Jackanory - I'll tell you a story

(Photo: Luca Barcellona)

We started last week's session with good news from Mike that he had had his operation and was "comfortable". We wish him a speedy recovery and an early return to the fold in good health and excellent voice.

We may have been a man down but the four of us who were left kept the singing going. Colin in particular, MC as usual, started the ball rolling with Eight Bells (Roud 13268). Still on the sea, Simon took us Sailing To Philadelphia with Mark Knopfler. From the sea we followed Geoff onto the rails with Roger Miller's King Of The Road.

Derek decided to pick up a theme from a couple of weeks before when he was not present, singing children's songs:

• Green Peas, Mutton Pies (Roud 13204)
• Old Roger Is Dead (Roud 797) - Derek explained the game for this song in some detail since no one else had come across it
• The Big Ship Sails (Roud 4827)
• The Nonsense Song or H Mi Rinkum (Roud 5269) - collected from the interestingly named Alien Stollery

There was a question raised about the origins of The Big Ship Sails. It seems that no one really knows. Some say it's about the Manchester Ship Canal (known to some as the Alley), others say it's about a ship on the Atlantic Ocean, the Suez Canal, or the Panama Canal. Apparently there was a version specifically about the Lusitania but the root song is older than that, and maybe older than the canals mentioned. It's worth mentioning that there were two slightly unusual aspects to Derek's version (I'm not saying at all that he mis-remembered). The date on which the action happens is the "first day of September". Colin asked whether that was significant; it seems that it is more usual to sing "the last day of September", but that also is thought to be more about scansion than historical accuracy. The second is that most of us I think would sing the chorus as "...on the alley alley oh" (see the above reference to the Manchester Ship Canal), but Derek sings something like "...round the eely ily O", which seems to be a Scottish version according to sources listed in Roud although similar wording has been collected in Yorkshire and Ireland.

Following on to some extent from King Of The Road, Colin sang about the Greenback Dollar (Hoyt Axton, Ken Ramsey). Continuing the game of follow-my-leader, Simon managed to hit both railways and greenbacks with Jean Ritchie's The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore.

Geoff led into his next song with the interesting story of his "first professional singing engagement". He was apparently a regular at the Odeon's Saturday Club and one of his school teachers was the resident pianist. She would ask one of the children to do a solo. When Geoff was asked he was aware that the boy who sang the week before had been given half a crown in payment (two shillings and sixpence - equivalent to 12.5 pence in modern British currency). The song was The Story Of My Life. Geoff started to sing but as the song progressed his mind wandered and when he finished he was only given one shilling (current equivalent, 5 pence). The song he sang tonight though without his mind wandering was the song which always started the Saturday Club with communal singing - remembered in its entirety since the 1950s.

The interesting thing though about this linked recording is that the film's titles show the Odeon words as Geoff sang them but the soundtrack has Tommy Handley singing instead of "the Odeon Club", "the GB club". GB in this case is Gaumont British, a cinema chain bought in 1941 by the Rank Organisation which already owned the Odeon chain. The song in this form is known as the Gaumont British Junior Club Song or the Boys And Girls Song and was obviously later adopted by the Odeon chain.

We had another pair of songs when Colin sang Johnny Todd (Roud 1102) followed by Simon with Eric Bogle's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda which mentions "Johnny Turk".

After Derek sang his Nonsense Song, already mentioned above, Geoff was moved to recite a poem which his father taught him. On the face of it it is nonsense but in fact it is a lesson in putting punctuation in the right place and re-punctuated it makes perfect sense. The poem is Caesar Entered On His Head. Geoff's real contribution on that circuit of the room was Jimmy Webb's Galveston.

Yet another pair, again passing from Colin to Simon, was Liverpool Judies (Roud 928) followed by The Ellan Vannin Tragedy (Hughie Jones).

After his children's songs and particularly the Nonsense Song Derek challenged us for the link with his next one, which was The Unst Boat Song. Simon remembered that it was in Norn, an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland) off the north coast of mainland Scotland and in Caithness in the far north of the Scottish mainland. It is thought to have become extinct in 1850, after the death of Walter Sutherland, the language's last known speaker.

A song collector was interviewing a singer in either Orkney or Shetland, Derek couldn't remember which. After singing some other songs, he offered a sing which he understood to be nonsense. It turned out to be this song, which someone later recognised for what it was. It is understood to be the only piece of Norn discovered in the British Isles. There was a recent BBC Radio 4 programme which mentioned Norn (at 23 minutes 51 seconds) among other Nordic languages.

I think I have time for one last story before closing this report. Geoff said something about singing a song that he liked. It was questioned why you would sing a song you didn't like, then Simon admitted to sometimes singing one he didn't like though it is growing on him. This caused Derek to ponder that there are two songs he once didn't much like but which he now likes and sings.

The first was The Elf Knight (Roud 21, Child 4). Apparently when Fred Jordan sang, even if encouraged to do so, he would never talk about the songs, but would just sing them. Derek didn't like this song but somehow felt that Fred made it more acceptable because he seemed to own it. Then once Fred actually said something about the song: "This was my mother's song", and all became clear.

The second song that gave Derek a change of heart was The Lakes Of Coolfin (Roud 189, Laws Q33). He considered it a fairly boring song about a random nobleman who is drowned but when he heard a Suffolk singer perform it (I think he said a member of the Ling family but clearly not the one recorded here) instead of singing of "young William" he made it "young Billy" and Derek realised that the singer considered the song to be about some unfortunate contemporary chap from the village.

Geoff closed the evening with Ewan MacColl's Freeborn Man.

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

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