Easter 2025

Sanctuaire de la Sainte-Baume
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We had a great Easter session at the Dragon Folk Club. We loved welcoming first time visitors John and Howard who call themselves Old Friends, and now they are our friends too.

This Friday the optional theme will be St George's Day (just three days early). Don't worry if you can't follow the theme, but there's plenty of scope to follow it. St George, dragons and England are the obvious ones, but look also to his other patronages which include: agricultural workers, farmers, field workers, soldiers, archers, armourers, equestrians, cavalry, saddle makers, chivalry, peacekeeping missions, skin diseases, lepers and leprosy, syphilis, sheep, shepherds, scouting, Albania, Bulgaria, England, Ethiopia, Greece, Georgia, Portugal, Romania, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Castile and León, Catalonia, Alcoi, Aragon, Genoa, and Rio de Janeiro.

Back to last week, according to blog tradition I will mention all of the songs sung by newcomers John and Howard (Old Friends). Songs which are new to the Dragon database, although they may have been sung at the club before, are marked with an asterisk (*) and songs not in the YouTube playlist liked from "a selection" below are marked with a hash (#).

Colin started off with a proper Easter song: The pace-egging song (roud 614). Simon followed on with just a mention of Easter in The moonshine can (roud 9949).

Old Friends specialise in Simon & Garfunkel songs and as a duo were asked to sing two each round. They opened their account with Leaves that are green (* Paul Simon) and the eponymous Old friends (* Paul Simon).

Paul's first of the evening was the Easter-appropriate Seven virgins (roud 127) and Denny evoked Easter chicks with The chickens in the garden (roud 2552 - James Alan Bland). And so the first rotation was complete.

Colin once again brought us a seasonal offering with Dave Goulder's The Easter Tree.

John and Howard sang Scarborough Fair (roud 12, child 2) and Summertime (DuBose Heyward, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin).

Apart from our visitors, Colin was the only one to add entries to the Dragon database during the session. He first did this with Johnny Cash's Redemption (*), and later with Eggs and bacon (*# roud 377 - collected from Stan Steggles). I didn't find a recording of Eggs and bacon, but I did find the closely related Eggs in her basket (roud 377).

Completing the collection of songs from John and Howard (Old Friends) we have:

• Vincent (Don McLean)
• April come she will (* Paul Simon)
• All I have to do is dream (* Boudleaux Bryant)
• Don't let the old man in (* Toby Keith)
• Detectorists (* Johnny Flynn)
• Man of the world (* Peter Green)

Paul gave us one song that didn't make its way to the playlist: Tracks in the snow (# Steve Thomason).

Denny closed the session with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

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