The Day The Pub Burnt Down / Closed Early

OK, it was originally supposed to be
a castle burning down (Image by Simon Meeds)

This evening being earmarked for Robbie Burns, your Substitute Scribe decided, as a fatuous pun on 'Burns', to sing The Day the Pub Burned Down (Rudy Sunde – brother of Ruby Tuesday?). Shortly afterwards the barmaid gave the dreadful news that our festivity was to stop at 10:15 as the rest of the pub was practically empty and they were closing early.

Given Burns' propensity for claiming authorship of most of the songs known in Scotland in C18, I have put together those songs which are associated with as well as those actually written by Burns.

Burns:

[Colin] You Jacobites by Name (Roud 5517), Parcel of Rogues (Roud 5516) & Lassie with the Yellow Coatie (Roud 2582). This last caused great problems, since Colin found himself using the similar tune of the shanty I'm Bound Away – perhaps understandably similar, since the Yellow Coatie girls were fisherwomen, gutting fish etc on the quayside. With a little tutoring from Mike, he got through it, only to find Derek struggling to escape the same tune while singing Coming Through the Rye (Roud 5512).

For the love of women

Last week's session had no official theme but Derek said that he had created one for himself and asked us to guess what it was. No one quite got it but he admitted in the end it was for International Women's Day, which it was. More specifically, all his songs for the evening were sung from the point of view of a woman. I'll mention all of Derek's songs but I'll try to extract the female themes from the songs of our other singers too.

First of all, a reminder that this week's session will have a St Patrick's Day theme. I'll leave it up to you to decide what that can mean for you since there is quite a lot of scope.

MC Colin started us off with George Papavgeris' Friends Like These.

When might March follow May?

It was a small throng that met up last week at The New Inn but we are grateful to everyone who made it, especially to Roger, who was unusually Chris-less since she had been singing her heart out the night before and presumably needed to give her voice a rest.

Our numbers were reduced even further at the break and as we started going round in ever decreasing circles we put the night out of its misery slightly earlier than usual but a good variety of songs were nevertheless sung.

Derek started us off in a very seasonal way with Whitsun Dance (Austin John Marshall). Quite a number of May songs were still coming out of the woodwork, starting with Mike's singing of Claudy Banks (Roud 266, Laws N40).

Happy Birthday Mike H

Mike Harding

(any plug for Mike's folk show is purely incidental)

A slightly better-attended session last week heard the big news that had been rumbling all week. Maggie has decided to retire from running the club and after the next session (30 October 2015) and will be handing to baton to Colin. Mike reminds Colin that you are only ever lent the reins of the Dragon Folk Club.

In preparation for taking over, Colin suggested to Mike that the next session would have a theme of Halloween. Mike accepted the suggestion, adding that it might also involve Australia and New Zealand (a rugby reference), so that gives a bit of scope to everyone.