Unexpected but welcome visitors

Ned Kelly on 10 November 1880,
the day before his execution

Well, last week's Dragon Folk Club session was different, in mostly good ways. Colin's wife has been ill and while she is happily recovering it was not unexpected that he was a little late arriving, so Simon took over as MC for the evening.

Mike was the first of the regulars to arrive and found five, yes five, people already present. They were a group of four ladies, Sheila, Carol, Angela and Kay, who were accompanied by non-singer Tony, who I believe to be Sheila's husband. They weren't totally unknown because Mike knew Tony and Sheila and I understand that Angela had visited the Dragon Folk Club at least once before. They were however entirely unexpected and would be very welcome to come again as many times as they wish, just remember that our official starting time is 8:15pm - the music usually starts at around 8:30pm.

Since our visitors had already been singing, Simon asked them to perform two of their songs to start off the first circuit of the room. It turned out that as a group they had only practised twice and only officially had two songs which were The Fields Of Athenry (Pete St John) and Act Naturally (Johnny Russell, Voni Morrison).

Short but I hope sweet

Frontispiece depicting Juvenal and Persius,
from a volume translated
by John Dryden in 1711

It's a really short report of last week's session I'm afraid due to lack of time but first of all, please remember that this Friday's session will be our theme for St David's Day, so it's mainly Welsh but remember that he is also patron of poets and vegetarians, Pembrokshire and Naas in County Kildare, Ireland.

Colin started us off with The Bos'n The Gunner And Me (Francis Barron, Henry Trotere).

Simon spent the evening singing songs he had left over from Valentine's Day the week before, starting with No Sir No (Roud 146). Inspired by the line "If my hand should slip a little further" from the previous song, classicist Derek told the story of a young lady who had studied Juvenal's Satires  and had always wanted to know the meaning of an obscure Latin word used when one character's hand was slipped up the clothing of another character. She found the biggest and best Latin dictionary in the University library, and found that the word was translated... into its Greek equivalent. Now keen to get to the bottom of the mystery, she found the biggest and best Greek dictionary, where the Greek word was translated... back into the Latin! Derek sang Sullivan's John (Pecker Dunne).

Parodic episodes

Before I start the report on last week's session, can implore you to make an effort, even through the terrible weather, unless of course it is unsafe to do so, to attend this week's session. It is our St David's Day bash, when Welsh themed songs, tunes and other modes of performance are particularly welcome, but anything else will go too. The issue is that we will be without two stalwarts of the club for one week only and particularly with the expected bad weather there is a significant risk that we will turn up short of a quorum and go home without a word being sung or a note played. I know that if two or three of our irregulars, or even newcomers, can find the strength to turn out we can have a great evening, and of course the more the merrier; even audience members are welcome to join us.

Back to last week's session, Colin was MC and he started off the officially unthemed session with Ewan MacColl's Manchester Rambler.

Yet another musical miscellany

The Mary Rose in a battle with seven Algerine corsairs
(an engraving by Wenceslas Hollar
who was on the ship at the time)

There was no theme for last week's session so we were free to come up with clusters of songs around various topics.

Colin was the MC and Mike kicked us off with the topical The Twenty Fourth of February (Roud 951) (sorry I couldn't find a recording in English), although he sang "twenty third". Apparently it describes a battle which took place on 29 December 1669 where Captain John Kempthorne on the fifth Mary Rose saved a convoy from attack by seven ships of Algerine pirates. He was knighted for this action.