Deep breath

Ashton Court, December 2010 (Photo: Simon Meeds)

Yes, it wasn't quite Christmas at last Friday's Dragon Folk Club session, in fact there wasn't an official theme, but that didn't stop people singing Christmas songs, Heather because she won't be with us this week, and Denny because she felt like joining Heather. Even Paul got in on the act at least once.

This Friday (19th December) will be our Christmas themed session although our themes are of course always optional. The following week (26th) we will have a break and then we'll be back for our New Year session on 2nd January. Various appropriate themes and sub-themes come to mind, but I'll leave that to your imagination for the moment.

Back to last week, in Colin's absence Simon was MC and he kicked us off with Tom Paine's bones (Graham Moore).

Heather took up her Christmas theme with Cliff Richard's 1988 festive hit Mistletoe and wine (* Jeremy Paul, Leslie Stewart, Keith Strachan).

Denny started her contribution with When yellow's on the broom, written by the recently deceased Adam McNaughton, and Paul finished off the first rotation with Tending the sheep (*). This last song was probably written by Ruth Tongue.

Although Tongue's songs were presented as having been collected from various (pseudonymous) singers in Somerset in the early part of the 20th century (in this case ‘Old Shepherd’ from The Blackdown Hills), most have never been found anywhere else, and evidence suggests that many of them were written by the same person, quite possibly by Miss Tongue herself, though it is impossible to be sure.

Only two songs sung during the evening was not found on YouTube and therefore not in the playlist linked from "a selection" below:

• Denny - A tribute to the drowned (Samuel Laycock)
• Paul - Tracks in the snow (Steve Thomason)

Due to Heather's self-set Christmas theme, there were a few more songs (and a poem) new to the Dragon database:

• Heather - The Christmas truce (* Carol Ann Duffy)
• Heather - Little donkey (* Eric Boswell)
• Heather - Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! (* Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn)
• Heather - Rockin' around the Christmas tree (* Johnny Marks)

Simon left us with a good sing and something to warm us up ready for the Christmas session proper next week: When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 4 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).