Bonfire Night 2025

Last week's slightly belated bonfire night session at the Dragon Folk Club saw the usual mix of Guy Fawkes, bonfires, and campfire songs as well as general winter themes and some serendipitous performances mixed in. more importantly it brought an impressive turn-out of singers including three first timers: Ander, Rebecca and Johan who all sang excellently.

First, and importantly, there will be no Dragon Folk Club session this Friday (14th November 2025) so we will delay our Remembrance themed evening (war, anti-war, remembrance, etc.) until the following Friday (21st November). In the meantime some of use may visit Folk at Frampton Cotterell this Friday.

Colin, MC as usual, set us a rhythm by starting the evening with Running bear (Jiles Perry Richardson "The Big Bopper"). Roger said it was the first record he bought.

Roger invited us to Keep right on to the end of the road (roud 23917 - Harry Lauder). Perhaps this was an early Remembrance contribution since Lauder wrote the song in honour of his son, killed in the First World War.

Heather gave us Wild mountain thyme (roud 541 - Francis McPeake).

Paul invoked his inner child with Michael Finnegan (roud 10541) and Denny made some of those assembled squirm with Nobody likes me (roud 12764).

Simon sang The ballad of Patch Eye and Meg (Michelle Shocked), relevant because it was first recorded as part of The Texas Campfire Tapes.

Sue sang of The leaving of Liverpool (roud 9435) and Bob brought the first rotation to an end with My girl Josephine (Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew).

For now our visitors, appropriately to Bonfire Night, kept their tinder dry, but that wasn't to last long.

Rebecca's songs were:

• The little beggarman (roud 900)
• Poor Guy (* Peter Christie) from the singing of Instant Sunshine
• Woad (roud 24978 - William Hope-Jones)

Ander sang:

• I wish I was back in Liverpool (Leon Rosselson, Stan Kelly-Bootle)

We also heard a duet from Rebecca and Ander on Queen of Waters (Nancy Kerr).

Johan gave us a traditional Swedish drinking song about Noah leaving his ark and growing vines to make wine: Gubben Noak (* Carl Michael Bellman). The tune reminded Denny of Come landlord fill the flowing bowl (roud 1234), and so she sang it.

There were just two songs which are not on YouTube and therefore not in the playlist linked from "a selection" below:

• Roger - Together we'll fight (*# Roger Stanleigh)
• Colin - I love to go a-gorging (#)

The remaining songs new to the Dragon database, but necessarily never before sung at the club, were:

• Roger - Don't ever change (* Gerry Goffin, Carole King) - Rejected by The Everly Brothers, recorded by The Crickets and performed by The Beatles
• Heather - A winter's tale (* Mike Batt, Tim Rice)
• Colin - My leader (*)

It fell to Paul to finish the evening which he did with Cockles and mussels (roud 16932).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 12 of whom 11 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

Halloween 2025

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

It was Halloween  (quite literally on the 31st) last week at the Dragon Folk Club and everyone joined in on the theme for at least part of the evening, which was great. This week's theme, optional as usual, is for Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night if you prefer. Consider songs, poems, monologues and stories on themes such as Guy Fawkes, fire, fireworks and campfire songs along with anything else appropriate that you can think of.

Back to last week, and I'm keeping this report brief, Heather was asked to start us off. She was obviously looking forward to this week as she read her own poem "What, no fireworks?" (*#).

Simon got into the current theme with Zombie jamboree (Conrad Eugene Mauge, Jr or Winston O'Conner (Lord Intruder) - disputed). The linked version by King Flash is the first to change the original "Jumbee Jamboree" to "Zombie Jamboree".

Stuart and Carrie gave us Ghost (Kate Rusby) followed by Long black veil (roud 18510).

Colin, also on topic, sang Hallows Eve (Chris Hoban).

Paul read a poem, So many different lengths of time (* Brain Patten) and Denny completed the first rotation with Davey Dodds' The magpie (*). Brian Patten, on of the Liverpool poets, died in September.

Now with limited time I will simply list those remaining songs (and poem) which have been added to the Dragon database this week, though as usual it doesn't necessarily mean that none of them haven't been performed at the club before:

• Heather - NWR Halloween (*# Heather, poem about the National Women's Register, Chipping Sodbury branch)
• Stuart and Carrie - I wandered by a brookside (* Words by Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Hougthon; tune by Barbara Berry - Ed: I knew Barbara and I heard her sing it at least once, see the video for the full story)
• Paul - Sweet William's ghost (* roud 50, child 77)
• Stuart and Carrie - Wonderful life (* Black, real name Colin Vearncombe)
• Denny - The coal and Albert Berry (* Ted Edwards)

Stuart and Carrie closed the session with A horse with no name (Dewey Bunnell).

See you this week, 7th November, for (metaphorical) fireworks!

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 8 of whom 7 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

Nose to tail

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Thanks to serious traffic disruption we didn't attain our full strength until well after half way through the evening, nevertheless a total of forty two songs were sung. Second-timer Heather ran out of songs she had prepared but valiantly sang with the help of words found on her mobile phone for the rest of the evening without missing a beat.

Don't forget that this Friday (31st October) is our Halloween-themed session. As always, themes are optional, but it's nice to come up with something appropriate, however tenuously. Watch out for more upcoming themes.

MC Colin was first up with The nutting girl (roud 509).

Heather introduced the club to Scarlet ribbons (for her hair) (* roud 45048 - Jack Segal, Evelyn Danzig), and Simon completed the first rotation with John Conolly's The Punch and Judy man using Tony Capstick's version of the chorus.

Here are some more performances which need to be mentioned.

Heather sang Blanket on the ground (* Roger Bowling) which was first recorded by Billie Jo Spears and Grandfather's clock (* roud 4326 - Henry Clay Work). Heather's friend Hazel was not there to sing, but it was noted that she joined in enthusiastically with the "tick-tocks".

The Oxford English Dictionary says that the song Grandfather's clock, written in 1876, was the origin of the term "grandfather clock" for a long-case clock. It is said that the clock in the George Hotel, Piercebridge near Darlington inspired Work to write the song. The tradition was that the clock had been owned by two brothers named Jenkins. When one brother died, the clock began losing time, and it stopped for ever upon the death of the other.

Colin found what must have been a low hanging fruit to add to the Dragon database in Foggy foggy dew (* roud 558, laws O03).

Heather contributed Crazy (* Willie Nelson), made famous by Patsy Cline and that was soon followed by Colin with Reynard the fox (* roud 1868, 358).

After a couple more songs Paul and Denny made their entrance. While they are our most distant regulars, it doesn't usually take them anywhere near the two and a half hours to reach The Bridge for a session that it did last week due it seems to two road closures: one maybe for an accident and one for the planned replacement of a bridge. Anyway, arrive they did and Paul was immediately invited to sing. His first song was Bold Riley (roud 18160) and Denny followed that with The forsaken mermaid (roud 466, laws K17). And with that our complement was complete for the rest of the evening.

Helen channelled her inner Louis Armstrong for What a wonderful world (* Bob Thield (as George Douglas), George David Weiss).

Colin sang The Liverpool barrow boy (*), a song written, we are told, by Mollie Armstrong whose job it was to collect money at the door of The Spinners' Folk Club.

Heather had us singing along to Time after time (* Cyndi Lauper, Rob Hyman).

We were also able to sing along with Paul although I don't think any of us had previously heard Keith Donnelly's shanty parody Lever Johnny lever (*).

It fell to Simon to close the session with Nancy whisky (roud 883).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 5 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

1805, 1066 and all that

HMS Victory (Photo: Simon Meeds)

We may have been a small group at last week's Dragon Folk Club session, but we sang up a storm. There was no official theme, but we touched on the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Hastings which were both near their anniversaries, had a variety of songs directly or indirectly from Singing Together, and several also from the singing of The Spinners. Listen to the playlist linked from "a selection" below and I'm sure you will find other themes that emerged.

There will be no theme this week (24th October), but get ready for the Halloween theme the following Friday (31st October).

Colin, MC as usual, started the ball rolling last Friday with Come fair wind or stormy weather (Steve Knightley).

Paul continued the maritime theme and took us straight to Trafalgar with Nelson's death (roud 18837) and Denny brought us onto dry land (just) with Tom Lewis' Marching inland.

Simon completed the first rotation with Boney was a warrior (roud 485) which was our first from Singing Together - he sang it at junior school in the 1970s.

I won't labour the point about the ad hoc themes, but there are a few things that may be worth a mention.

Colin returned to the work of Steve Knightley to sing Breme fell at Hastings (*), marking the recently passed 959th anniversary of the battle.

In the absence of our resident blues-man, Bob, Paul sang Little red rooster (* roud 16807 - Willie Dixon), and Denny followed on with The chickens in the garden (roud 2552 - James Alan Bland).

Simon sang two songs to the same tune: The wark o' the weavers (roud 374 - David Shaw) and The oyster girl (roud 875, laws Q13).

Denny sang Ye Jacobites by name (roud V31021 - traditional, rewritten by Robert Burns) which caused Simon to bring out Les Barker's My name it is Van Goch (*), a parody of the same song. I don't know whether Denny knew who wrote Simon's song, but shortly afterwards she sang Les Barker's Sloop John A (*), of course a parody of Sloop John B, otherwise known as H'ist Up The John B's Sails (roud 15634).

Simon finished the evening off with No Sir No (roud 146).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 4 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

Harvest 2025

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was themed for harvest and we did pretty well with lots of more or less on topic songs.

Remember that our themes are always optional, so while following the theme is encouraged, don't worry if you can't at all or if you can't keep it up all evening. As usual, any type of performance is welcome as long as you keep it acoustic.

We are heading into one of our theme-laden seasons, so here are some dates for your diary:

• 31 October - Halloween (traditions, ghosts, witches, horror...)
• 7 November - Bonfire Night (Guy Fawkes, bonfires, fireworks...)
• 14 November - Remembrance (Remembrance, war, anti-war...)

With only very rare exceptions, with or without a theme, we are to be found every Friday night from 8:15pm in the barn (just past the toilets) at The Bridge Inn, Bridge Road, Shortwood, Bristol (UK), BS16 9NG. See you there!

And so to last week's session: Colin, MC as usual, started the ball rolling with Out in the green fields (roud 2670).

Helen followed with a version of the Skye boat song (roud 3772). Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson rewrote the song in 1885. He judged the lyrics to be "unworthy", so made a new set of verses "more in harmony with the plaintive tune". The version Helen sang (*) was based on this version, adapted by Bear McCreary for the TV series Outlander.

Denny gave us the first of the evening's three versions of John Barleycorn: Hey John Barleycorn (roud 2141).

Paul introduced us to Shiny-o (*). According to Stan Hugill, "this halyard song was saved from oblivion thanks to the daughter of a certain Professor Hatfield who took town several rare shanties her father heard being sung by a black crew in 1886 aboard the 548 ton, three-masted barque Ahkera on an eighty-four day passage from Pensacola to Nice. He collected nine work songs, the rarest being Way down below (roud 11870), Nancy Rhee and the one we have here.

Excuse me here a quick aside. Until I was researching the previous section I don't think I'd ever seen a shanty being used for it's original purpose, whether that's capstan, windlass, or whatever. That is until I saw this video of Hulton Clint singing Across the western ocean "at the windlass". It makes the point often stressed by our shanty-singing friend Mike Starkey that people often sing shanties too fast.

Roger's first song of the evening was Adge Cutler's Twice daily.

Simon finished the first rotation with John Barleycorn (roud 164) to the tune Wir Pflügen (Johann Abraham Peter Schulz).

Helen's second song, Forever Autumn (music by Jeff Wayne, lyrics by Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass), was already in the Dragon database, but it deserves a bit of an explanation for it's unusual history. Most people know the version sing by Justin Hayward for Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds, but it was previously recorded by Vigrass and Osborne. That however is not the start of the story, because the tune was written by Jeff Wayne for a Lego commercial in 1969, and here it is.

Roger sang Keep right on to the end of the road (*), written by Harry Lauder in 1924. Lauder wrote the song in honour of his son, Captain John Currie Lauder, killed in the First World War, and it was originally published under the name "The End Of The Road".

Helen was surprised that none of us knew The shelter of your eyes (*), written by Don Williams, which was his first single, released in 1972. It's good to introduce us to things we haven't heard before or don't remember.

It was also Helen who sang I'll never find another you (*), written by Tom Springfield and recorded by The Seekers.

Roger sang his own Ukrainian lament (# Roger Stanleigh).

Crows in the Garden (* roud 4505) was Colin's penultimate offering of the evening for it was he who rounded off the session with Take a whiff on me (roud 10062), which of course isn't as innocent as he claimed. Here's the earliest known recording from 1930.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

A bunch of "new" songs

A decorated door in Villefranche-de-Conflent, France
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session saw two visitors joining us for a lot of singing and chat. I will consider both Heather and Hazel new to the club although I believe I heard that Heather had been before though I think before any of the others present had first attended. Some of us however knew her a little from other sessions. Hazel did not perform, but it was noticed that she sang along to many of the songs and her presence was very welcome.

Before I go any further there is an important announcement. Our room at The Bridge is double-booked this Friday (3rd October 2025), so it will be a very rare Friday with no Dragon Folk Club session. We will however be back on Friday 10th October for a Harvest themed session. As always the theme is optional, but if you can bring along some appropriate songs that would be great.

Returning to last Friday, Colin as MC started the ball rolling with Tom Lewis' Sailor's prayer.

Heather's first song was Snowbird (* Gene MacLellan), a hit for Anne Murray in 1969.

Stuart and Carrie started off performing together, first with Under the boardwalk (Kenny Young, Arthur Resnick), followed immediately by Cool water (* Bob Nolan).

Sue, this week without partner Bob, sang Beyond the sea (Charles Trenet, Albert Lasry, Jack Lawrence).

Simon gave us Michelle Shocked's Ballad of Patch Eye and Meg. While this brought the first rotation to an end, Denny and Paul, who had just returned from far flung places, arrived at the beginning of the second rotation and their respective first songs of the evening were The water of Tyne (roud 1364) and One more pull (Ian Woods).

i'm going to be busy enough cataloguing, as our blog's tradition requires, the songs Heather sang on her first visit in club memory and the remarkable number which were new to the Dragon database, so I will get straight down to the job.

Heather's other songs were:

• Nobody's child (Cy Coben, Mel Foree)
• Secret love (* Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster)
• Bunch of thyme (roud 3)
• Paper roses (* Fred Spielman, Janice Torre)

Other songs new to the Dragon database:

• Stuart and Carrie - A horse with no name (* Dewey Bunnell)
• Carrie - Close to the wind (* Stuart Marson)
• Colin - The next Best Western (* Richard Shindell)
• Stuart - Reuben's train (* roud 3423)
• Carrie - Until morning (* Kate Rusby)
• Colin - William Taylor (* roud 158, laws N11)
• Carrie - All of me (* Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons)

Simon closed the session with Stan Rogers' Northwest passage.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 9 of whom 8 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

Blue and Gold

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

What last week's Dragon Folk Club session lacked in number of singers it made up for in the eclectic selection of songs. Yes, we knew in advance that we would be a couple of regulars down and this time we didn't have any visitors, but that didn't affect the keenness with which we attacked our respective repertoires.

Colin, MC as usual, started the evening with The man in the moon (roud 21397), which Simon followed with Scarborough fair (roud 12, child 2).

Bob was straight into his genre of the blues, asking Blues stay away from me (Alton Delmore, Henry B Glover, Rabon Delmore, Wayne Raney). Sue cheered us up a bit and completed the first rotation with Sting's Fields of Gold. It was obviously this juxtaposition that gave us this week's report title.

There were only two songs this week that were new to the Dragon database:

• Colin - Everything glows (Les Barker)
• Sue - You've got a friend in me (Randy Newman)

And the only song not available for the playlist linked from "a selection" below was Sue's own Recycled teenager.

Other blue and gold songs (in some cases loosely) included:

• Colin - Midnight special (roud 6364)
• Bob - You got gold (John Prine, Keith Sykes)
• Simon - Blues run the game (Jackson C Frank)
• Bob - Matchbox (Carl Perkins)

Colin finished off the evening with George Papavgeris' Friends like these.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 4 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).