No train wreck

This week's session (18 March 2016) will be our closest to St Patrick's Day, so you might like to bring along some Irish songs and tunes. Next week (25 March) will be Good Friday and there is an event at the pub, so we will not have a session but we will be back the following week for the 1 April. There's no official theme yet but I wonder whether some fooling around might be in order?

Last week, Colin was MC and Derek started us off with The Bailiff's Daughter Of Islington (Roud 483, Child 105). Mike got us all singing with Drink Old England Dry (Roud 882).

Phil's first song was Engine One-Forty-Three which is based on the true story of the wreck of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway's Fast Flying Virginian (FFV) near Hinton, West Virginia on 23 October 1890. The train was on its way to Clifton Forge, Virginia, when it hit a rock slide. Early accounts record that the engineer, George Alley, remained on the train to try to slow it and save the lives of its passengers. Alley died at the scene, but the fireman is said to have jumped to safety.

Colin won't be at this week's session, so brought his Cheltenham Festival song forward by one week, singing Steve Knightley's Galway Farmer.

One mini-theme of this session was perhaps Australian songs. Whether consciously or not it could be seen as a tribute to Phil's school friend, "JB" who was visiting from Western Australia where she lives. The first of these was Mike's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (Eric Bogle) followed later in the evening by Derek singing a parody of the same song "When I was a young man I played a guitar...".

Another source of songs was Newfoundland with Simon singing The Ryans And The Pittmans (Roud 21113) and Chris brought us She Is Like The Swallow (Roud 2306).

Talking of song origins, looking forward to the following week's St Patrick's Day session, Derek made the point that Wild Rover No More (Roud 1173) only went to Ireland when The Dubliners adopted it, and that its real origin is with East Anglian singers such as Sam Larner and the Ling family.

We had two children's songs, both of which are in the Roud Folk Song Index: Colin sang The Old Carrion Crow (Roud 891) and Roger sang Three Blind Mice (Roud 3753) though really it was only a preamble to him singing Donkey Serenade (Bob Wright, Herbert Stothart, Rudolf Friml, Chet Forrest).

At the end of the evening it was Derek who sent us home with Matt McGinn's The Dundee Cat.

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

(Number of people present - 8, of whom 7 performed)