Handed Down

Irish singer Molly Donnery shares her favourite folk song, My Belfast Love, shortly before going on stage with The Haar at Shrewsbury Folk Festival.

Singer songwriter Reg Meuross shares his favourite folk song, Bob Dylan's Girl from the North Country

In the first of a mini-series of short interviews at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, Iain talks about his favourite folk song Flower of Scotland and sings a very beautiful version.

Put on your Sunday best, we're going to the fair!

A handsome young man, a  moonlight tryst and a young woman is left to bear the consequences. It's an age old tale, but why did it become so popular in the early 19th Century? We might have the answer.

We're also looking more widely at English fairs through the ages; the fun, strange and sometimes scandalous things that happen there, and the songs people sing about them.

This episode features bit of mild swearing thanks to our cheeky friend Samuel Pepys.

Music
Brimbledon Fair is from Folk Songs From Somerset by Cecil Sharp
Selby Fair words are from the Bodleian Library Ballad Index, but I made the tune up
The Ewan MacColl version of Bartholomew Fair can be found here
The full words of Jockey to the Fair can be found at the Bodleian Library here
The tune behind the Thomas Hardy extract is Brigg Fair
The full version of Ramble Away is the one I learned from Shirley Collins' recorded version
You can find the full lyrics of Answer to Young Ramble Away (if you really want to!) here and the tune is a Derrydown Fair variant that I found on  Mudcat.

References
There are some great discussions about Ramble Away on the Mudcat Cafe, and the Mainly Norfolk website has a very informative summary about the song.

The episode features extracts from A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain 1724-1727 by Daniel Defoe (which also features on the Mainly Norfolk website), from the Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and the diaries of Samuel Pepys.

Vic Gammon (1982) Song, Sex and Society in England 1600-1850 Folk Music Journal 4 (3) 208-245 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4522105

It's another epic ballad this week as I catch up with Franz Andres Morrissey to learn more about this song, that was originally collected in Scotland. We also chat about the ups and downs of the Swiss folk scene, have a good old gossip about Robert Burns, and I learn where Martin Carthy gets his tunes from.

Brown Adam, or Broun Edom, is a rare song with some old, even pre-Christian, themes and motifs. It unfolds in true storytelling style and includes such colourful characters  as a False Knight, a faithful Lady, and Brown Adam himself, a magnificent young Smith. Shenanigans ensue and there's quite a bit of gratuitous bird shooting before the story moves on. Who needs Netflix when you've got songs like this?

Franz is an academic (though he carries it  lightly) and an experienced folk musician, and we talk about his book, Language, the Singer and the Song. We also discuss his play which tells the stories of slavery through words and song.

His band Taradiddle (https://taradiddle.ch) has just recorded an album that will be out soon, and there's a rumour that there'll be tour dates announced shortly.

You can hear more of Franz's music on Soundcloud.

Music
Brown Adam was performed and produced by by Franz. The episode also features three live recordings by Taradiddle: Benediction Song, Who's The Fool Now, Hey Ca' Thro and Leaving Limerick. You can find more here. There's also a snippet of the song that Franz and I recorded together remotely, Now Westlin Winds.

Acknowledgements
Franz and I met through The Barnstoners, a self-organising group of musicians who have all been to the fabulous Stones Barn run by Maddy Prior and Rose-Ellen Kemp up in Cumbria. It goes without saying that we're big fans of theirs and recommend them highly.

Bessy (or Betsy) Bell and Mary Gray were two bonny lasses, and they may even have been historical figures, but the plague came from yon borough town and slew them both regardless. And thus was created a most romantic and picturesque place of pilgrimage.

Bessy Bell is also a tune and we take a look at it's surprising history, from being scrawled in a book of sermons to the part it played in the heyday of a theatrical phenomenon.

The tune we sing today isn't the traditional one; a quite different tune accompanied this song for a couple of hundred years. And yet there's a far better tune lurking in an old broadside, and I'm giving it a world premiere as the tune for Bessy Bell and Mary Gray.

Music
Instrumental version of Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (trad)
Betsy Bell and Mary Gray in the style of Maddy Prior and Martin Carthy
Harp improvisation
Bessy Bell tune (trad)
Go To Bed Sweet Muse (Robert Jones)
Bessy Bell to the tune of A Health To Betty (trad)
Beggar's Opera Overture (Johann Christoph Pepusch)
'Twas Within A Furlong of Edinburgh Town (tune from Playford but sometimes attributed to Henry Purcell; words quite possibly by D'Urfey, arranged by Jayne Morrison)
Betsy Bell and Mary Gray - full song (trad)

FX from Freesound contributors djangoaltona, inchadney, boodabomb and bruno-auzet

References

Francis James Child (1904) English and Scottish Popular Ballads https://archive.org/details/englishscottishp1904chil/page/n13/mode/1up 

Letter written by Major Barry: http://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/arch-scot/article/view/168/166 

Highland Notebook, Robert Carruthers: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CZsHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Bertrand Harris Bronson (1976) The Singing Tradition of Child’s Popular Ballads: https://archive.org/details/singingtradition0000bron 

Fourpence Halfpenny farthing, from A Pepysian garland : black-letter broadside ballads of the years 1595-1639, chiefly from the collection of Samuel Pepys (1922) https://archive.org/details/pepysiangarlandb00pepyuoft/page/322/mode/2up 

Bessy Bell from Orpheus Caledonius https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/91483447 

Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes: https://archive.org/details/oxforddictionary0000opie/page/n9/mode/2up

Julie Bumpus (2010) BALLAD OPERA IN ENGLAND: ITS SONGS, CONTRIBUTORS, AND INFLUENCE: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1276055885&disposition=inline

Miscellaneous works of that celebrated Scotch poet Allan Ramsay: https://deriv.nls.uk/dcn23/1056/7480/105674805.23.pdf

Edinburgh Literary Journal, 1829 https://www.proquest.com/openview/f7929bf2f574263f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2773 

It's May. The meadows and hedgerows are in bloom, the sun is ablaze and the lark is on the wing.

Song: The Lark in the Morning - CS
Poem: The Lark Ascending (extract) by George Meredith
Tune: The Lark Ascending by R Vaughan Williams/The Lark in the morning (jig)
Poem: The Green Cornfield by Christina Rosetti
Song: All Things Are Quite Silent - Carys
Poem: Extract from The Night's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer
Song: The Skylark, words by Fredrick Tennyson, tune by Neal Jolly - Neal Jolly
Poem: Extract from Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
Tune: The Chirping of the Lark, from Playford, arr. J Shaw
Letter regarding a lecture given by Cecil Sharp, dated December 23rd, 1931 - Paul Reeve
Song: The Lark in the Morn, as collected by Cecil Sharp
Song: The Lark in the Morn - Paul Reeve
Poem: To a Skylark (1805) (extract) by William Wordsworth
Tune: My Singing Bird
Poem: To a Skylark (extract) by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Song: Kate of Arglyn, collected by Cecil Sharp from John Murphy in Marylebone Workhouse 1909
Poem: The Lark Song by James W Wilt - Diana Whittaker
Song: O Nancy My Heart
Poem: To a Skylark (1825) (extract) by William Wordsworth
Song: Pleasant and Delightful
Poem: To the Lark by Robert Herrick
Song: Lark in the Clear Air - Diana Whittaker
Poem: Lottie Lane (broadside ballad)
Song: Lark in the Park by John Devine - John Devine
Poem: Limerick by Edward Lear
Tune: Lark in the Morn arr Lynne Morley - Lynne Morley

Lark song FX recorded by urupin, from Freesound
Where not attributed, songs and poems performed by Jenny Shaw
Some of the songs were discovered using the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, others came out of our memories or our imaginations.

The Barnstoners is a group of people who have loved their time at Stones Barn and continue to stay in touch. This podcast would never have been born without the support and encouragement of The Barnstoners, and the hugely empowering tuition at Stones Barn from the amazing Rose Ellen Kemp and Maddy Prior.

When I interviewed The Haar about the song Wild Rover, we had such a great chat about music that there was just too much to fit into a single episode! So, for all you music lovers out there, here are Molly, Cormac, Adam and Murray talk about their musical backgrounds and why they love traditional music so much.

Do buy their new album Where Old Ghosts Meet because it's excellent, and while you're at it you might want to snap up their equally wonderful first album too.

The Haar are:
Adam Summerhayes – fiddle
Murray Grainger – accordion and vibrandoneon
Cormac Byrne – bodhrán
Molly Donnery – vocal

Episode includes short excerpts of Wild Mountain Thyme and Whiskey in the Jar from Where Old Ghosts Meet.

Handed down is presented and produced by Jenny Shaw.

The Wild Rover is a sailors' song, known in most of the places where seafarers from these isles gathered.  But I can guarantee you've never heard it done like this before!

In today's episode I'm with The Haar, shortly before the release of their new album Where Old Ghosts Meet. We chat about this song, described as being like a handshake for sailors meeting in far away places, and why they chose to add a new verse.

They also talk about their approach to traditional music, and improvising in a style in which a whole host of musical backgrounds and traditions meet. What could be more fitting for such a well travelled song?

The Haar are:
Adam Summerhayes – fiddle
Murray Grainger – accordion and vibrandoneon
Cormac Byrne – bodhrán
Molly Donnery – vocal

You can find their website at http://thehaar.ie/

The episode includes excerpts of the following songs, all from their forthcoming album:

• Danny Boy
• Dónal Óg
• Carrickfergus
• Whiskey in the Jar
• Wild Rover (in full)

You can buy the album at https://thehaar.bandcamp.com/ and I would heartily recommend it.

We're diving even deeper into this Lancashire favourite, thanks to today's guest Colin Ormston. His research uncovers an enigmatic pair of brothers and a treasure trove of songs and local lore, and we get to hear the original tune and arrangement of this popular song.

You can find Colin's research and copies of the two original songbooks here and his folk website here. You can also hear his music on Youtube.

The original podcast with guest Peter Madeley can be found here.

Music etc
Instrumental version of Old Pendle (modern version) recorded by Peter Madeley

Original tune for Old Pendle played by Jenny Shaw

Pendle Witches (from Songs of the Pendle Country Book 2) played by Jenny Shaw

Old Pendle (full song) recorded by Colin Ormston and 3D

Spoken excerpts from Songs of the Pendle Country Book 1