New Year and matters arising

Wren (photo by Alden Chadwick)

It was a perfectly respectable turnout for the first session of 2016. We had been promised songs on themes to cover the whole period between Christmas and 8 January, which is pretty much what we got.

Colin was MC and he asked Derek to start us off. Derek said he had to start off in his traditional way with Miner's Dream of Home (Roud 1749) - "For the bells were ringing the old year out, And the new year in".

Richard didn't seem to realise that Christmas was over, singing the Kipper Family's The Ivy and the Holly (the second song in the linked video).

We were presented with a number of St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) songs, including Colin's St Stephen's Day Murders (Paddy Moloney and Elvis Costello) and Richard's Herod and the Cock (Roud 306, Child 55). The theme was continued with a whole herd of songs about the Boxing Day tradition of hunting the wren. Colin sang The Wren Song, and a parody of The Cutty Wren by Les Barker. Meanwhile, Derek gave us The Boys of Barr na Sráide.

Another Les Barker song came from Lesley: Hard Cheese of Old England, which caused Derek to reply with his own song, You Can't Eat Bang about an extinct and particularly hard cheese from Suffolk.

New Year's Eve (Si Kahn) was sung by Gary and Mike sang We'll Sing Hallelujah (at the turning of the year) by Richard Thompson. Finally we were taken into the new year by Simon singing Dave Goulder's January Man.

The Snows They Melt The Soonest (Roud 3154) was a more generally wintery song from Steve C.

Derek wanted to mention the recent death of our friend, Alan Mitchell. While he admitted that his and Alan's repertoires did not have a large intersection, one song which they both sang was A Dalesman's Litany (written or collected by FW Moorman to a tune by Dave Keddie).

Steve C was accompanied by though not in a musical sense, Jane, who as well as telling us some of her stories, read Edward Lear's The Jumblies and recited Lord Byron's When We Two Parted.

Gary finished off the evening with George Papavgeris' As Long As Someone Sings A Song.

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

(Number of people present - 10, of which 9 performed)