Unexpected but welcome visitors

Ned Kelly on 10 November 1880,
the day before his execution

Well, last week's Dragon Folk Club session was different, in mostly good ways. Colin's wife has been ill and while she is happily recovering it was not unexpected that he was a little late arriving, so Simon took over as MC for the evening.

Mike was the first of the regulars to arrive and found five, yes five, people already present. They were a group of four ladies, Sheila, Carol, Angela and Kay, who were accompanied by non-singer Tony, who I believe to be Sheila's husband. They weren't totally unknown because Mike knew Tony and Sheila and I understand that Angela had visited the Dragon Folk Club at least once before. They were however entirely unexpected and would be very welcome to come again as many times as they wish, just remember that our official starting time is 8:15pm - the music usually starts at around 8:30pm.

Since our visitors had already been singing, Simon asked them to perform two of their songs to start off the first circuit of the room. It turned out that as a group they had only practised twice and only officially had two songs which were The Fields Of Athenry (Pete St John) and Act Naturally (Johnny Russell, Voni Morrison).

They were relieved to learn that we had no official theme for the session, though of course our themes are always optional, but they were soon introduced to the concept of themes when Mike sang The Twenty-Fourth Of February (Roud 951). This song is a version of The Bold Princess Royal, sung the previous week by Derek. Mike customised it to the twenty-first of February to fit the current date.

Derek was also date-appropriate, referring to the 16th February 1882 with The Trimdon Grange Explosion (Tommy Armstrong - Roud 3189).

Simon's first song harked back to the previous week's theme of Valentine's Day with The Ballad Of Patch Eye And Meg (Michelle Shocked) - sorry, the half-decent version that was previously on YouTube has disappeared and Michelle herself avoids the platform like the plague.

Geoff explained the history of his song, Flight Of Earls (Liam Reilly). The Flight of the Earls (Imeacht na nIarlaí) took place in September 1607, when Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers, left Ulster in Ireland for mainland Europe.

By this time Colin had arrived and was ready with a Tom Lewis song, Dutchman's Trousers.

As already noted, "the ladies" as I continued to call them because they have not yet settled on a group name, had run out of practised songs, so Sheila stood in for the group with Dead Dog Cider (Trevor Crozier) after which Kay added Walk On (Brownie McGhee, Ruth McGhee).

Derek had heard on the radio that George MacKay, who played Lance Corporal Schofield in the recent film, 1917, has played Ned Kelly in True History of the Kelly Gang which is for imminent release. This led us to a theme of Ned Kelly, which saw Derek sing Farewell To Greta and Ye Sons Of Australia (Roud 5475), and Mike added Wild Colonial Boy (Roud 667, Laws L20), to the tune of Riders In The Sky (Stan Jones).

Another minor theme came when Colin sang of a hermit in The Field Of The Willows (Dave Goulder) which Derek followed up with St Kevin the hermit in the guise of The Glendalough Saint.

The ladies, led by Sheila, managed to squeeze out another song in the shape of Worried Man Blues (Roud 4753). Kay added When I'm Dead An Gone (Benny Gallagher, Graham Lyle).

As always, I will continue to list all the remaining songs sung by the visitors:

• Sheila - The Hole In The Elephant's Bottom
• Kay - Roll On Me Time (Shep Woolley) 
• Sheila - Rolling Home (John Tams)
• Kay - The Last Shanty (Tom Lewis)

As the session came to a close, Simon managed to persuade the ladies' to pull out one final song between them and they gave us Tom Dooley (Roud 4192) to send us home.

Thanks to everyone who turned up for an excellent session and most of all to "the ladies", Sheila, Carol, Angela and Kay, who I hope enjoyed the evening and will join us many more times in the future.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 10, of whom 9 performed)