St Paddy Meets the Easter Bunny

Devastation caused by the Easter Rising.
Easter is a major holiday in Ireland,for a host of reasons,
some of which are religious and some historical.

Should readers, understandably distressed at finding that this week's blog has fallen into the hands of the Substitute Scribe, decide to leave precipitately, please at least pause to view this message – THERE IS NO CLUB MEETING ON FRIDAY 25TH MARCH (GOOD FRIDAY). This is due to the room's being used by the Inn for Easter festivities.

One result of the above was that this week's meeting became the optimal day for Easter songs as well as treading on the heels of St Patrick's Day. Most of those present confined themselves to the Irish aspect, although only DomBehan's Caesar's Conquest Of Ireland (Derek) actually recorded (albeit lesser known) events from the life of St Patrick himself!

Rambling Syd Rumpo rises again

Cyril Tawney

Mike kicked off the session this week with the Heights of Alma about the Battle of Alma which took place, reasonably topically, on 20 September 1854 and is usually considered to be the first battle of the Crimean War.

Last week Mervyn remembered a folk session with the theme "one song sung to the tune of another", and sang his version of Kathy's Song to the tune of The Silkie. He also related that Kitty Vernon had sung Wild rover to the tune of Away in a manger. This week we heard that Derek went home that night singing just that combination in the car. He said it went quite well, but he couldn't possibly repeat something that had been done before. Derek therefore charmed us with Hell's angel (the parody of Wild rover) to the tune of Lord of all hopefulness, which is in turn based on Banks of the Bann. When Paul showed an interest in knowing the difference between these two tunes, Derek dredged his memory and sang, from beyond his already huge repertoire, Banks of the Bann.