Sam Amidon with Bill Frisell “Saro”
A beautiful rendition of this song of unrequited love. The singer’s poverty causes him to be spurned by his love and her family; he vows to wander the world.
Though traditionally found primarily in the Appalachians and the South, it is here performed in New York, by a son of Vermont. Recorded at Le Poisson Rouge, March 2012.
Lord Bateman sung by Elizabeth Laprelle
If you’re in western Mass tomorrow (4/23/12) try and catch Ballads & Crankies at the Montague Grange Hall, featuring Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Elizabeth LaPrelle and Katherine Fahey, with special guest Tim Eriksen. Along with wonderful music, this show will feature “crankies” like the one shown here, scrolling panoramas that illustrate a story or song.
Lord Bateman (Young Beichan)
(Source: youtube.com)
Thought this was a Nick Nack party, not a wrestling match…
The Nick Nack Song (Risselty Rosselty, Now, Now, Now): A variant of Wife Wrapped in Wether’s Skin, or something different? No matter: This is one of my favorites off of the wonderful Story That the Crow Told Me (Vol. I).
Cath and Phil Tyler perform “Wether’s Skin”, from their Songs from the Shed session. Some scholars maintain that this ballad inspired Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and (as the Traditional Ballad Index notes) “Wife Wrapped in Wether’s Skin” was performed as long ago as 1575. Frank and Anne Warner collected the song from Lena Bourne Fish of East Jaffrey, New Hampshire in 1941.
The Tylers recorded this on their excellent Dumb Supper album (2008), available on Bandcamp.
“A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world.” [follow link to read more]
— Janice Birchfield, Roan Mountain Hilltoppers (via dusttodigital)
(Source: dusttodigital)
Yarrow, in the snow, by Tim Eriksen. 1 March 2012
Tim notes: “Yarrow is an old song from Vermont, and other places before that. I got it off Ty and Robin (Red Heart the Ticker).” It is of the Braes of Yarrow family, Child 214, also familiar as the Dowie Dens of Yarrow.
The song may be found on the new CD Banjo, Fiddle and Voice, which surprisingly features banjo, fiddle and voice, as well as stripped-down percussion from Cordelia’s Dad bandmate Peter Irvine.
Folk, Ravi Shankar, and a little Andrés Segovia mixed in…Roger McGuinn plays Eight Miles High
A kind of love song from the Soundcloud feed of Sedayne:
“I was actually slated to sing this on the Woodbine & Ivy Band album but it never got further than a couple of rough demos, but it remained in my heart, well chosen by the Folk Police super, and it’s a fine a fiddle song as any and as braw a song of love as you might wish. This comes from the singing of the great Willie Scott, though for the sake of cultural yearning I’ve taken it back to James Hogg’s original poem, albeit retaining a few of Scott’s vernacularisms. As Arcadian pastoral idylls go, it has a long lineage, however so well travelled, but the tradition of such things remains vivid enough, despite the stern sermonising of Holmant Hunt, whose Hireling Shepherd of 1851 we oft visit in the Manchester Gallery and take at face value, pretty much…”
*
WHEN THE KYE COMES HAME
James Hogg (1770–1835)
Come all ye jolly shepherds,
That whistle through the glen,
I’ll tell ye of a secret
That courtiers dinna ken:
What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name?
‘Tis to woo a bonny lassie
When the kye comes hame.
CHORUS: When the kye comes hame,
When the kye comes hame,
‘Tween the gloaming an’ the mirk
When the kye comes hame.
‘Tis not beneath the coronet,
Nor canopy of state,
‘Tis not on couch of velvet,
Nor arbour of the great—
‘Tis beneath the spreading birk,
In the glen without the name,
Wi’ a bonny, bonny lassie,
When the kye comes hame.
There the blackbird bigs his nest
For the mate he loes to see,
And on the topmost bough,
O, a happy bird is he;
Where he pours his melting ditty,
And love is a’ the theme,
And he’ll woo his bonny lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the blewart bears a pearl,
And the daisy turns a pea,
And the bonny lucken gowan
Has fauldit up her e’e,
Then the laverock frae the blue lift
Drops down, an’ thinks nae shame
To woo his bonny lassie
When the kye comes hame.
See yonder pawkie shepherd,
That lingers on the hill,
His ewes are in the fauld,
An’ his lambs are lying still;
Yet he downa gang to bed,
For his heart is in a flame,
To meet his bonny lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the little wee bit heart
Rises high in the breast,
An’ the little wee bit starn
Rises red in the east,
O there’s a joy sae dear,
That the heart can hardly frame,
Wi’ a bonny, bonny lassie,
When the kye comes hame!
Then since all nature joins
In this love without alloy,
O, wha wad prove a traitor
To Nature’s dearest joy?
Or wha wad choose a crown,
Wi’ its perils and its fame,
And miss his bonny lassie
When the kye comes hame?
love exile cross-dressing ship wreck disaster cannibalism reprieve rescue sailor (keywords for this ballad from The Ballad Index)
Boston, as performed by Tim Eriksen for a BBC Radio Scotland performance with Karine Polwart, 19 August 2010.
Of this, Tim writes, “The words are from a notebook kept by Massachusetts privateer Timothy Connor when he was imprisoned in Plymouth, England during our Revolutionary War. I made the tune…”
The Silk Merchant’s Daughter (I)
Roud 552, Laws N10
An intriguing investigation of this iconic song and its creator, Richard (Rabbit) Brown, who was recorded in New Orleans by Ralph Peel in 1927 and then receded into obscurity. From the fantastic Old Weird America blog.
Mississippi John Hurt :: Spike Driver Blues. Featured on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest, with Seeger, Paul Cadwell and Hedy West looking on.
Roud 4299
FYTF:
Hedy West - Little Sadie (Roud #780)
hedy west playing “little sadie” on rainbow quest with pete seeger
Little Sadie (Bad Lee Brown), performed by Hedy West.
Steve Roud discusses his work compiling The Folk Song Index, an online index to all the traditional folksongs of the English-speaking world. The Folk Song Index is a freely-available online database which lists English-language traditional songs collected in Britain, North America, and Australia, whether found in books, sound recordings, or unpublished collections. Entries include details of the song title and first line, name of singer, place and date of collection, and more. As each element is fully searchable, singly or in combination, the Index constitutes a major finding-aid for both enthusiasts and serious researchers.
Alela Diane and Alina Hardin (with band) sing Matty Groves.
7 April 2009
Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard
Roud 52, Child 81
