May-be, may-be not

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We had a fine session last week at the Dragon Folk Club. There was no official theme so we had plenty of scope for variety. This Friday too there will be no theme so as always anything goes as long as it's acoustic.

In the absence of regular MC Colin, Simon took up the reins, but he was narrowly beaten in his arrival, so the opening song went to Paul who gave us Too old to go back to sea (Rod Smith).

For her first song Denny decided to try some thing new. I think she might have called it Old May song. She had "collected" it the previous week from Jenn Reid who was the support act for Eliza Carthy at Bristol Folk House. Denny spoke to Jenn who told her that the song had been sung by The Oldham Tinkers, a group with which Denny is familiar.

Digging a little further into the song I quickly found that Roud gives it the number 305 in which it is grouped with a number of other May songs. It seems that the song is indeed very old so I think it's worth pointing out a few versions of it and some more information.

In his book "Lancashire Sketches" (1869), Edwin Waugh wrote:

By the way, that phrase, "the drawing near of spring," reminds me of the burden of an ancient May song, peculiar to the people of this district [between Stretford and Flixton, now in Greater Manchester]. In the villages hereabouts, they have an old custom of singing in the month of May; and companies of musicians and "May-singers" go from house to house among their neighbours, on April nights, to sing under their chamber windows this old song about "the drawing near unto the merry month of May." An old man, known in Stretford as a "May-singer," an "her-gatherer," and a "Yule-singer," who gets a scanty living out of the customs of each season of the year as it comes, furnished me with a rough copy of the words and music of this old "May Song." In one verse of the song, each member of the sleeping family is addressed by name in succession,-

Then rise up, Sarah Brundrit, all in your gown of green;

 and as each appears at the window, they are saluted with a "Merry May." Since the time of my visit I have been enabled, through the kindness of John Harland, Esq., F.S.A., to give this old May song, in complete shape, as it appears in his first volume of "Lancashire Ballads," recently published by Mr. Edwin Slater of Manchester.

Waugh goes on to give the full words of the song, which are also available on mudcat.org.

Here are some versions of the song:

• Old May song (The Oldham Tinkers) - included in the "a selection" YouTube playlist linked below because it was Denny's reference
• Swinton May Song (The Watersons)
• Drawing nearer to the merry month of May (The Copper Family)

...and here are two other songs under the roud 305 umbrella from the Dragon database (both sung at the club by Colin):

• May day carol
• Padstow May song

After singing a few verses of the above song Denny stopped because she wasn't happy with her grasp of the tune. Bearing in mind we aren't too fussy about how people stick to tunes and that it sounded OK, there really was nothing to worry about, but she didn't want to continue. Simon suggested that the tune she was singing was reminiscent of "The <fill in colour> cockade", so Denny proceeded to sing The white cockade (roud 709).

The only song of the evening not available for the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below was also sung by Denny, and was Wayhill fair. This song comes from a tape she has of The South Bank Grunters. It seems to be related to Weyhill Fair (roud 1086), but isn't so much about horses at the fair.

Having spent a lot of words on one song I will skip straight to the end of the evening. The last three songs were:

• Simon - No sir no (roud 146)
• Paul - Country life (roud 1752)
• Denny - Pleasant and delightful (roud 660, laws O30)

So that's it for another blog report. Remember to keep music live and we'll hope to see you at The Bridge on Friday!

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

(Number of people present - 3 of whom 3 performed)

Silly, nautical or naughty?

Another great session at The Dragon Folk Club with a nicely quorate six singers. There was no official theme, but since it was the day before All Fools there were plenty of songs with some degree of silliness. A bit of a nautical theme (silly or otherwise) also developed.

After a social preamble and a fashionably late start to the session Colin as MC started us off with Jez Lowe's song Candles. Bob followed this with Matchbox (Carl Perkins) and Sue with the Crawdad Song (roud 4853).

Simon gave us the first song of the evening not present in the YouTube playlist: Richard Stilgoe's Transplant Squad.

Paul sang When All Men Sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford) and Denny followed that with Pleasant and Delightful (roud 660, laws O30).

I'll leave you to investigate the "a selection" playlist linked below to see what other silliness and nauticality were on show, but I will mention those performances for which there is no representation on YouTube:

• Simon - House of the Rising Damp (Mary McCloud)
• Paul - Salty Young Sea Dog (Graham Holland)
• Colin - Laura The Leg (Mike Absalom)

And it was Colin who completed the evening with a good sing-a-long to Tom Lewis' The Last Shanty.

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

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

Avoidance behaviour - fine

The Anchor Inn, home of The Middle Bar Singers
at Sidmouth Folk Festival (Photo: Barry W*******)

Don't forget our St Andrew's Day session this Friday - OK, more St Andrew's eve but you get the idea, Scottish songs and tunes are the main dish with possible sides of his other patronages.

Back now to last weeks theme-free session, Colin started it off with Wally Whyton's Leave Them A Flower.

We proceeded through Derek's Locke Hospital (Roud 2, Laws Q26), and Mike's Rolling Home (Roud 4766) with no discernible theme apart from Derek declaring the efforts he was making to save his Scottish ballads for St Andrew.

That's not to say we didn't have links, both intentional and unintentional of course. Simon's singing of Down Our Street including its suggestion that in desperate times "tom cat tastes like air" inspired Derek to give us Silver Threads Among The Butter, which Martin Carthy took as the first verse of his song Girls: "When the dog died we had sausages, When the cat died, catnip tea".

Anniversaries - don't extract the urine

Gresford Mining disaster memorial (Photo: Richard Hoare)

Friday's session once again saw Steve C joining us. We're not doing too badly recently for bums on seats but with me, the scribe absent for the next two weeks, the deputy scribe will be taking over and more singers and audience are definitely required.

Colin, back in his role as MC after a week's break, started the evening off with Pleasant And Delightful (Roud 660, Laws O30) accompanied as usual by strange sounds and gestures from others present.

Derek noted that his favoured cricket side, Glamorgan had won the Second Eleven 20 20 (SET20) competition and sang a strange song of celebration which went something like "Glamy, Glamy, Glamorgan".

Valentine's Day 2018

A blindfolded, armed Cupid (1452/66)
by Piero della Francesca

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was our closest to Valentine's Day, so it was our usual seasonal theme of Love and Lust, a theme which had a very high hit rate. In fact I think that there were only three songs that didn't somehow connect to the theme, but even they were for very good reason.

The first was Derek with what he said was Ewan MacColl's version of Windy Old Weather. This was the completion of his final pair of songs from the previous week's session. I managed to find the lyrics in this document (page 73) but without attribution. I did however manage to find reference to it in relation to a radio programme "Singing the fishing" which was one of the Radio Ballads series (broadcast 16 August 1960, repeated 6 November 1960) which included in its credits Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

The other two off-theme songs should really have been admirably on theme. Derek sang The Bold Princess Royal (Roud 528, Laws K29) "On the 14th of February..." and Mike sang a hunting song, Last Valentine's Day (Roud 6475).

Spinning a yarn

(Photo by Hans Splinter)

Last week's session saw the return of Richard and Lesley after their travels and a rare, in recent times, appearance of Gary, who I believe has been busy travelling and performing at festivals over the last few months.

Colin also returned from his break and fell back into his usual role of MC. Derek was the first to sing with Lord Bateman (Roud 40, Child 53). It proved unusually problematic for him since he started off with his usual tune but it morphed half-way into another, equally valid tune for the song.

Festival-style sing-a-long

Carson Robison

At the start of the session Maggie wasn't very happy, having sat down on a wet seat (I assume). She had to swap for a dry one, and in the process found a cigarette that someone had dropped on the floor, presumably while picking up their darts from beneath the dart board. Maggie wasn't bold enough to smoke it but, after some examination to check the brand and to eliminate the possibility of obvious "doctoring", Colin smoked it at the interval with no obvious ill effects.

Mike kicked off the session with The hunting priest [Doctor Mack or Tally Ho! the hounds, Sir] (Roud 1861), but he started with the second verse of his version and while he could remember the third was at a total loss for the the first and gave up, restarting with Haul on the bowline (Roud 652).

Wherefore art thou Maggie?

With Maggie and Mike watching Shakespeare instead of taking charge at The Bridge, Richard took Mike's place for the evening, helped by Lesley on raffle tickets.

Simon arrived at the same time as Colin, and any impression that he may have tried to run him over was definitely unintentional (and didn't really happen at all). An apparently friendly chap standing at the door of the pub suggested that Colin had been less than willing to exchange pleasantries; maybe it was his recent brush with death?

Rising from the heat of The Ashes

Cootamundra Wattle

Last week's session was as hot and sweaty as a dingo's armpit except we didn't have a dingo, just Gerty who took great pleasure in sitting on Mike's notebook as he tried to write down the songs we sang. There was also the competition with the band in the bar, which I think we won.

The only theme I discerned during the evening was Australia, introduced by Rachel, and one can only assume, relating to the ongoing Ashes series, in which England seems to be doing well. Rachel's contributions were from the collecting of A L Lloyd: Wallaby Stew and The Shearer's Dream. Tom added Cootamundra Wattle and Rose came in with Diamantina Drover.

Thursday was Maggie's birthday, so we all sang Happy Birthday.

More brief than recently

Al Stewart

Apparently my reports have been too long recently. No, not a complaint from the Dragon Folk club, but at home. You see, I try to complete the report after getting home from a session and a long report can mean very late to bed, especially after checking up all those song references. So, this will be shorter than recent reports and I may carry on that way. It just means I'll only mention songs which had stories attached on the night and I'll risk not mentioning everyone who was there. Sorry in advance.

Mike kicked off the evening with Sam's Gone Away. Derek sang The Four Marys. Apparently there are other titles to this song but Derek explained why he always uses this one. He was at a folk club and talking to a lady who said she was not feeling too good. It was because she had drunk four bloody marys the night before, so Derek began to sing "There were four bloody marys...".