Not a dangerous sport?

Kathleen Behan
(Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

With Richard and Lesley on holiday in Auld Reekie we could have been very thin on the ground this week but we were saved by a rare appearance from Tom, and the presence of our two friendly morris dancers: Terry and Sean. In particular it was good to see Sean on his second visit during his convalescence from a dance-related injury. He promises to return, which is a very good thing.

Colin took up the MC's mantel and invited Derek to start us off which he did with The Rambler From Clare.

Mike's first song of the evening was Tom Lewis' Recall.

Sean's first contribution was Farewell To Tarwathie, which was written in the 1850s by George Scrogie, a miller at Fedderate, New Deer in Aberdeenshire. His other contributions were self-penned, being You No longer Know My Name, about his father's descent into dementia; The New Smurf Song, referring to Edward Snowden's revelations about GCHQ's tools for monitoring smartphones; Sandy Let's Dance, about his wife; and Corvynista.

After my successful attempt to find a recording of Phil Hammond last week, Derek picked up on another of my video choices: The Glendalough Saint sung by Brendan Behan. I think his point was that he had only heard Brendan singing his own songs; the recording appears to come from this album. This interest caused him to give us Erin Go Bragh of which he used to have a recording by Kathleen Behan, mother of Brendan. The recording is now lost to Derek and he thought it a difficult challenge for me to find it. The song was written by Peadar Kearney, Kathleen's brother. YouTube only yielded the above-linked rendition by another son of Kathleen's: Dominic Behan. That site has one recording of Kathleen but that is all I have found of her singing, though at least one album appears to exist.

Tom came up with a lesser-known Ralph McTell song, which Ray Croll didn't sing: Winnie's Rag.

Sean apologised unnecessarily for the sad nature of his excellent song about his father mentioned above, which caused Mike to have a "look what you've done now" moment as Colin sang Leonard Cohen's Suzanne - music to slit your wrists to, possibly?

Alan, unusually for him, reading from a book of the works of Marriott Edgar, gave us some less commonly performed monologues, including Little Aggie. It may be worth mentioning that the linked recording is by Shep Woolley who was the MC at the first folk club-type event I ever attended. Interesting? No, I thought not.

Tom started to play Paul Simon's American Tune but temporarily forgot both the words and the title. He said it was Duncan, and Colin had written that down in the record before Tom realised the actual title. Colin said Tom would just have to sing Duncan now, which he did. He did however return to American Tune later in the evening.

Arriving after his morris dancing and without his guitar, Terry sang Michael Peter Smith's The Dutchman. He was also later called upon to sing the closing song. Borrowing Tom's guitar and picking on the metal rather than his usual gut, he sang Eric Bogle's Leaving Nancy.

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

(Number of people present - 10, of which 8 performed)