Harvest 2018

(Photo: Herry Lawford)

It was a disappointment that we could only muster six people for our annual charity Harvest session; six is enough to make a lively musical evening but not to make a fortune in money raised for the BBC Radio Bristol Alive Appeal. It was however to good to see a brace of Terries (C and H).

MC Colin sang the first song, All Of A Row (Roud 1474). Derek asked whether this was in fact the Suffolk Harvest Home but it seems not, because that is apparently a version of Roud 310 ("Here's a health unto our master... drink, boys, drink").

Having said he had no harvest songs Terry C seemed to keep the tenuous connections going for most of the evening, starting with The Country Carrier (Roud 1400).

Derek opened up the John Barleycorn tally for the evening with Fred Jordan's version of Roud 164. This was later matched by Mike with the same song to the tune Wir Pflügen (attributed to Johann AP Schulz) to which the 1782 German poem which became We Plough The Fields And Scatter was set in 1800. Colin's contribution to this mini-theme was Hey John Barleycorn (Roud 2141).

Simon was another one with tenuous lins and he opened his account with Buttercup Joe (Roud 1635). After The Country Carrier, this was also the second explicitly from the repertoire of The Yetties, the third being Colin's performance of Out In The Green Fields (Roud 2670).

Mike's first harvest song was All Among The Barley (Elizabeth Stirling, Roud 1283)

Derek wavered from the theme to recall a cricketing anniversary. On 31 August 1968, Gary Sobers became the first batsman ever to hit six sixes in a single over off six consecutive balls in first-class cricket. The feat consisted of five clean hits for six and one six where the ball was caught but carried over the boundary by Roger Davis. Sobers was playing as captain of Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan at St. Helen's in Swansea (notably Derek is a Glamorgan supporter); the bowler was Malcolm Nash who far from unfortunate as suggested by Wikipedia, considers it a claim to fame. This tally of 36 runs in an over broke a 57-year-old record of 34 runs, held by Ted Alletson.[67] The ball was collected from a garden by 11-year-old Richard Lewis; he later gave the ball to Sobers.

Derek had racked his brains for a cricketing song in his repertoire and drew a blank, so instead he sang of another unfortunate incident in Swansea - Sweet Swansea (Roud 1612).

As usual we were able to rely on Terry H to give us some sweet songs in his mellow voice albeit that he is still somewhat hampered by an ear infection which kept him away from singing for a while. Notably among his songs was Danny Boy (Frederic Weatherly, Roud 23565) for which I can link a video of Terry singing. It's noted that our absent friend Maggie S doesn't like this song but I have heard someone before say that they were turned on to it by Terry's singing, so I wonder whether she would be similarly persuaded?

It fell to Colin to close the evening with Dougie MacLean's Scythe Song.

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

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