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)

Give me that old time religion

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

It'll be a concise report of last week's session but I hope it will still give you a flavour of what happened.

There was a tongue in cheek note at the end of the previous week's blog report that there might be a theme of carrier bags. Colin started us off with his one plastic bag song: Benledi Street Ballad. Apparently Coin found three other songs about bags but hadn't been able to prepare them for performance.

I don't think Derek's Lake of Coolfin (Roud 189, Laws Q33) had anything to do with bags of any kind and neither did Geoff's first: Master McGrath (James Custer, Roud V32683).