Halloween

Ghost catchers

This week's session was actually on Halloween so there were, as you would expect, lots of ghosties and ghoulies and... things that go bump in the night but in fact it turned out to be quite an eclectic evening.

It was an evening for couples. In a very rare occurrence Colin brought his wife, and even more unusually, Gary (currently unable to drive himself about) brought his wife, Helen. While it's a treat for all of us, since  Helen is an excellent singer, the unfortunate trade-off was that they had to leave at half-time.

Joe and Josci were also present but decided not to sing this time. Joe wanted Simon to sing something with him but I'm not sure it would have worked unaccompanied. See what you think.

Mike started us off with Devil in York (Tim Brooks).

As you might expect on Halloween, we had many ghost stories. The first was from Derek and came in the form of The Suffolk miracle (Roud 246, Child 272). Simon's ghostly offering was She moved through the fair while Chris sang Molly Malone (Roud 16932) and Colin Widdicombe Fair (Roud 137).

Other strangeness was represented by, for example, Colin's The wedding at Stanton Drew (Colin Reece) and Slark (Stackridge), Lesley's Reynardine (Roud 397), and in what he described as an annual silliness: Simon's Monster mash (Bobby Pickett and Leonard L Capizzi).

More down-to-earth strangeness came in the form of Richard's own Full of superstitions and Simon's Smuggler's song (Rudyard Kipling).

Understandably, others didn't entirely follow the theme. John sang Johnny Cash's Folsom prison blues. Lorna, who had come with John, sang Yellow bird (Alan and Marilyn Bergman) accompanied by John on Djembe. The second time round John performed his own poem, Ride the freedom train, with vocal accompaniment from Lorna, and Lorna sang a version of Amazing Grace (John Newton).

Roger sang Wild Rover (Roud 1173), happily while Mike was out of the room, seeing to his dog, Indy. Roger's second offering was Streets of London (Ralph McTell).

Gary's sole offering of the evening was Sea dog (Bob Zentz), and Helen's was The librarian's lament (John Conolly).

Derek was clearly disappointed that, having prepared a selection of Nelson-related songs, he had been unable to sing them at last week's cancelled session, so he sang The bonnie bunch of roses (Roud 664). Richard followed this swiftly, along the same lines, with Bold Nelson's praise (collected by Cecil Sharp).

Finally, Mike closed the session with Alabama John Cherokee.

Next week is our closest session to Bonfire Night, so be sure to bring along your campfire songs.

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

(Number of people present - 16, of which 12 performed)