St Patrick's Day 2023

Florrie Forde (1875-1940)

We had a great little session for St Patrick last Friday at The Bridge. The usual suspects were joined again by Paul W and Denny, the previous week's newcomers. The full complement was made up by Steve C.

I'll keep it short this week, but I can get away with that because, unusually, the YouTube playlist from the "a selection" link at the bottom includes every one of the 40 songs sung. And yes, while forty isn't a record for Dragon session it's really up there.

Colin as MC started us off with Whiskey in the Jar (roud 533, laws L13A). Many, although not all of the songs we sang were Irish or had some connection with Ireland. Next it was Simon singing Down Our Street.

Paul gave us All For Me Grog (roud 475) and Denny added Percy French's Mountains of Mourne. Steve C completed the first round with Galway Shawl (roud 2737)

I'll briefly mention a few of the other songs.

Steve asked whether he had sung Stan Rogers' Field Behind the Plow at the club before. I can confirm he has. One occasion, not necessarily the only one, was 13 September 2019.

Colin sang The City of Chicago which was made famous by Christy Moore, but was written in 1984 by his brother, Barry Moore, who is the singer Luka Bloom.

Paul sang a version of Fathom the Bowl (Roud 880) which he had adapted to refer to Ireland and Guinness. I've taken the liberty of linking a more conventional version.

Denny sang Oh! Oh! Antonio, which was written by CW Murphy and Dan Lipton in 1908. It's nice to be able to link to a recording of Florrie Forde who was the original artist to sing the song. I really wanted to use a photograph of Forde to head this article, but realised there was probably no Irish connection. Despite CW's surname, he was William Murphy, born in Manchester in 1870. It turns out however the songs he wrote include Irish As She's Spoken (1893), How Can They Tell That Oi'm Oirish? (1898), The Little Irish Postman (1904), The Singer Was Irish (1910). That's good enough for me.

Steve finished off the evening with The Ballad of Sammy's Bar (Cyril Tawney).

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

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

St Patrick's Day 2019

The Giant's Causeway, County Antrim
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's St Patrick's Day session saw a wide variety of songs with more or less connection to Ireland. This Friday there will be no theme so we'll look forward to at least as wide a variety.

Last Friday Colin as MC started off well on theme with Tom Lewis' St Patrick's Song.

Mike told us that Simon's Paddy Lay Back (Roud 653) was associated with Liverpool. There is a long quote from Stan Hugill on the subject of the song here. Mike's own first song was Red Haired Mary (Sean McCarthy).

Derek tried, for the first few rounds anyway, to pick songs which actually mentioned St Patrick. His first contribution was How Caesar Was Driven From Ireland (Dominic Behan).

Connections

Harry Liston (1843-1929)

Despite the absence of Mike and his trusty canine companion, Indy we had a great session last week. We were joined again by Steve C and for the first time by Liz. Carl also came along having visited us before in February of this year.

Remember this weeks session (30 November) will have the theme of St Andrew's Day. I listed in last week's blog report all the patronages held by Andrew, so there's no excuse for having nothing to sing but if you are still at a loss bear in mind that we are always happy for people to offer us material that doesn't follow the theme - we may even sometimes find a connection for you.

Last week's session started with MC, Colin singing The Ee-rye-ee Canal (Roud 6599).

Liz, on her first visit, came thinking she would sing only one song, that being The Three Ravens (Roud 5, Child 26). Little did she know the persuasive capabilities of our MC. Without her realising the covert coercion being applied (only joking) she sang a further three: Whiskey In The Jar (Roud 533, Laws L13A), Away Ye Merry Lasses (Georje Holper) and The Water (Johnny Flynn).

Crowd Dispersal

Last week's session was again well attended with a welcome return for Rose, who also brought along a newcomer to the club, Jonjo.

Colin was MC and Derek started the evening off with Red Roses For Me (Sean O'Casey). Mike followed this with Wave Over Wave (Jim Payne, Janis Spence).

Tony brought us one of his Welsh tunes which this time was Tafarn Y Wheatsheaf (The Wheatsheaf Pub) and Hilary followed that with Try To Remember (Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt).