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

Tags: anglo-concertina, Copper Family, cruel parents, Love Sex & Courtship, Press Gang, Roud 2930, Sussex