Easter 2019

Photo: Jarosław Pocztarski

Last weeks session was unfortunately back to basics with only three singers to celebrate or otherwise mark Easter with songs overtly religious, comedy, political, historical and everything else. While we put a slightly early stop to proceedings we got though an impressive thirty songs - yes, ten each!

This Friday's session at The Bridge Inn will have an optional theme of St George, or William Shakespeare's birthday (and death day, we are told) if you prefer.

Last Friday, Colin was MC and started us off with Woody Guthrie's Jesus Christ. In contrast, his second song was the uncharacteristically blasphemous Stand Up For Judas from the pen of Leon Rosselson, whose excuse is that he is Jewish (nothing against Jewish people).

Derek's first contribution was Judas (Roud 3964, Child 23) which seems to be one of our oldest songs. Derek didn't sing it in the Middle English as in Raymond Crooke's version linked here but this is closer to his version than any other I found.

Simon picked comedy, pointing out that he should really be female to sing Dillie Keane's Jogging. The thought was that it might be seen as giving up giving up what you gave up for Lent and therefore could be argued to be an Easter song. Did you follow that?

Derek and Colin managed to continue throughout the evening with Easter-related songs, Derek mostly on the Easter Rising and Colin mostly on the festival itself. Simon on the other hand before long reverted to non-Easter songs, not however before managing to dig out one contribution which Derek hadn't heard sung since his student days. It goes to show that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose for it was James Dobbs who lived 1781-1837 that wrote I Can't Find Brummagem, a lament for the changes that had happened in Birmingham over the previous twenty years.

Colin's selection included two songs, or should that be hymns, from Sydney Carter: Lord Of The Dance, and the perhaps less well known Bitter Was The Night.

Colin indicated that he had almost run out of Easter songs by the end of the session but Derek soldiered on pulling things from the depths of his memory. WB Yeats' poem, The O'Rahilly was set to the tune Villikins And His Dinah simply because it didn't fit Blow The Man Down. Derek holds that almost anything can be sung to one of those two, and on this occasion it seemed to work reasonably well. He went on to sing a snatch of the half-remembered Lament For Roger Casement, which he had once memorised by singing to himself while wandering around a London Park, but that was many years ago.

After some discussion of when to close the evening that just left time for Simon to return to Easter (in one verse at least) of When All Men Sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 3, of whom 3 performed)