Wherefore art thou Maggie?

With Maggie and Mike watching Shakespeare instead of taking charge at The Bridge, Richard took Mike's place for the evening, helped by Lesley on raffle tickets.

Simon arrived at the same time as Colin, and any impression that he may have tried to run him over was definitely unintentional (and didn't really happen at all). An apparently friendly chap standing at the door of the pub suggested that Colin had been less than willing to exchange pleasantries; maybe it was his recent brush with death?

Richard kicked off the evening with Byker hill (Roud 3488) starting as he meant to go on by covering Mike's songs in his absence. One of his later songs, Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't, was a reference to Richard and Lesley's upcoming visit to Paris - yes, really, listen through the song! Richard continued to reproduce Mike's songs with Blackleg miner (Roud 3193).

Colin was another to pickup a theme of mining with Colliers' rant (but not this one).

Lesley contributed one song that she would have been wary of doing if Mike and Maggie had been present, that being Pleasant and delightful (Roud 660, Laws O30). I'm sure it's not that M&M don't like the song, just that they can't get all those alternative words and actions out of their heads.

Derek's first contribution was Rambleaway (Roud 171), in line with his own origins, Derek replaced the usual "Birmingham fair" "with "Framlingham fair". Since Derek challenged me on it, I will also mention that he sang The weary gallows (The maid freed from the gallows) (Roud 114, Child 95), a version of The Prickly Bush collected in 1975 by Hugh Shields from the singing of Susie Phaidi Oig (Mrs Cunningham) from Teileann, Co Donegal.

Simon was inspired by a recent trip to Masson Mills to sing Poverty knock (Roud 3491), probably written by Tom Daniel, a weaver from Batley. Derek got his spoons out for the chorus. Apparently Derek used to carry a pair of extra large spoons solely for this song since they sounded more like a loom in operation. Simon introduced another first-time song in Peggy Gordon (Roud 2280).

Paul provided the usual nightmares for the session record book with his own guitar pieces; so much so that Richard recorded one as Title not important. Leonised was fairly clear, though apparently it had been inorrectly recorded on a previous occasion as Leo and I. In fact it is an homage to Leo Kottke. Three in one isn't in fact an oil (there aren't sequels called Castrol GTX and WD40), but rather a combination of three short tunes.

Gary sang Come by the hills. When Richard referred obliquely to possibly needing a passport, Gary was confused. Richard was referring to post-referendum Scotland in case of a "Yes" vote, but Gary considered the song to be Irish. In fact it seems that the tune is from an Irish traditional song, Buachaill o'n Éirne Mé, but the words were written by Scottish playwright W Gordon Smith (if you don't believe Wikipedia, go to our friends at Mudcat).

The evening was closed with Gary singing Don Freed's tragi-comic Being a pirate.

Here's a selection of these and other songs sung during the session.

(Number of people present - 7, of which 7 performed)