May Day 2019

May Pole (Photo: klndonnelly)

Last Friday's session had the theme of May and we were just two days late for May Day itself. This week (10 May) there will be no theme but if you have any May left-overs I am sure no one will mind the scraps.

In fact last week's session was amazing or at least unexpectedly well peopled. Tom made his first appearance of the year, John and Chris O, usually only very occasional visitors, made their second within a month, and Steffan, who I've been working on, he says, for four years, finally made a welcome appearance.

Colin, MCing as usual, started off the evening not particular in the May theme but marking the occasion of Derek's team, Glamorgan beating Gloucestershire in the cricket. He did this with the first of several Kipper Family songs of the evening: The Cricket Match.

Mike wasn't feeling to well so his contribution before an early exit was just one song, but a fine May song it was, Hal An Tow (Roud 1520) which is from the Helston May Day celebrations. There will no doubt be a follow-up from Derek and from just down the road at this week's session.

St George's Day 2019

The later "England Winners" of
the UK 1966 4d World Cup Stamp

Last week we met to mark St George's Day, which is of course also believed to be William Shakespeare's birthday (as well as the day he died).

This Friday's session will mark the beginning of May, Beltane if you wish. In fact last Derek believed that our canine folky, Indy might have been practising his maypole dance as we wound his extendable lead around the chair and table at which Derek sat, so we are expecting some interesting performances this week. What can you add to the session? If you don't perform then please feel free to attend as an audience member.

Colin, our regular MC, started off last week's session with Richard Thompson's The New St George.

Derek joked that he was unsure of the origins of his first song and suggested that I might be able to research it. That "song" was the Engerland football chant. Mike suggested that it might be contemporary with Lonnie Donegan's World Cup Willie, released in 1965 for the 1966 world cup.

Easter 2019

Photo: Jarosław Pocztarski

Last weeks session was unfortunately back to basics with only three singers to celebrate or otherwise mark Easter with songs overtly religious, comedy, political, historical and everything else. While we put a slightly early stop to proceedings we got though an impressive thirty songs - yes, ten each!

This Friday's session at The Bridge Inn will have an optional theme of St George, or William Shakespeare's birthday (and death day, we are told) if you prefer.

What a difference a week makes

Grand Union Canal, Park Royal (Photo: Derek Arridge)

What a difference a week makes! From a very (ahem) intimate session the previous week we had a perfectly adequate crew this week, not least thanks to three occasional visitors. John O and Chris O are not local but visit us when they are in the area with their caravan. John says this was their fourth visit, which seems about right. We were also joined by Lisa who has been before and was a very welcome sight and sound at the session.

This week's session will have an Easter theme, being on Good Friday (yes, we don't let something like that stop us), and next week will be our St George's session (26 April, just three days late).

A bunch of Colins

The absent Colin (Photo by Simon Meeds)

Despite special levels of advertising, nay pleading, we really were only three at last week's session. There was officially no theme but I had suggested that in his absence we might sing songs from Colin's vast (although like mine, paper-based) repertoire and indeed everyone came up with something along those lines.

There is no set theme for this Friday's (12 April) session, so please help us make it a bit more populous... at least Colin should be back from his wee trip to Scotland.

Simon took up the MC baton and started off with the first song previously sung by Colin, Bless 'Em All (Fred Godfrey, Robert Kewley - Roud 8402). Geoff reminded us of Colin singing The Gasman Cometh (Michael Flanders, Donald Swann).

April Fools, Mothering Sunday and Lady Day 2019

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

This Friday's session (3 April) will have no theme. Colin, our usual MC, will not be present and his place will be taken by Simon. In recognition of this we will declare open season on Colin's repertoire, so please feel free to look back through our blog reports and pick songs he has sung in the past for you to repeat this week. If you don't fancy that then you are at liberty to sing, play, recite or otherwise perform anything you like as long as its acoustic.

Back to last week, Colin was present and MCed. He started us off obliquely on the Mothering Sunday theme. You may know that as well as your own mother, Mothering Sunday is about the church where you were baptised, your mother church, well Colin went one stage further with The Mother Country, which was written down by Benjamin Franklin though it is not known whether he actually composed it.

Who's counting?

This is a special edition of the Dragon Folk Club blog. Unusually it isn't the report of one of our weekly Friday sessions but something for the geeks and nerds like me.

For some time I have been recording in a database nearly all of the songs and other items performed at the club. The main aim of this exercise is to make the task of bringing together our weekly reports slightly easier. However the side-effect is that I'm getting some quite interesting data on what we do.

By the nature of its real aim, this is not particularly scientific since some performances are missing, and some are sort of extrapolated. Nevertheless, it gives a reasonable indication of what has been going on at the club since August 2018.

We have five core members of the club.Quite a few other people turn up from time to time but these guys are present more than anyone else. So, it's worth reporting the total number of different performances each of them has done. This is not a competition, just an observation.

• Colin 219
• Derek 176
• Simon 134
• Mike 110
• Geoff 86

This hides the fact that they are in two different leagues. While Colin, Simon and Geoff usually use printed words, Mike only rarely does and Derek never. The repertoires of these last two singers are really amazing and even these figures don't reflect the full size of their repertoires.

More generally we have recorded 791 different songs (although that includes some tunes, poems and monologues), represented by 804 different variants, indicating that multiple distinct variants of some songs have been performed.

If you regularly read posts on this blog you will know that I record the numbers given to songs by the Roud, Laws and Child catalogues. The Laws one is slightly more complicated but it is easy enough to list the Roud and Child numbers we have sung up to #100 in each catalogue:

• Roud: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20, 23, 31, 38, 49, 50, 51, 54, 68, 79, 87, 90, 91, 94, 98
• Child: 2, 3, 7, 10, 12, 13, 16, 21, 24, 26, 49, 54, 73, 76, 77, 78, 84, 93

That's not bad coverage. I have a record of numbers beyond 100 but I wouldn't want to bore you with them. The child catalogue has a total of 305 ballads and roud lists thousands of songs in the English language.