A late May miscellany

Frank Kidson

Some people managed to keep up the May theme this week, and even Richard found one May song, having previously given up after spending most of the preceding four months singing them. Apart from that we had somewhat of a miscellany this week.

Mike kicked off proceedings with the Card playing song (Roud 884). According to the sleeve notes of the album Bold Sportsmen All: Gamblers and Sporting Blades on which Ewan McColl sings the song, "Folksong collector Frank Kidson obtained this song from a soldier who learned it in India in the 1850s. Originally, each verse was sung by a different member of the company, who drained his glass midway through the stanza, to give himself inspiration. Other less decorous versions have come to light. This example is offered to would-be singers as a model on which they may make their own improvisations."

Mining disasters and yet more May

Shirley and Dolly Collins

The May theme continued this week for some people, joined with some mining disasters following the news this week of the disaster at the Soma mine in Turkey.

Mike started us off with Cape Cod girls, which I have also seen called the Codfish Shanty.

The mining disaster theme was taken up by Derek with The Blantyre explosion. This song is about the Blantyre mining disaster, which happened on the morning of 22 October 1877. At Blantyre Colliery, William Dixon's pit, numbers 1 and 2 were both blasted, killing 207 miners of which the youngest victim was a boy of only 11. The accident left 92 widows and 250 fatherless children.

Aussie rules

John Williamson, Australian
country music singer-songwriter

A new feature this week in the blog report: by special request I have recorded the number of people present at the session. I have also back-dated this feature by two weeks, so you can see that we had a bumper week on 25 April, when there were 20 people present, of which 17 performed.

The other piece of news this week is that the club has had some problems with one of the pub's regulars: problems which have been mentioned on this blog in the past. This week Maggie received an apology from that person. We hope that will now be the end of the matter and if it is there will be no further mention of it here.

There was much jollity and wide ranging discussion again this week, often relating to the relative merits of various Yorkshire and Lancashire towns. Being from Lincolnshire myself, I should have had the sense to stay out of it but I am afraid I didn't.

May at last

Stan Kelly, who wrote Liverpool Lullabye

After last week's bumper gathering this week wasn't as much of a disappointment as it could have been with a good showing of regulars. Being the nearest session to 1 May, May festivals and traditions were in evidence, though, as Derek pointed out, it was surprisingly left to him to be "roving out on a May morning".

Pre-session chat was wide ranging and frank. I won't trouble you, reader with most of it; suffice to say, one strand went from liberty bodices to "going commando" in a few short steps. It was also remarked that the unwanted interloper "the fresian" hasn't made an appearance recently. Anyone who doesn't know the story please understand that I'm not talking about some unwanted folky but a pub regular who has been known to interrupt proceedings sometimes.