Twelfth Night, the Deep South and Fred Jordan's boots

Fred Jordan's boots

We weren't quite as much of a throng as the previous week but almost everyone was singing or otherwise performing. We were joined in the bar by two people not directly involved in the session. There's nothing at all wrong with that, and I saw them responding to some of the performances, which has to be a good thing.

This was the nearest Dragon session to twelfth night, so there were some appropriate songs for that, and continuing the theme of New Year. We also had a mini-theme of Fred Jordan.

Maggie being unwell, Mike was to leave at half time again, so Richard did the duties of MC.

Derek kicked off proceedings with Lavender's blue (Roud 3483) which is connected with the celebration of Twelfth Night and the choosing of the king and queen during the festival. Robert Herrick's poem Twelfe-Night, or King and Queene (published 1648) describes the election of king and queen by bean and pea in a plum cake, and the homage done to them by the draining of wassail bowls of "lamb's-wool", a drink of sugar, nutmeg, ginger and ale. Note that Derek uses "fiddle faddle" rather than "dilly dilly" in the song.

Fine singing this week - come back soon

Jean Ritchie

Apart from most of the usual familiar faces we were very pleased to welcome three new ones this week: Matt, Nonny, and Arian, who proved excellent performers, both with their harmony singing and individually. They have only recently started singing together and this was their first outing. I hope they make it the first of many to The Dragon Folk Club and that it might even become a habit.

Simon started off by pointing out that Monday 8th December is Jean Ritchie's 92nd birthday and singing her song, The L&N don't stop here anymore. Phil continued the railway theme with The runaway train (Robert E Massey, Harry Warren, Carson Robison) and George Allen (the dying engineer).

Matt, Nonny and Arian so far have only three songs together and they quickly got through those. I'm sure Mike would have appreciated their singing of Rolling down to old Maui (Roud 2005). Unfortunately he had just slipped out to calm down his dog. The second song from the trio was My lady's coach (probably Sabine Baring-Gould). The third and final song from their early repertoire was The deserter (Roud 493).