Land and sea

Ravenscar from Boggle Hole (Photo: Simon Meeds)

With Geoff back from his chess-related activities and occasional visitor, Richard on board we had a perfectly adequate showing for last Friday's session. It was the last session for a while without a theme. We start this Friday (25 October) with Halloween, so ghosts and magic and things that go bump in the night are all fair game together with more traditional religious themes from All Saints.

Back to last week, MC Colin started us off with Dominic Behan's The Sea Around Us. This inspired Derek to sing a song which included the line "the land between England and Ireland, it's covered in water you know", although unfortunately I wasn't able to trace it. (See The Yorkshire Irishman for an update)

Simon gave us Peat Bog Soldiers which was written by prisoners in Nazi moorland labour camps in Lower Saxony, Germany. Meanwhile Richard, thinking of the current Rugby World Cup supported England with Swing Low Sweet Chariot (Wallis Willis - Roud 5435).

Geoff had been looking for a particular song about a Scottish war cry. He didn't find the one he sought but he did find Matt McGinn's The Heilan' Man, but not knowing the tune he read it as a poem. Following Geoff's song's references to the Roman invasion of Britain Mike, knowing it would please Colin, sang The Roman Gladiator which was written in about 1940 by Bruce Campbell, Groundsman at Wethered's Brewery in Marlow. Extra verses were added by Dave Houlden.

Colin sang The Land (Roud V25265), a protest song associated with the Georgist movement which was later adopted by the Liberal Party and used until it merged with the SDP to form the Liberal Democrats. Inspired by this I think, Derek sang When Wilt Thou Save, written by "The Corn Law rhymer" Ebenezer Elliott.

Staying on the subject of land, Richard's version of This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie) was a perfectly straight one except for the chorus where he replaced "from California to the New York island" with "from Chipping Sodbury to Barrow Gurney".

Colin had been searching for a version of Seven Drunken Nights (Roud 114, Child 274) which he remembered and found a close approximation which was as the linked recording except that Sunday comes from what seems to be the Pete Hicks version.

Geoff's next song drew us in and made us listen to Guy Clark's The Cape.

As a diversion from the usual path, Richard asked permission (not that he needed to) to read some prose, which it turned out came from Mike Harding's book Rambling On (An Encyclopaedic Look at the World of Perambulation), an excerpt which matched his love of rambling with a variety of songs. As an example, it had Vaughan Williams arranging "Knick-Knack Paddywhack" for a set of unlikely instruments. This caused Derek to take advantage of singing a song which he now "knew" had been arranged by such a person, giving us This Old Man (Roud 3550).

Richard would have sung Bristol Rovers' theme song, Goodnight Irene  (Roud 11681) but in the absence of the chords we had to make do with another song from Lead Belly's repertoire, Pick A Bale Of Cotton (Roud 10061).

It was Richard who eventually closed the session with H'ist Up The John B's Sails (Roud 15634).

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

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