A mixed bag

A Lincolnshire fenland farm in 2023
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

A happy band of four met for last week's un-themed session of the Dragon Folk Club. I'm rather late writing the report this week, so I will keep it short.

First of all let's get out of the way the advert for this Friday (1 March) when the theme will be St David's Day, which it is. Of course Welsh songs, songs about Wales and the Welsh, and at a push even songs about whales are very welcome, but really anything goes as long as it's acoustic, whether that's a song, a tune, or any other sort of performance.

And don't forget St David's other patronages, which compared to the other national saints of the UK and Ireland seem to be quite thin on the ground: Pembrokeshire (in South West Wales), Naas (the county town of County Kildare in Ireland), vegetarians, and poets.

To keep this brief I will mention just some of the less-often sung of the things we heard last week. You may think some of them are less-often sung for a reason, but I hope you will agree that others are gems.

• Colin - Radio Times (Tom Lewis)
• Paul - One more pull (Ian Woods)
• Simon - Jolene (Dolly Parton)
• Colin - Old Molly Metcalfe (Jake Thackeray)
• Simon - Love is like a butterfly (Dolly Parton)
• Colin - The frog's courtship (roud 16)
• Denny - Sweet thyme (John Conolly, Pete Mundy)
• Simon - The Lincolnshire song (John Sykes)
• Colin -  The herring song (roud 128)
• Denny - Loving Hannah (roud 454)
• Colin - Ivor (roud 2570)

I'll pause there just to note that we learnt the song Ivor tells the true story of dramatist, singer and composer Ivor Novello who was sentenced to eight weeks in Wormwood Scrubbs prison, serving four of those weeks, for misusing wartime petrol coupons. An admiring fan had stolen the coupons from her employer, but the court found that Novello was also culpable. This was a serious offence under rationing laws in wartime Britain.

• Colin - The pitmen poets (Jez Lowe)
• Colin - Little Mohee (roud 273, laws H8)
• Paul - Bird on the wire (Leonard Cohen)

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session - in fact it's all 36 of the songs we sang that evening.

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

Another One of Those Nights!

Bob Hart

This is the Substitute Scribe speaking. Firstly may I make it entirely clear that no one made a sustained attempt to actually sing The Purple People Eater (sorry, I don’t know its Roud number!) Colin however did sing Down by the Dockyard Wall. Derek then queried a similarity in the tune to that of Dave Webber’s Watch and Chain. Colin pointed out that both tune and words of Dockyard Wall were by Shep Woolley. Geoff proceeded to identify him as a regular actor in Rawhide and as the singer /composer of The Purple People Eater. However, as subsequent research reveals, the latter was actually Sheb Wooley^[1]. The Southampton-based Shep was given his nickname (even a long thread on Mudcat nearly 10 years ago failed to reveal his real name) because he was rather more agricultural than Sheb.

Yes, folks – it was another of those Dragon nights when the craic in between is more interesting than the actual songs! And by the way did you know that the English ‘crack’ was the original word and it was only Gaelicised into ‘craic’ later? If so, please make an effort to get to the Bridge – we need your brains.