Dulce et decorum est pro sodalitate cantare

Appalachian Dulcimer as played by John S

Last Friday's session was the last of our series of 50th anniversary celebrations for the club. With three of the regulars unable to be there and Simon exceptionally running things, Simon and Derek were sitting pondering an evening of a couple of rounds of two songs followed by a very early finish when the singers started pouring in. Well, that may be an exaggeration but for a start it was John S who walked through the door for the first time in a very long while. Patience was rewarded when Steve G arrived, quickly followed by Jo, then came a promised second appearance by Steffan. And so, we were quorate with a respectable showing of six singers! Thanks are due to all who came, and stayed, to make the evening a very enjoyable one.

While our anniversary celebrations are now over (for another fifty years maybe), the club soldiers on and we will be here every Friday from about 8:15pm unless there's a very good reason not to be. All comers, whether performers or not, are very welcome to enjoy some music and chat. Performances don't even have to be musical: stories, monologues, poems and jokes are all within our remit; anything in fact as long as it's acoustic.

Simon, sitting in the MC's chair, followed recent tradition by starting us off and he did so by singing Lady Franklin's Lament (Roud 487, Laws K09).

Having missed the 20th June date by almost a week, Derek sang the Corpus Christi Carol (Roud 1523). While the linked recording seems close to the version he sings, he starts it off more like a Scottish version, "The dow she flew east and the dow she flew west" where "dow" is presumably dove although I have also seen it as "hern" which apparently refers to a heron.

Since John S is a very occasional visitor (though absolutely welcome to make it more frequent), I will attempt to name all of his contributions, most of which he accompanies on Appalachian Dulcimer. He started with A Farmer's Son So Sweet (Roud 1431) and told the story of the connection between this and his third song, Flanders (Roud 2636) - sorry the linked version is not the one he sang and therefore not the right one for the story either. Both songs were collected from Mrs Betsy Pike of Somerton, Somerset in 1906, the latter by Cecil Sharp. The former song was however collected by Alice Snow, the singer's granddaughter, who clearly recognised that her grandmother knew a lot of old songs and noted them down so accurately that when she submitted them to Cecil Sharp, he took her notes into his own collection. Although from a poor background, Snow had become musically literate and taught in elementary school.

John also sang Jeanette (Roud 391) and played a tune which he called Pawpaw, apparently an old name for Dahomey, a kingdom within the present-day country of Benin. The only reference I have found to the name is that 'elsewhere Agaja is always referred to as “The Emperor of Pawpaw,” a title for which there seems to be no explanation, apart from the fact that the coast eastwards of the Volta was sometimes known as the Popo or “Paupau” coast, from the towns of Little Popo and Grand Popo. The King of Dahomey did not extend his rule over these towns, which gave asylum to the king of Whydah after his defeat in 1727' (ref).

John's last contribution before the end of the evening was Handsome John (Roud 6363). From a comment he made I think Derek was a little jealous that there isn't a similarly named song for him.

Among others, Steve G gave us two songs from the pen of John Smith: Salty And Sweet and There Is A Stone. He also sang Four Strong Winds, written by Ian Tyson, one half of Ian & Sylvia. Steve mentioned that he had heard Nick Park interviewed on BBC Radio 4 saying that he listened to it while working. The actual quote from Only Artists is:

"With Gromit in The Wrong Trousers there's a bit when Gromit's in his kennel and he sees no option but to leave home, and it's incredibly sad. I remember animating Gromit, looking at pictures of him and Wallace and deciding to leave with his raincoat on and the tears were welling up in his eyes as he looked at a picture of him and Wallace. And just to keep that emotion alive creating each frame, you know, millimetre by millimetre, tweaking him every frame, I was constantly playing that Neil Young song, Four Strong Winds. That was the soundtrack to those few days where I was animating Gromit, just to keep me in a sad sort of state of mind."

Jo gave us two songs from John Prine: Blue Umbrella and Angel From Montgomery.

Among his contributions, Steffan performed two of his own songs: Dutchman's Gold and Stolen Wish though when it fell to him to finish the evening, it was with a Brownie McGhee song, Born To Live The Blues.

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

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

If you are puzzled by the title of this week's report, it is Latin. It means that "it is sweet and right to sing for the club". At least two songs mentioned above include "sweet" in their title: John's A Farmer's Son So Sweet and Steve G's Salty And Sweet. Also, in the name of John's instrument, the Appalachian Dulcimer, "dulcimer" comes from the Old French "doulcemelle", which in turn probably comes from the Latin "dulce melos" (sweet song): "melos" being from the Ancient Greek "μέλος" or "mélos" and is part of the root of the English word "melody".

The title as a whole is a pretty inappropriate piece of theft by me from the Roman poet, Horace's Odes: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", meaning "it is sweet and right to die for your country", reused darkly by First World War poet, Wilfrid Owen in the title of his poem "Dulce et Decorum est".

There we go, my school English and Latin classes weren't wasted after all (with thanks to Messrs Abbott and Loader)