New Year 2019

Whittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire, New Year's Day 2000
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Happy New Year to everyone, and indeed that was our theme for last Friday's Dragon Folk Club session. This week there will be no pre-planned theme, nor next week, but that will then bring us to 25 January and Burns' Night!

Last week Colin was MC and started the evening off with Rothesay-o (Roud 2142) which starts "One Hogmanay at Glesca Fair".

Steve C made on of his semi-regular appearances and started his contribution with the seasonal The Snow It Melts The Soonest (Roud 3154). Simon was nervous about pulling the rug from under Mike by singing The January Man (Dave Goulder) but Mike encouraged him to sing it.

Mike kicked off with Richard Thompson's We'll Sing Hallelujah while Derek took us to Orkney for a Wassail or New Year's Carol (Roud 4584).

Colin sang The End Of Another Year whose author, Bob Zentz hails from Norfolk, Virginia in the USA, not England's East Anglia as may have been suggested.

Simon had hurriedly picked up some seasonal songs for the evening. Carol For New Year's Day goes with the tune for Greensleeves and dates from 1642, Deck The Halls (Roud 26301) has English words written by Thomas Oliphant and first published in 1862, and the bawdy Diddle, Diddle; The Kind Country Lovers (Roud 3483) predates Lavender's Blue with which it shares a tune (apparently called Lavender's Green) comes from a broadside printed between 1672 and 1679. Having earlier been afraid of stepping on Mike's toes, with this last one Simon stepped on Derek's who was about to sing the very same song, but no one seemed to mind too much.

Derek maintained his own tradition by singing The Miner's Dream Of Home (Will Godwin, Leo Dryden - Roud 1749). He seemed to think this was something to be suffered since he promised this would be last time until next New Year unless we have a mining or Australian themed evening at which he is particularly stuck for a song.

Colin's Come Fill Up Your Glasses (Peggy Seeger) got the tempo and mood back on a celebratory track and who can resist a bit of cross-dressing with The Tailor's Breeches (Roud 1610) from Mike (singing that is, not... Oh well).

Derek gave us a medley of Epiphany parodies based on We Three Kings... you know the ones: Leicester Square with ladies' underwear and Beatles using various forms of transport - sorry no videos; they exist on YouTube but aren't worth searching out, so don't go looking... Don't say I didn't warn you.

It was also Derek who had apparently almost thrown his radio out of the window during the week. Radio 4 Extra was repeating its serialisation of Lord Peter Whimsey, Strong Poison (Dorothy L Sayers) and Derek heard actor Ian Carmichael as Whimsey, in a moment when the case was going badly, say "Binn'ry O Binn'ry" which of course should be pronounced "Bin-ory" and to make the point he sang The Twa Sisters or Binnorie (Roud 8, Child 10).

Steve C appropriately finished off the evening with Tom Paxton's The Last Thing On My Mind.

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

(Number of people present - 5, of whom 5 performed)