1805, 1066 and all that

HMS Victory (Photo: Simon Meeds)

We may have been a small group at last week's Dragon Folk Club session, but we sang up a storm. There was no official theme, but we touched on the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Hastings which were both near their anniversaries, had a variety of songs directly or indirectly from Singing Together, and several also from the singing of The Spinners. Listen to the playlist linked from "a selection" below and I'm sure you will find other themes that emerged.

There will be no theme this week (24th October), but get ready for the Halloween theme the following Friday (31st October).

Colin, MC as usual, started the ball rolling last Friday with Come fair wind or stormy weather (Steve Knightley).

Paul continued the maritime theme and took us straight to Trafalgar with Nelson's death (roud 18837) and Denny brought us onto dry land (just) with Tom Lewis' Marching inland.

Simon completed the first rotation with Boney was a warrior (roud 485) which was our first from Singing Together - he sang it at junior school in the 1970s.

I won't labour the point about the ad hoc themes, but there are a few things that may be worth a mention.

Colin returned to the work of Steve Knightley to sing Breme fell at Hastings (*), marking the recently passed 959th anniversary of the battle.

In the absence of our resident blues-man, Bob, Paul sang Little red rooster (* roud 16807 - Willie Dixon), and Denny followed on with The chickens in the garden (roud 2552 - James Alan Bland).

Simon sang two songs to the same tune: The wark o' the weavers (roud 374 - David Shaw) and The oyster girl (roud 875, laws Q13).

Denny sang Ye Jacobites by name (roud V31021 - traditional, rewritten by Robert Burns) which caused Simon to bring out Les Barker's My name it is Van Goch (*), a parody of the same song. I don't know whether Denny knew who wrote Simon's song, but shortly afterwards she sang Les Barker's Sloop John A (*), of course a parody of Sloop John B, otherwise known as H'ist Up The John B's Sails (roud 15634).

Simon finished the evening off with No Sir No (roud 146).

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

(Number of people present - 4 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 (#).

St Andrew's Day 2018

Saint Andrew the Apostle by Artus Wolffort

After last week's excellent St Andrew's Day session we return to a themeless evening this Friday where anything goes as long as it's acoustic and legal (although we have had songs in the past the singing of which might have got you locked up only a few years ago).

MC Colin kicked us off in appropriately Scottish mood with the poem St. Andrew's Day-A Toast by Jean Blewett which he put to a familiar tune which escapes me at the moment.

We were joined for the first time in several years by Chris S who didn't sing on previous occasions. This time he started off with his own part-finished work, Be The One To Turn To, and continued with borrowed words, singing Michael Row The Boat Ashore (Roud 11975), Drink Up Thy Zider (Adge Cutler) and Kumbaya.

It would be very easy for me to go through a variety of Scottish songs we heard through the evening, and there were plenty as you will see, but as I pointed out in the report two weeks ago, St Andrew is patron of a lot of places, professions and other things apart from Scotland, so let's go on a partial tour of those.

St Andrew's Day 2017

Point of Sleat, Isle of Skye, Scotland
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last Friday's session saw a satisfactory number of seven bums on seats for a St Andrew's Day theme. I had pointed out in publicity that St Andrew is patron saint of many places and things other than Scotland, including singers, but it was barely needed since I think there were only two songs clearly unrelated to Scotland, one very deliberately and the other was written by someone with what appears to be a Scottish name.

Colin was the MC and he called on Steve C to start us off; Steve sang Jock Stewart (Roud 975).

Do your research

Beacon at Seaton Carew, Hartlepool

Last week's session was light on people but weighty on songs and on learned chat. I have limited time and one or two promised follow-ups to cover, so please forgive me if I'm a little light on collected recordings again this week.

First an announcement... the Harvest session will be on 8 September. Not only does that mean a harvest theme to as many songs and tunes as possible but also a special raffle. Please bring produce which can be offered as prizes and pockets full of change for the raffle and any random collections that may take place. Proceeds this year will go to Shelter, a charity that Dragon regular, Roger has previously supported with his own musical evenings.