Valentine's Day - 2019

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Valentine's Day session brought out many tales of love and lust as well as a couple of unrelated but timely anniversaries.

Before I get started with the report we have some parish announcements since we are coming to peak theme season. All of the following themes are optional; you are always welcome to come along and perform anything you wish, or indeed take your place as an audience member, but if you can match the theme with one or two songs, stories or any other type of acoustic performance then so much the better. Where no theme is given for a particular Friday night it doesn't mean we don't meet, we almost always do, it's just that there is no specific theme planned, so come along with your own theme or none as you wish.

1 March - St David's - mainly Welsh but he is also patron of poets and vegetarians, Pembrokshire and Naas in County Kildare, Ireland

15 March - St Patrick - mainly Irish but he is also patron of engineers and paralegals as well as many geographical areas

29 March - April Fools - superstitions, luck, nonsense, etc.

26 April - St George - mainly English but also farmers, soldiers, skin diseases, shepherds and many more

Back to last week, MC Colin started the singing with the Bold Fisherman (Roud 291, Laws O24) which ends up with a proposal of marriage. Derek gave us a children's street song Postman Postman (Roud 19234). I wasn't able to find any recordings of it but it is obviously distantly related to this American one.

Simon's song The Ballad Of Patch Eye And Meg (Michelle Shocked) finds evidence of past romance in a tattoo. Mike finished round one with Come Write Me Down (Roud 381).

When Colin sang Bill The Weaver (Roud 432, Laws Q9), Mike said he'd only heard one person sing it previously. Colin acquired it, we heard, from Folklife West where it was collected in England but the only usable recording I found, as you may have heard, was from the USA.

Derek brought us two non-Valentine anniversaries. The first was the Bold Princess Royal (Roud 528, Laws K29) "On the fourteenth of February", except that it seems the action may in fact have taken place in June 1789, when HM packet Princess Royal was accosted and pursued by a brig which was later identified as the French privateer Aventurier. Derek was on safe ground though with The Trimdon Grange Explosion (Tommy Armstrong - Roud 3189) which took place at 14:40 on 16 February 1882.

Simon gave us two songs which related love and butterflies, first Elusive Butterfly (Bob Lind) and later Love Is Like A Butterfly (Dolly Parton).

Colin had one slightly strange take on love with Brother Gorilla, translated by Jake Thackray from George Brassens' Le Gorille.

It fell to Simon to finish off the evening with Running Bear, written by Jiles Perry Richardson "The Big Bopper" for Johnny Preston.

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

(Number of people present - 4, of whom 4 performed)