MC Colin made an earlier-than-usual start with Gather Round The Family (Bonny Sartin), so it was only during Tom's first song, You've Got A Friend (Carole King), that Mike and his canine companion, Indy arrived.
Terry H was trying some of the songs he plays less frequently and some entirely new material. The first of these was Lady Franklin's Lament (Roud 487, Laws K09).
Simon had dredged and tried to extend his sparse repertoire of Christmas songs, starting with Gaudete (From Piæ Cantiones [Finland, 1582]). Two other singers picked up on the Latin theme, if only in part: Mike with The Boar's Head Carol (Roud 22229) and Colin with the Huron Carol (Jean de Brébeuf).
Derek's first contribution of the evening was The Cherry Tree Carol (Roud 453, Child 54). He seemed to imply that he had spliced it with another song but if he did the join was invisible to this scribe.
It was great to see Chris and Roger after a long break. Chris took us to Newfoundland for She's Like The Swallow (Roud 2306). Roger had to be serenading Chris with September Song (Kurt Weill, Maxwell Anderson).
Terry H wanted Chris to join him on the female verses of The Blue Cockade (Roud 191) and she might have obliged but we couldn't find another set of words for her - the last time I heard Terry sing this song his "female partner" was Kevin Adams!
From the Sheffield Carol tradition Simon sang While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks (Nahum Tate, Thomas Clark - Roud 936). Clark's tune, called Cranbook, after a town in his native Kent, is best known today as the one used for On Ilkla Moor Baht 'At. However, the history seems to be that the tune, written probably a couple of years before it was first published in 1805, was originally used for a hymn called Grace 'Tis A Charming Sound and was later adopted for While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks (originally written by Nahum Tate before 1700).
It probably remained the most popular tune for the carol until Hymns Ancient and Modern was published in 1861, which popularised the use of the tune Old Winchester. In fact While Shepherds... is set to more tunes than any other of the traditional carols, maybe as many as one hundred.
On Ilkla Moor Baht 'At was written around the middle of the 19th century. It seems to have been written in a fairly informal way by members of a choir, possibly as stand-in words where the choir didn't want to stop and start singing sacred words while practising the carol.
Derek sang Three Wise Women. I see that on The Mudcat Café in 2009 he mentioned it was "by Les Barker (if not it was Stanley Accrington)". I suspect he was closer to the mark with the latter but Accrington's version is not only longer than Derek's but has different gifts. Nevertheless, a lot of the structure is almost identical.
Sorry to all the other singers but I have to mention another of Derek's songs since he gave us a challenge to work out how Doctor Price was connected to Christmas. I remembered from a previous occasion when he sang the song that Doctor William Price was a pioneer of cremation, a practice which was illegal at the time but that didn't really answer it. In fact, as Derek revealed, Price precipitated the scandal of cremation when he burnt the body of his five-month-old-son. This was though the second controversy in which his son had been involved; the first was that Price had named him Iesu Grist (the Welsh for Jesus Christ) - this was Derek's link with Christmas.
The last song of the evening was Tom's own song about a former partner of his, Sweet Baby Jane (Tom Mossman).
Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 8, of whom 8 performed)
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