Not all talk

Simon & Garfunkel at Schiphol Airport,
the Netherlands in 1966

Despite being reduced to four this week, we had a good session. Apart from being reduced in numbers of people we were also reduced in numbers of songs because we gravitated to chat as much as to music. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Colin started with a joke about flies, which led to Simon and Derek also telling jokes on an entomological theme. Derek's joke reminded Mike of another, about a mouse, which he told despite it having almost exactly the same punchline.

Finally, Colin got down to singing, not about insects but about a shark, in fact The Chivalrous Shark (Wallace Irwin). Perhaps Simon met that creature in the middle of the Atlantic while Sailing To Philadelphia with Mark Knopfler?

Mike marked the recent 50th anniversary of the release by Simon & Garfunkel of the album Bridge over troubled water, singing the longer, traditional version of Scarborough Fair (Roud 12, Child 2). Scarborough Fair/Canticle wasn't on that album but on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme from 1966. Based on a version Simon heard sung by Martin Carthy while living in the UK. Carthy in turn had picked it up from a songbook by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. The only significant contribution from Simon to the writing was the words to the Canticle counterpoint, originally an anti-war song called The Side Of A Hill which he wrote in 1963. Famously the Scarborough Fair track is alleged to have led to a feud between Carthy and Simon which, if it ever existed, is now apparently over.

Derek said he had a Welsh song left over from the previous week's St David's Day session, so he sang Swansea Town (Roud 165).

Colin introduced a song which I hadn't heard before, a sort of temperance parody of Hey John Barleycorn (Roud 2141) called Non Barleycorn.

Derek returned to another old theme, one he set for himself two weeks before of Ned Kelly or more generally Australian bushrangers. On this theme he had two fresh songs: Moreton Bay (Roud 2537) and Jim Jones At Botany Bay (Roud 5478).

Sorry, there doesn't appear to be a YouTube video of Mike's Bristol Jack Of All Trades, so we'll have to make do with the Dublin version (Roud 3017).

Colin couldn't find the tune of Take Your Time (Pete Mundey) so he changed to The Owl And The Pussycat (Edward Lear) - I have no idea whether the linked video has the same tune as Colin sang. It turned out that Take Your Time was a song that mike had been used to singing many years ago and that having forgotten all but the first verse, he had failed to find any more words. Borrowing Colin's sheet of words, that became his next song.

Derek told of how he had heard a lady sing Queen Eleanor's Confession (Roud 74) with increasingly over-the-top reactions from the King in each verse. That is therefore how he performed it, much to the dismay of our canine member, Indie who probably thought there was someone else in the room with a loud bark. I struggled to find a video of anyone singing with even half the vigour which Derek displayed; so many sing it as though the King was barely even slightly perturbed . The best I could do was this version from go-to folky vlogger, Raymond Crooke (Raymond's website).

It was Derek who finished off the first half with a rendition of The Hoily Rig, from the repertoire and possibly the pen of Bob Roberts).

Usually at this point, if not before, Mike and canine companion Indie pack up and go home to Maggie, "The Missus", but on this occasion conversation flowed.

I think it started with discussion of Mike's last song, The Rochester Recruiting Sergeant, written by Pete Coe and based on found fragments of The Bold Fusilier (there goes Raymond Crooke for the third time this week!). It moved on to the role of officers of the Glosters going off to various conflicts around the world (including the American Civil War and the Mexican War) to see fair play.

We heard that one such Gloster officer joined up in the USA and formed that country's only ever wholly black regiment. This slightly bizarrely led to talk of the founding of a bar in Massachusetts in the early 20th century by a gay couple and on to various other subjects which I can't say I remember. By the time Mike made it out of the door all this interesting chat had left us with barely five minutes before the end of the session.

We were about to close up for the night when Simon offered a reading of a letter sent by his great-great-great-uncle, Tunnard Dickinson, who had emigrated from Lincolnshire to Ohio. The letter was written on 28 January 1849 and among other things mentions the Mexican war of which Mike had spoken. With that the session ended.

There will be no theme at this Friday's session but be prepared for our St Patrick's Day theme the following week, on 20 March. Performances with more or less of a link to Ireland or St Patrick will be very welcome but don't worry, our themes are always voluntary and pretty much anything goes as long as it's acoustic.

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

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