In the Christmas spirit

This week's session was rather special since not only was it our Christmas party but also it was the first at what we have now decided will be the new venue for the Dragon Folk Club. Unfortunately we were a few down on the expected numbers due to illness but the seasonal buffet made the evening go well. We hope that the new venue will prove more conducive to lively sing-arounds and that we can persuade more people to join or rejoin us. If you are in the area on a Friday night please do drop by the New Inn in Westerleigh. But not too fast since we are having a week off; there will be no session on 26 December 2014 and we will be raring to go at this new venue on 2 January 2015.

Mike got us into the Christmas mood with the Gloucestershire Wassail (Roud 209).

Most of us managed something with a Yuletide feel. Even devout atheist, Derek made an effort to be serious about Christmas with the Cherry Tree Carol (Roud 453, Child 54). Colin sang Mike Harding's Christmas 1914, which is currently on re-release in remastered form for charity (50% of all profits from the single will be split between the Royal British Legion and Help For Heroes - sung by Mike H, not by Colin, of course).

Simon continued the Christmas theme with Gaudete, a carol from no later than the 16th century. Not to be outdone, Mike's riposte was another ancient carol, the Boar's Head Carol, written down in 1521 by Wynken de Worde. On a less serious note, having heard Gaudete, Maggie requested that Colin sing the Kipper Family's Awayday parody of the song, which he duly did.

On the subject of Maggie's requests it was two weeks ago that she made a request of Phil, and it was only now that he was able to fulfil it by singing Red River Dave McEnery's Amelia Earhart's Last Flight.

Colin took the Christmas theme further afield with what is probably Canada's oldest Christmas song: the Huron Carol, written in 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf using the native language of the Huron/Wendat people,  and later translated into English by Jesse Edgar Middleton.

While Chris didn't directly address the subject of Christmas, two of her songs mentioned "scarlet" which seemed fairly Christmassy. They were Scarlet Ribbons (Evelyn Danzig and Jack Segal) and Barbara Allen (Roud 54, Child 84). Roger, in the meantime, as well as giving us some rousing songs, told us of the story of how he was accepted into the SAS after completing its entrance exercise and refused because he didn't fancy committing to a twelve year term.

Tom was another who did't quite manage to meet the Christmas theme but came up trumps in terms of the spirit of the season with Carole King's You've got a friend.

Terry C and Keith G both arrived later in the evening, Keith straight from work and Terry presumably straight from morris dancing. Keith gave us One Meat Ball (Hy Zaret and Lou Singer) and I'm on to you (Neil Diamond), and Terry sang The night John Willy took his ferret to a do (Larry Kearns) before finishing off the evening with Leaving Nancy (Eric Bogle).

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

(Number of people present - 12, of which 10 performed)