St David's Day 2015

Celebrating St David’s Day in Barmouth

The important factor which both constitutes news and explains the whole session is that there will be no Dragon Folk Club on 27 February but we will be back on Friday 6 March at the usual venue. It's simply a matter of our room being booked for another function. We were given at least two weeks' notice and the possibility of an alternative night, which was nice. Unfortunately the alternative night didn't work for enough of the regulars, so we're having a week off.

This hiatus meant that we wouldn't be meeting any closer to St David's day, so adopted Welshman, Richard, who MCed for the evening, announced at the last moment that. All things Welsh would be the theme. Given that there had been no leek (sic) of this information beforehand the level of preparedness was fairly low, except for Richard himself, who had obviously been planning it.

Valentine's Day 2015

CWAC Valentine's Day 1944

Ignoring the fact that it was Friday 13th, we concentrated on it being the day before Valentine's Day with a theme described by Mike as "Lust and Unrequited Love". I think everyone pretty much stuck to the theme even if we strayed even further than usual from the folk tradition. Roger set out on a tour of songs from the shows, claiming he was "doing a Simon", since Simon sang Summertime a couple of weeks ago.

Colin took the mantel of MC and got Mike to kick off with Black Sloven (Last Valentine's Day), which is not about love at all but is a hunting song. Nevertheless, it somehow got us off on theme.

Rugby and Derek's connection game

The 1905 Original All-Blacks who each received

an autographed copy of On the Ball and took

the song on tour.

We were smaller in number than recently but no less keen. It was the evening of the first six nations' rugby match of the season: Wales versus England at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. This led to one of the main themes for the evening.

Richard was once again MC and, since Mike hadn't yet thought of a song, got Colin to kick off the evening, which he did with The Robert Whitworth (Neil and Roz Kimber), telling the story of an epic rescue performed by the Whitby lifeboat of that name on 19 January 1881.

Advice and disasters

The trawler Ross Cleveland

Richard was once again MC for the evening and he kicked off the session with Tarry Wool.

Things were back to normal this week after Burns' Night last week, although Derek's mentioned that his first song, McPherson's Farewell, was claimed by Burns but that he didn't write it. Unfortunately my research has only uncovered people claiming that Burns did write it; so although I trust Derek in these things I haven't been able to unearth the history he is getting at.

Burns' Night 2015

Robert Burns (1759-96)

A fine turn-out for our pre-Burns' Night session with 19 humans and three dogs including Gertie, who could possibly be described as a "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie" if she wasn't listening. There were plenty of Scottish, psuedo-Scottish and debatably Scottish songs in evidence. I won't comment too much on their relationship to Burns unless it's reasonably obvious or was stated.

Richard was once again MC for the evening - it's becoming quite a habit. We were pleased to see Maggie S for the first time in a few weeks, but she and Mike still had to leave at half time.

A couple of other notable anniversaries were mentioned. Derek pointed out Ewan McColl's 100th birthday on Sunday 25 January, and Keith G mentioned the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death on Saturday 24 January.

Keith G proposed as appropriate to Churchill, Leonard Cohen's First We Take Manhattan (then we take Berlin).

Church-going, languages and Barbara Allen

Leadbelly (right), from whose singing our
final song of this session (Take a Whiff on me) comes.
The trumpeter is Bunk Johnson

A better turn-out this week and a couple of people trying our new venue for the first time. This is good to see and I hope a lot more of our occasional visitors will make appearances in the next few weeks; maybe even becoming more regular once they see that things are better at The New Inn, Westerleigh.

With Indy howling as well as ever and Maggie at home requiring Mike's care and attention, Richard once more took up the role of MC for the evening. Derek kicked off with The Volunteer Organist (Roud 5378, William B Gray and G L Spaulding). Richard picked up the theme of going to church by performing, as a reading, The Wensleydale Lad (Roud 21176). Church bells then became a minor theme with Steve G singing Bob Dylan's Ring Them Bells and Colin Egloshayle Ringers (Roud 1163).

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.