Scottish left-overs?

Corncrake

Parish notices first. After a week at old venue of The Bridge, we are back at The New Inn, Westerleigh this week (9 December) for a low-key Christmas session. Songs might be Christmas, bah humbug, or anywhere in between. There may even be some seasonal nibbles but I won't promise anything at this stage.

Next week (16 December) there should also be a session at The New Inn - see next week's blog report for more details. However there will be no sessions on 23 or 30 December. The first session of 2017 will be on 6 January but you'll have to wait for more details of that one as well. Sorry to be mysterious but there really is some uncertainty around at the moment, so please bear with me.

So last week we were back at The Bridge with Colin as MC and Derek started off with the first song: Napoleon's Dream (Roud 1538), and after singing it he exclaimed "they've still got the echo". Indeed despite the addition of a carpet in recent years (though before we previously departed the premises) the room, complete with stone walls, offers a far better acoustic than the bar where we sing at The New Inn.

Tom continued with Let Me Down Easy (Ralph McTell) and Terry C gave us Song For Ireland (Phil Colclough, June Colclough).

Colin admitted his mistake in announcing St Andrew's Day the week before both prematurely and without preparation, so he and Simon, who wasn't present at the previous session, ploughed a Caledonian furrow through the evening. Colin started it off with A Scottish Holiday (JW "Bill" Hill) and Simon kept it straight with Laird Of The Dainty Doonby (Roud 864).

Gary brought a seasonal note with Graeme Miles' When The Snows Of Winter Fall.

Derek had a brief flirtation with the theme of herring singing first about a Jolly Herring of the red variety (Roud 128) and then in a more incidental way with Windy Old Weather (Roud 472). For the second of these Derek no doubt expected Colin to note down the first line in the club's official record, and challenged him to get the spelling right. The first line? Well, it's "As I was fishing near Happisburgh light" - referring to the village in Norfolk whose name is pronounced "Hazeborough".

Tom made a brief excursion into Scotland with Echo Mocks The Corncrake (Roud 2736) which I think I'm correct in saying he acquired from Sylvia Barnes, the same source as Simon's The Handweaver And The Factory Maid (Roud 17771), of which he sings Sylvia's Scottish version of what appears to be an English (possibly Lancashire or Yorkshire?) song. Colin's offering second time round was This Love Will Carry written by Dougie MacLean, whose song, Caledonia was sung by Simon later in the evening.

Terry joined in obliquely with the Scottish theme, singing the Irish song, Red Is The Rose, which is set to the tune of Loch Lomond. I have found the song credited to Tommy Makem for the words but apparently it predates him and Robert Burns for the music but Burns usually if not always adopted traditional tunes, so that was almost certainly a load of rubbish!

There can't be many songs which mention Sellotape^TM, much less have it in their title, but Colin found one in the Sellotape Pipers (Margaret Stoddart).

Derek, having given well the previous week, eventually turned his vocal chords to something Scottish this week in the form of The Dowie Dens O' Yarrow (Roud 13, Child 214).

Terry resorted to Scots-Australian Eric Bogle for Leaving Nancy, inspired by his goodbye to his mother as he emigrated to the antipodes.

Colin outlasted Simon with Scottish songs by singing Robert Burns' version of Ye Jacobites By Name (Roud 5517) and finally, to end the evening, Wark O' The Weavers (Roud 374) which sent us all home singing.

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

(Number of people present - 6, of whom 6 performed)