Knock knock

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

It was another great session at the Dragon Folk Club last week. We were back to reasonable strength in numbers with seven people present and all singing. There was no theme which left the field wide open.

Speaking of themes, this Friday's session (23rd January) will be our Burns' Night special (though Rabbie's actual day is Sunday), so bring your songs written or collected by Robert Burns, general Scottish songs, or anything you can vaguely link (I half-jokingly suggested songs about fire). Failing that, remember that our themes are always optional, just a bit of fun, so the most important thing is to turn up to sing, play, listen and chat - or whichever subset of those is your fancy.

Back to last week, Colin was MC and started the ball rolling with In these hard times (roud 23324 - RP Weston, Fred Barnes).

Simon delayed his planned first song and instead went for Les Barker's poem Have you got any news of the iceberg.

Roger introduced us to his self-penned song Can't be doing this any more (*#Roger Stanleigh).

Denny sang Poverty Knock (roud 3491 - Tommy Daniel). I always knew that there were stories to tell around this song, but I've done a bit more research.

Tommy Daniel was a 5ft tall weaver from Batley, although he had other jobs during his working life. He was born around 1890, started work aged 11, and died in 1970. He is variously credited with writing, re-creating or collecting the song. Piecing together the stories of various individuals who knew him, knew weaving, or simply knew the area, anecdotally the song had been in existence in some form since at least the 1920s.

Tommy himself wrote: "This work song dates back to the early Dobby power looms. Owing to low wages and the slow dreary 'knock-ity knock' sound of the looms, weavers were called 'Poverty Knockers'."

According to Wikipedia, Dobby looms first appeared around 1843, roughly 40 years after Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the Jacquard device that can be mounted atop a loom to lift the individual heddles and warp threads. The word dobby is a corruption of "draw boy," which refers to the weaver's helpers who used to control the warp thread by pulling on draw threads.

It seems that Tommy may have collected some verses of the song, edited out others that he thought too risqué, and maybe written or "recreated" some more. He sang various verses at different times and I'm sure I've heard a story that claimed he would come up with a new verse and say that he had recently "found" it somewhere.

Whatever the case, it's a great song to sing, and get people singing along. Apparently Tommy required the audience to do a tap-tap after "poverty knock".

Paul's first song of the evening was Fathom the bowl (roud 880).

Sue sang the Crawdad song (roud 4853) and Bob completed the first rotation with The last ride (Robert Halcomb, Ted Daffan).

Apart from Roger's "Can't be doing this any more" which has already been mentioned there were three more songs not found on YouTube and therefore not in the playlist linked from "a selection" below:

• Sue's own A chilly song (# Sue Lonsdale) written specifically for the Dragon Folk Club - the heating's now working, but best to still bring warm clothing at this time of year
• Colin - My favourite things (*#), which is of course a parody of My favourite things (Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II). OK, my pedantry forced me to use the original Mary Martin performance from the Broadway show. Here is the Julie Andrews film performance you were all expecting.
• Roger - Together we fight (#Roger Stanleigh)

Paul finished the session off appropriately with the Farewell shanty. Mervyn Vincent from St. Issy and Alan Molyneux from Plymouth are largely responsible for the revival of this West Country shanty. Mervyn found it in an old book on boat-building and it later served as the closing song at Alan’s Breakwater Club in Plymouth.

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

(Number of people present - 7 of whom 7 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 (#).

Dewi Deferred

Saint David (Dewi Sant)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was relatively well attended with eight performers and two audience members. The audience, who said they enjoyed the evening but had to leave early were Paul and Monica; we hope to see you again soon. We were also joined from over the bridge (i.e. having travelled from his home in South Wales) by Barry. I'm not sure whether Barry has been to the DFC before but whether or not, he was very welcome.

It has come to my notice that there is an even going on that may be of interest to our regulars, particularly those who have been coming to the club for a very long time. There is an exhibition at the Yate & District Heritage Centre which runs until the 17 March, entitled The Pubs of Yate and Sodbury. It is notable because the advert for the exhibition on Facebook shows The Lamb Inn at Iron Acton, which was the original venue for the club, being its home for the first seventeen and a half years of its existence.

Back to last week's session, it informally inherited the theme of St David (Dewi Sant in Welsh) from the previous week's abortive event, which just didn't happen because of the snow. Colin was MC and He started off proceedings appropriately with the Bells Of Rhymney, a song first recorded by Pete Seeger, using words written by Welsh poet Idris Davies. The lyrics to the song were drawn from part of Davies' poetic work Gwalia Deserta ("Wasteland of Wales"), which was first published in 1938.