century, involving a ship that wasn’t called the Dolphin and didn’t sail from Liverpool. Sung with drones and drums, and with thanks to Tony Capstick.
Filed under Yellow
I’ve bought a concertina! (English system, secondhand; it’s a Lachenal tutor (for those who know about these things), 100+ years old, thoroughly refurbed 20-30 years ago & checked over the other day). It’s a beautiful instrument – the best purchase I’ve made in years.
The only problem is that I can’t play it yet. I have managed to get a few chords out of it, though, as you can hear on this song. (Four, to be precise: G, D, C and A minor.)
This song has a double debt to John Kelly, who I’ve namedropped a couple of times recently. I learned it from him in the first place – it’s the opening track, and one of the standouts, on his first album Come all you wild young men. This arrangement, slowing it right down to bring out the sadness of the story, is a departure from John’s – but it’s based on what he did to Greenland Whale Fisheries on his second album. I’ve got a weakness for really sad songs, and GWF has always been just a bit hearty for me (“There’s a whale! There’s a whale! There’s a whale-fish! he cried”); John’s arrangement is a revelation. I don’t think anyone’s ever criticised this song for being too cheerful, but I think this slow, still arrangement is quite effective all the same. See what you think.
Filed under folk song, John Kelly, traditional
Fifty-Two Folk Songs 