Easter 2025

Sanctuaire de la Sainte-Baume
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We had a great Easter session at the Dragon Folk Club. We loved welcoming first time visitors John and Howard who call themselves Old Friends, and now they are our friends too.

This Friday the optional theme will be St George's Day (just three days early). Don't worry if you can't follow the theme, but there's plenty of scope to follow it. St George, dragons and England are the obvious ones, but look also to his other patronages which include: agricultural workers, farmers, field workers, soldiers, archers, armourers, equestrians, cavalry, saddle makers, chivalry, peacekeeping missions, skin diseases, lepers and leprosy, syphilis, sheep, shepherds, scouting, Albania, Bulgaria, England, Ethiopia, Greece, Georgia, Portugal, Romania, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Castile and León, Catalonia, Alcoi, Aragon, Genoa, and Rio de Janeiro.

Back to last week, according to blog tradition I will mention all of the songs sung by newcomers John and Howard (Old Friends). Songs which are new to the Dragon database, although they may have been sung at the club before, are marked with an asterisk (*) and songs not in the YouTube playlist liked from "a selection" below are marked with a hash (#).

Colin started off with a proper Easter song: The pace-egging song (roud 614). Simon followed on with just a mention of Easter in The moonshine can (roud 9949).

Old Friends specialise in Simon & Garfunkel songs and as a duo were asked to sing two each round. They opened their account with Leaves that are green (* Paul Simon) and the eponymous Old friends (* Paul Simon).

Paul's first of the evening was the Easter-appropriate Seven virgins (roud 127) and Denny evoked Easter chicks with The chickens in the garden (roud 2552 - James Alan Bland). And so the first rotation was complete.

Colin once again brought us a seasonal offering with Dave Goulder's The Easter Tree.

John and Howard sang Scarborough Fair (roud 12, child 2) and Summertime (DuBose Heyward, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin).

Apart from our visitors, Colin was the only one to add entries to the Dragon database during the session. He first did this with Johnny Cash's Redemption (*), and later with Eggs and bacon (*# roud 377 - collected from Stan Steggles). I didn't find a recording of Eggs and bacon, but I did find the closely related Eggs in her basket (roud 377).

Completing the collection of songs from John and Howard (Old Friends) we have:

• Vincent (Don McLean)
• April come she will (* Paul Simon)
• All I have to do is dream (* Boudleaux Bryant)
• Don't let the old man in (* Toby Keith)
• Detectorists (* Johnny Flynn)
• Man of the world (* Peter Green)

Paul gave us one song that didn't make its way to the playlist: Tracks in the snow (# Steve Thomason).

Denny closed the session with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)

Ne'er cast a clout

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We weren't too sure last week whether we would get a good session at the Dragon Folk Club with our usual MC, Colin, being away, but Simon stepped in and we had a pretty good time.

Simon started the ball rolling with The moonshine can (roud 9949). This was followed with the Swinton May song from Denny. Paul thought he might have a new song for the database with Blackbird (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) but that one was just pipped to the post by Colin a few short weeks ago. Steve first song was the Jolly waggoner (roud 1088).

My usual criteria for making special mention of songs doesn't really get me anywhere this time. All thirty six songs we sung were available on YouTube and are therefore included in the playlist linked from "a selection" below, and there was only one sing that was new to the Dragon database (though not necessarily to the club) and that was Lisbon (roud 551, laws N8) which was sung by Denny.

Although we didn't have any more new songs, we did have a few first performances by specific singers to be recorded in the database:

• Paul - The aforementioned Blackbird
• Simon - The keeper (roud 1519)
• Simon - Hotel California (Don Felder, Don Henley, Glenn Frey)
• Simon - Hal an tow (roud 1520)

In pre-database times Simon had definitely sung The keeper and Hotel California, and probably also Hal an tow.

And so we kept on with the singing and the banter until Steve closed the evening with Cyril Tawney's The ballad of Sammy's Bar.

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

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