Week 315 – Two Young Brethren

A song from the Copper Family, originally learned from the Song for every season book, and subsequently from hearing Bob and John sing it on record. Of course the proper way to sing these songs is unaccompanied in harmony; but sometimes there’s just not another singer to hand, and I find that the concertina can do a pretty good job of evoking the Copper harmonies – especially on songs like this one, which seems to have a hymn-like quality.

Bob always said that there was something rather appropriate about his and Ron’s fathers singing this because, as young men, one brother (Jim) had been a planter of corn, while the other (John) was a tender of sheep. You can hear Bob talking about this immediately after the song in this YouTube clip (entirely illegal, of course, in terms of copyright law, but since the Leader catalogue seems doomed to remain under lock and key for the foreseeable, I can only applaud whoever has put the entire 4 LP box set online in this way).

Two Young Brethren

Andy Turner – vocal, G/D anglo-concertina

Week 314 – The Barley Raking

You know how, when searching online for a recipe, your heart sinks when you reach one of those blogs, and realise that you’ve got to wade through screeds of text about the author’s personal life before you get to the recipe… well, this post is a bit like that. Feel free to scroll down to the bottom if you just want to hear the song. I won’t be offended (I won’t know!). And, as I’ve probably commented before, I do these blog posts for my own personal satisfaction, and if anyone else likes them that’s just a bonus. So, here goes.
When I was about 8 or 9, two new, young, male teachers started work at my primary school – Mr France and Mr Snow. I was in Mr France’s class in what these days would be Year 5, and I think it’s fair to say that he was a popular teacher with all of the class – very different from some of the older, fiercer teachers in the school. My mother taught at the same school, and definitely fell into that older, fiercer category. She and Barrie France seemed to hit it off, however, and they stayed in touch, and continued to meet up occasionally, after he moved on to a different school. And so it was, I suppose, that finding himself with two spare tickets for a barn dance at Warehorne, he offered them to my Mum. She and My Dad had been keen dancers before I was born – old time, barn dancing, square dancing, but definitely not jive or rock & roll. When I was old enough not to need a babysitter, they started going out again, mostly to school PTA dinner dances. I resisted all my Mum’s attempt to teach me to waltz or foxtrot, but when the PTA put on a barn dance that was open to fifth formers and above, a bunch of us went along and – much to our amazement, I think – had a really good time.
I’ve been trying to work out when Barrie France’s offer of tickets to this dance at Warehorne took place. I can’t decide if it was early 1976, or early 1977. I’m pretty sure I’d already heard of, and heard good things of, local band Fiddler’s Dram, which suggests that the later date is more likely; but the internet tells me that the first Whitstable May Day celebrations were held in 1976, and I’ve very definite memories of attending that event (and I wouldn’t have known about it, but for this dance). In either case, it came after my Damascene conversion to folk song. And so, on that fateful Friday when my Mum told me that she and Dad were going out to a dance that night – and that the band included members of Fiddler’s Dram – I asked if I could come along too. A phone call must have ensued (this would have involved walking to the phone box at the end of the road – my parents didn’t get a telephone installed until I went to university) and a ticket was procured. Having previously only danced to one of those sedate EFDSS-style piano accordion and music-stand bands, I was completely blown away by the band that night – the Oyster Ceilidh Band. Their playing was so full of energy, and the dancing wasn’t sedate, it was energetic and enthusiastic – dancing with abandon. Well, if you’re a lover of what was become known as English Ceilidh then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Warehorne residents Ron and Jean Saunders put on regular dances with the Oyster Ceilidh Band in the village hall. After that, we went to every one, and to Oyster dances elsewhere (Boughton Under Blean village hall was another regular venue). And soon a bunch of my school friends were coming along, attracted by the liveliness of the events, and joining in enthusiastically. There were other events that Ron and Jean helped to organise too – I recall a music hall evening, carol-singing round the village (see Week 174 – Sweet Chiming Bells) and a Harvest festival.
We’ll come back to Warehorne in a moment. But I also want to mention the other part Barrie France played in my folky journey. He’d begun organising an occasional (monthly?) folk club in a side room at the Stour Centre, the fairly new leisure centre in Ashford. His interests lay at the Simon and Garfunkel / Tom Paxton end of the folk spectrum, rather than the trad stuff I had become obsessed with, but I went along with my best mate Mike Eaton. It was Mike’s dad’s copy of Below the Salt that had switched me on to folk music, and we were now singing in unaccompanied harmony, our repertoire consisting entirely of songs pinched from Steeleye and Watersons LPs. As I wrote recently elsewhere
Our singing style was a horrible mixture of teenage Kentish boys trying to imitate Tim Hart (who, I later discovered, affected that country yokel voice, because he thought his actual public school voice was too posh), Martin Carthy in his still brilliant but most affected early 70s period, and the East Yorkshire vocal stylings of Mike Waterson – who was only in his mid-30s at the time, but sounded like he was one of the old ‘uns.
But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it’s how most singers and musicians get started before, hopefully, finding their own way.
I have few memories of Barrie’s folk club. I think we might have gone along a couple of times at most, and I suspect that the club was a fairly short-lived venture. I do recall a Dutchman singing ‘It takes a worried man to sing a worried song’, and I think Ron and Jean Saunders might well have been there, performing with their son Jonathan (they later formed the Isle of Oxney Barn Dance Band, who were the first band I ever sat in with at a real dance in front of paying punters, and who I think might still be going, with Jonathan at the helm). And of course Mike and I would have sung – maybe ‘Spotted Cow’ or ‘Rosebud in June’, or perhaps ‘Swarthfell Rocks’, or ‘Bellman’, and almost certainly ‘Country Life’. The most important thing that happened, was that at the end of the evening we got chatting to a group of four girls. They hadn’t sung, but said they’d like to, and in the blink of an eye, we’d decided to form a group! The following Sunday afternoon, we all assembled in my Mum’s front room. There was Mike and me, and then Susan Hamlet, Lindsay Edwards, Caroline Chappell and ‘Bobo’ Woodruff (who declared that Mike, curled up in an armchair, looked like a dormouse). We’d just started sixth form, and they were a year older, in the Upper Sixth. I can’t actually remember if the six of us were ever all in the same place at the same time ever again, and this meeting certainly didn’t lead to us being a regular group (did we ever sing anywhere at all? I’m not sure we did). But Mike and I became good friends with Su Hamlet, and I learned a lot from her, one way and another (having eaten my Mum’s Sunday lunch one week, she told me that it had been horribly overcooked, and the beef was like tough old leather – not having much experience of other people’s cooking, this had never occurred to me, but actually she was absolutely correct!).
For his birthday that year, quite by chance, Mike was given a copy of the single LP selection from the Copper Family’s Song for every season and within the space of a couple of weeks we’d added almost all the songs from that record into our repertoire, Mike playing Ron to my Bob. And then, by the following summer I should think, we started singing with Alison Inns (sister of a school friend’s girlfriend) and Gill Harrison (sister of another friend in our year at school) and, sometimes, Jon Jarvis, who was slightly younger than us but whom we knew through the school choir and orchestra (Jonathan could actually play his instrument, which I’m not sure was really true of Mike with the violin, and definitely not of me with the trumpet). Mike’s Dad came up with our band name – Gomenwudu, which I believe is the name given to a harp in Beowulf (but I may have got that bit wrong). I don’t think Jon made it to Warehorne dances very often, but the rest of us did and, with the uninhibited arrogance of youth, we’d sometimes ask John Jones or Cathy Lesurf if we could sing a few songs at an Oyster ceilidh. And, bless them, they let us. And the audience were too polite to boo.
To put this in context, there were always song spots at these dances. Often from Fiddler’s Dram, or Beggars Description (see Week 277 – The First Time), or John Jones singing in harmony with his friend John Taylor; and, sometimes, John Jones would sing ‘The Barley Raking’ with Cathy Lesurf. So all of a considerably higher standard than anything we could aspire to.
There was one evening when we’d sung two or three songs at a Warehorne ceilidh, and they seemed to go down really well (cf. Samuel Johnson’s dog walking on its hind legs, and all that), and we were buzzing. To the extent that at the end of the night we mobbed John Jones and more or less forced him to dictate to us the words of ‘The Barley Raking’. Which meant that we had one more song in our repertoire! And I’ve sung it in various combinations ever since. Mike, Alison, Gill and I sang it unaccompanied; I sang it in my student days with Caroline Jackson-Houlston, again, unaccompanied; I worked up an accompaniment and arrangement in the early 1990s and played it with Saint Monday (with Dave Parry and Carol Turner); and then, when I started doing stuff with Magpie Lane fiddler Mat Green, we revived the same arrangement. And now, after more than 20 years of playing as a duo, Mat and I have finally recorded an album, and this song is on it.
The CD is called ‘Time for a Stottycake’ and you can see the track list, and purchase a copy (more than one, if you insist) from our website: www.andyturnermusic.uk/mat_andy.
The Barley Raking

Andy Turner – vocal, C/G anglo-concertina
Mat Green – fiddle
The song was collected in Hampshire by George Gardiner. It was included in Frank Purslow’s book The Wanton Seed and I’ve no doubt that that is where John and Cathy would have learned it. The notes to the revised edition of The Wanton Seed, by Malcolm Douglas and Steve Gardham, say that Purslow collated three Hampshire versions as well as inserting one verse from a broadside. The morris tune that runs through the arrangement is ‘Maid of the Mill’ from Kirtlington in Oxfordshire. The slightly asymmetrical B music is as per the musical notation I had from Tim Radford (written out, I assume, by Barbara Berry), but when I played it back to Tim he told me that’s not how it’s played for the modern Kirtlington side.

Barley Raking – broadside ballad from the Bodleian collection
A couple of concluding comments.
First, I’ve used the phrase earlier “the uninhibited arrogance of youth”. I have to say that, as a youth and, to be honest, probably throughout my life, I was far from uninhibited. And not especially arrogant either (although, as an only child, no doubt very selfish and not really aware of other people’s feelings). And yet, inspired by a love of singing, and the desire to do it as much as possible, we did somehow have the nerve to ask if we could sing at those Oyster ceilidhs. I wince now at the downright cheek of it, but we were so chuffed when the band let us.
Second, for anyone who’s confused, the phrase “cock up my beaver” refers to a beaver hat.
And finally, I have to record the passing of my dearest friend Mike. We saw each other infrequently in recent years, but I always considered him my best friend, as he had been since the age of 11. We had so many private jokes, that frankly weren’t really funny, but always made us laugh, if only because of the memories they evoked. Now I have noone to share those with. But the happy memories will live on. RIP Mike.

Mike and Andy at Dungeness, circa 1972

Week 313 – A Song for the time

Here’s a song from the South Yorkshire carolling tradition. Like ‘Stannington’ this one’s sung solo – but of course everyone joins in on the chorus, and on the final line of the last verse “And we’ll keep it holy still”.

I suppose I must have first heard the song on the Village Carols cassette A Song for the Time (1987) featuring Ian Russell’s recordings from the Black Bull, Ecclesfield.

His booklet notes say that while this piece is attributed by villagers to Dr Alfred Gatty (1813-1903), vicar of Ecclesfield, there’s no evidence to support this, and it is more likely to have been composed by the vicar’s son, Sir Alfred Scott Gatty (1847-1918). Alfred Gatty Junior wrote a number of carols, these being published in Aunt Judy’s Magazine, a magazine for young people edited by his mother,  Margaret Gatty.

These days ‘A Song for the time’ is sung in other carolling pubs, not just in Ecclesfield – here’s a video of the carol being sung in the Royal Hotel, Dungworth in 2011.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

A Song for the time

Andy Turner – vocal, F/C anglo-concertina

Carols at the Black Bull in Ecclesfield, 2005. Photo: David Bocking, from the Sheffield Tribune website.

Week 312 – I am a donkey driver

I got ‘I Am a Donkey Driver’ from the singing of Sussex singer Harry Upton, on the 1976 Topic album Green Grow the Laurels: Country Singers From the South. Although, like several other songs on this blog, it’s likely that I first heard it sung by my friend Adrian Russell.

It’s not a song I’d ever consciously set out to learn, but then a few weeks ago, while out for a gentle stroll with my mother-in-law in the New Forest, we came across half a dozen donkeys, and this song immediately popped into my head. Finding that I seemed to know, or at least half know, quite a lot of the words, I thought I might as well learn the rest.

So here it is. Where my half-remembered words seemed to flow more easily than what Harry Upton actually sang, I haven’t made too much effort to change things; it’s supposed to be an oral tradition after all.

Besides Mike Yates’ recording of Harry Upton, there are several other sightings of the song in oral tradition – mostly in Southern England, but the song also appears to have been known by schoolchildren in County Westmeath, Ireland, and I’ve discovered this morning that the song even turned up in Sint Eustatius in the Netherlands Antilles – check out this charming recording of Alice Gibbs, made by Alan Lomax in 1967.

The song appeared on broadsides – there’s an example on the Bodleian website, and ‘Jerusalem Cuckoo’ is listed as Axon Ballads number 79 on the Chetham’s Library website, although at the moment none of the images from that collection seems to be visible.

The notes to the Musical Traditions release Why Can’t it Always be Saturday? state that the song was associated with Scottish music hall performer Harry Linn:

This song, which gets its name from Cockney rhyming slang – Jerusalem artichoke – moke (another word for a donkey), was printed sometime around 1870 by the broadside printer T Pearson of 4 and 6, Chadderton Street, Oldham Road, Manchester. According to the sheet the song was sung by the Scottish Music Hall performer Harry Linn, who also wrote songs – such  as Eggs for Your Breakfast in the Morning, which Walter Pardon used to sing, Jim the Carter’s Lad, a song often found in the repertoire of country singers, and, using the pseudonym Alexander Crawford, The Stoutest Man in the Forty-Twa.

Linn also wrote ‘The Birds upon the trees’, and I imagine there’s a pretty good likelihood that he composed this one too.

I am a donkey driver

 

My Mum riding a seaside donkey, Hastings 1930s; my Grandad Bert Elkins in close attendance. As far as I know, this donkey didn’t turn her the wrong way up.

Week 311 – Brisk and lively lad

This is a Copper Family song, although I think I first heard it sung by my friend Adrian Russell. I’ve always had half a mind to learn the song, but in the past, although I really liked the tune, I thought I’d want to assemble a slightly more coherent set of words – something I never got round to doing. Last year, however, I found myself singing the words as printed in the Copper Family Songbook. And I discovered that

1. they seemed to flow really nicely
2. I half knew the words already
3. while there are a few gaps in the narrative, it’s perfectly obvious what’s going on
4. the song fitted really nicely in F on a C/G anglo.

So here it is – any deviations from the Copper Family’s lyrics are unintentional, and just the result of singing the song without any reference to the book over the last 9 months or so.

You can hear Bob and John Copper singing the song on the long-deleted 4 LP set A Song for every season. One day that might be re-released, I suppose, but in the meantime some kind soul has uploaded the entire set to Youtube – here’s ‘Brisk and Lively Lad’.

I’ve only this morning started looking at other versions of Roud 2930. Although there are versions from Ireland, Scotland and Vermont, the song appears to have been collected most often in Sussex. Lucy Broadwood included a version from just over the border in Surrey in her English Traditional Songs and Carols and this has an extra verse which explains how the young lady came to be on board ship and so handily available to tend to the brisk and lively lad’s wounds:

In man’s apparel then she did
Resolve to try her fate;
And in the good ship where he rid
She went as surgeon’s mate.
Says she “My soldier shall not be
Destroyed for want of care;
I will dress,
And I will bless,
Whatsoever I endure!”

Elsewhere on the internet you can find the song’s overlong seventeenth and eighteenth century forbears. For instance, ‘The Bristol bridegroom; or, The ship carpenter’s love to a merchant’s daughter’, printed in Birmingham between 1757 and 1796; and ‘The Valiant Virgin; Or, Phillip And Mary; In a Description of a Young Gentlewoman of Worcestershire (a Rich Gentlemans Daughter) being in love with a Farmers Son, which her Father despiseing, because he was poore, caus’d him to be prest to Sea; And how she Disguised herselfe in Man’s Apparel and followed him; where in the same ship (she being very expert in surgery) was entertain’d as Sugeons Mate, and how loving to him (and skillfully to others) she behaved herself in her Office; and he having got a Shot in the Thigh, how deligent she was to dress him; she never discovering herself to him untill they came both on Shore: Her Father Dyeing whilst she was at Sea, (He having no more Children then she) they went into the Countrey to take Possession of her Estate, and to Marry; To the admiration of all that were at the Wedding’, which EBBA dates to 1664-1688.

The latter states it is to be sung to the tune of ‘When the Stormy Winds do blow’. I always thought that was more or less exactly the same as the tune used by the Copper Family, but this assumption falls down when checking the tune as given in Chappell’s Popular music of the olden time. At university, I did a four-part arrangement of ‘When the Stormy Winds do blow’ (with words and tune, I think, from one of Roy Palmer’s ballad collections) and we sang this in the harmony group variously known as Three Agnostics and a Christian, or The Paralytics. I remember at the time thinking it was a really good arrangement. But I found it recently, typed it up on the computer, and was disappointed to find that it was a really pedestrian and uninspired bit of harmonising. Oh well.

The Valiant Virgin, published 1664-1688; from the English Broadside Ballad Archive.

Brisk and lively lad

Andy Turner – vocals, C/G anglo-concertina

Week 310 – Staines Morris

I think I must have first heard ‘Staines Morris’ at the end of Shirley and Dolly Collins’ Anthems in Eden suite, but learned it – as, no doubt, did countless others – from Shirley’s singing on Morris On. The source of the song is William Chappell’s Popular music of the olden time (1859). Chappell says

This tune is taken from the first edition of The Dancing Master. It is also in William Ballet’s Lute Book (time of Elizabeth); and was printed as late as about 1760, in a Collection of Country Dances, by Wright.

The Maypole Song, in Actæon and Diana, seems so exactly fitted to the air, that, having no guide as to the one intended, I have, on conjecture, printed it with this tune.

John Playford’s Dancing Master was first published in 1651, while the Actæon and Diana referred to here is Acteon & Diana with a pastoral storie of the nimph Oenone followed by the several conceited humours of Bumpkin the huntsman, Hobbinal the shepherd, Singing Simpkin, and John Swabber the seaman, by Rob. Cox, acted at the Red Bull with great applause, circa 1655. You can find the complete text on the University of Michigan’s Early English Books Online website. These verses are sung by “Country Wench 1”.

These days I’m pretty resistant to all this Merrie England guff, but I’ve retained a soft spot for this song. After all, the words might be a bit twee, but it is a rather fine tune. In our teens we used to sing it in our vocal harmony group Gomenwudu (in fact I’m pretty sure Mike used to sing Ashley Hutchings’ bass line). I’ve always thought of it primarily as a vehicle for vocal harmonies. But a couple of years ago I realised that it was possible to play it on the anglo. I didn’t really get it together then and, if I’m honest, I haven’t entirely got it together now. But as May Day approached I had another go at it. Put into a more singable key, with different fingering, on a different concertina, it seemed like a more viable proposition. And here it is – somewhat under-rehearsed, but if I’m ever going to post the song on this blog, it really has to be on May 1st – with multi-tracked vocals and two concertinas. Oh, and a Tierce de Picardie at the end. Again, something I tend to avoid like the plague, but here it just seemed right.

Maypole dance – from an early 20th century postcard, unknown location and date.

Staines Morris

Andy Turner – vocals, C/G and C/F anglo-concertinas

Solo gig alert – Lewes Saturday Folk Club

I’m playing a rare solo gig this coming Saturday, 18th February 2023.

I’ll be at the Lewes Saturday Folk Club, which meets at the Elephant and Castle, White Hill, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 2DJ.

See www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org for details.

 

I was originally due to play there in March 2020, but something cropped up…

I’ll be doing the usual mix of mostly traditional, mostly English, songs – some unaccompanied, some with concertina accompaniment – and tunes. There will be some material which I definitely would have performed in 2020, had COVID not intervened; but also some newer songs and tunes which I’ve learned since then and, probably, one song which hasn’t even been posted up on this blog yet.

Folk club organiser Valmai Goodyear writes

Andy Turner performs English traditional songs & tunes with grace & zest, with Anglo concertina & melodeon. He’s a member of Oxfordshire group Magpie Lane & the dance bands Geckoes & Chameleons. He works in a duo with fiddler Mat Green & has also worked with Chris Wood, the Oyster Band & the Mellstock Band.

Andy will give us two forty-five minute spots and the rest of the evening is filled by members of the audience performing a song or tune if they wish.

Everyone is welcome, especially if you’d like to sing or play. We mostly sing and play traditional music from the British Isles, but we enjoy other styles as well. We always start off with some English dance tunes for anyone with an instrument to join in.

We have a loyalty card. Six visits earn you £5 off an evening when admission is £6 or more. It’s £10 tonight. Bring the right money in cash on the night.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, and you live within striking distance of Lewes, then why not come along? If nothing else, it’s a Harveys pub, so the beer is guaranteed to be of the highest standard.

Week 309 – The Cherington Wassail

Last week I posted a Wassail song which was definitely collected in Oxfordshire: The Adderbury Wassail. My searches of the VWML catalogue also threw up 3 phonograph recordings made by James Madison Carpenter, all of the same song. None of the recordings is dated, and all are credited to an unnamed “Oxfordshire Singer”.

The first thing that struck me about the song is that it is very reminiscent of the well-known wassail printed in the Oxford Book of Carols as ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail’. Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire are neighbouring counties, so I wondered if this particular strain of wassail song had crossed over the border. However, the more I look into it, the more likely it seems that the American collector Carpenter was confused, and wrongly labelled a song he had actually recorded in Gloucestershire.

The GlosTrad website has a list of songs collected by Carpenter in the county. This includes three wassails. Both the Avening and Minchinhampton songs are similar, but clearly not the same as these “Oxfordshire” recordings. The Cherington Wassail Song on the other hand looks suspiciously close.

The song’s source is given on the website as Tanner, Thomas and Howes Mr and Phelps, Charlie. Carpenter’s own notes are quoted thus:

Mr Howes has known for sixty years. Bowl decorated with fox’s brush and holly bow, with bough, decorated with ribbons. Charlie Phelps checked the Cherrington (sic) Wassail sung by Tom Tanner.

I did wonder if Thomas Tanner was related to the Bampton singer Charles Tanner, and that was where the Oxfordshire connection came from. But the GlosTrad page on Thomas Tanner tells us that he came from a well-established Cherington family, so I think that’s a red herring. When I consulted members of the Traditional Song Forum, the replies I got suggested that Carpenter’s attributions were not always to be relied upon.

Elaine Bradtke, who works for the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, wrote

I’ve been working on the Carpenter Collection with Julia Bishop.  A couple things to note: Carpenter was not the best of record keepers. His indexes for cylinders and discs are often rather vague, or just plain incorrect, and I suspect they were made significantly later than the recordings themselves. He also seemed to be a little geographically challenged, so his indications of locations may not always be correct. But that’s what we had to work with when we indexed the collection.  After we transcribed much of the material, we were able to match many of the texts to the recordings and give more precise attributions.  However, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Cylinder 131 00:00. We don’t know who sang it or where it was sung.

You are correct, it is very close to the Gloucestershire versions.  Especially Avening, and Cherrington where they repeat “Our bowl it is made of some mappelin tree With our wassailing bowl we’ll bring unto thee”. But it is not an exact match to any of the typescript texts in the collection.  I would say it’s probably Gloucestershire, despite what his own index said.

The GlosTrad site – and I’ve no doubt that the site’s founders Carol and Gwilym Davies will have based this attribution on the best information available – lists Tom Tanner as the singer of ‘The Unquiet Grave’, which comes immediately after the Wassail song on this recording https://www.vwml.org/record/VWMLSongIndex/SN18617. So I’m going to assume that it’s also Tanner singing the Wassail – it certainly sounds to me like the same singer. So I’m also assuming that the song I’m posting here is essentially the Cherington Wassail.

Out of laziness as much as anything else, I’ve sung the words from this transcription by Carpenter, which uses a standard chorus, rather than repeating the last two lines of the song.

Incidentally, all three Wassails collected by Carpenter in Gloucestershire refer to the bowl being made of the “mappelin” or “maypolin” tree. As far as I can tell, this is simply another name for the maple.

The Cherington Wassail

Andy Turner – vocal, G/D anglo-concertina

Week 308 – The Adderbury Wassail

A couple of people have asked me recently if there were any Wassail songs collected in Oxfordshire. A quick search of the VWML catalogue brings up 10 records, but most of these actually refer to the same song – the two verse fragment collected by Janet Blunt from William ‘Binx’ Walton of Adderbury in December 1917. Of the others, none can definitively be said to be an Oxfordshire song:

• there’s another Wassail song collected by Janet Blunt, but although she heard it sung in Adderbury her notes have it as originating in Birkenhead
• the song recorded by Mike Yates at Headington Quarry on Christmas Day 1975 is almost certainly the ‘Somerset Wassail’ (that’s what the Quarry Mummers sing these days – I know, because I was playing for them on Boxing Day this year)
• and, having consulted more knowledgeable members of the Traditional Song Forum, it seems that the phonograph recording made by James Madison Carpenter, credited to an “Oxfordshire Singer”, was more likely than not made in the neighbouring county of Gloucestershire.

In his book Village Song & Culture: A Study Based on the Blunt Collection of Song from Adderbury North Oxfordshire, Michael Pickering writes

Binx tried hard to remember this song for Blunt in December 1917, but could remember only two of the three verses in their entirety. Of the first verse, only the opening came back to him: ‘Good mortal man, remember…’
This is a familiar wassail song line, and we can safely assume that the nature of those following was didactic.

In looking for additional verses to add to the two which Walton did remember, I came across this nice version by former Adderbury Morris Squire Tim Radford. But noting that he’d got a couple of the verses from the Albion Band, I thought I’d choose some others, just to be different. The “mortal man remember” phrase I associate with the Hampshire Mummers’ Song ‘God Bless the Master’, and it turns up also in this Sussex Mummers’ Carol. I’ve borrowed my first couple of verses from there (verses which I think can fairly be categorised as “didactic”); added a generic “God bless the master…” verse as verse 3; and then I finish off with William Walton’s two verses. This means I get to sing the splendid line “A bit o’ your good vittles ma’am” at the end of the song, finishing off, appropriately enough with

We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year.

Sentiments which I heartily endorse.

William Walton’s Wassail Song, from the Janet Blunt MSS.

The Adderbury Wassail

Andy Turner – vocal, G/D anglo-concertina

Week 307 – When Adam was first created

I must have been singing this song for very nearly 45 years. Always unaccompanied in harmony, of course, as is right and proper for a song from the Copper Family repertoire.

In the last year or so, I’d toyed with an arrangement in F on my C/G anglo. But this morning I decided to try it on the more sonorous Crabb F/C concertina which I found myself unable to resist at this summer’s Whitby Folk festival. It seemed to fit, and although my voice hasn’t been at its best of late, it didn’t seem too croaky. So I decided to slap it down on “tape” and post it here straightaway.

The song’s central point is – as James Brown would attest – that man is nothing without a woman. But, as with so many traditional songs, the words are written very much from the man’s perspective, and betray the fact that the song originated in a male-dominated society. I feel that the song’s heart is in the right place: it insists that Woman is not to be trampled upon by Man, but that she was created “his equal and partner to be”; but then blows it in the very next line by stating “when they’re united in one, sir, the man is the top of the tree”. Oh well.

Looking at broadside versions of the ballad on the Bodleian website, it’s clear that these lines weren’t inserted by the Coppers, but were there from the start. They’ve been softened a little in the the rather nice version of ‘When Adam was created’ which Sharp collected in 1918 from Jasper Robertson at Burnsville in North Carolina – in fact the song has been explicitly turned into a wedding song.

In praise of dear women I sing – ballad from the Bodleian website

 

When Adam was first created

Andy Turner – vocal, F/C anglo-concertina