Week 286 – The Blacksmith Courted Me

I first heard ‘The Blacksmith’ via the starkly beautiful arrangement on Steeleye Span’s second album Please to see the King. That must have been the autumn of 1976. Over the next couple of years I heard several other versions: Steeleye Mark I’s rather less impressive arrangement on Hark the village wait; Andy Irvine’s reading of the song on Planxty; Shirley and Dolly Collins’ interpretation of the Phoebe Smith version, as part of their magnificent Anthems in Eden suite; and Barry Dransfield’s wonderful extemporisations on the Dransfield album The Fiddler’s Dream (as an aside, if you don’t know that record check it out now – possibly the best folk-rock album ever).

Steeleye and Planxty both did the version collected by Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire, as printed in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. That’s not a version I’ve ever sung in public, but it would have been hard not to have absorbed it in my formative years as a singer, and I posted it here back in 2015 as Week 214 – The Blacksmith.

In early 1979, thanks to Ashford public library and inter-library borrowing, I managed to get my hands on the 1963 Topic LP The Roving Journeymen featuring Tom Willett and his sons Chris and Ben. That record had a big influence on me. Over the next few years I learned over half of the songs on the album: ‘Riding Down to Portsmouth’, ‘The Roving Journeyman’, ‘The Rambling Sailor’, ‘My Dog and I’, ‘The Old Miser’, ‘The Game of All Fours’ and last, but certainly not least, ‘Lord Bateman’. I also really admired Tom Willett’s performance of ‘The Blacksmith Courted Me’ but somehow I never learned it. Partly, perhaps, because I viewed it as a song best sung by a woman; partly because Tom’s words were not quite, as you might say, ‘oven-ready’. Well last autumn I decided the time for procrastination was long past, and set about assembling a set of words to sing.

Tom Willett’s version of ‘The Blacksmith’ as noted by Ken Stubbs in 1960

 

I brought in lines from other versions to fill out Tom Willett’s three-line verses. Then I swapped a couple of lines around so that “clever” rhymed with “ever” and “beauty” rhymed with “duty”. And then I agonised for ages over the last couple of verses. I was determined to bring in “Oh witness have I none, save God Almighty” which, along with the “Strange news” lines earlier in the song I think of as one of the absolute glories of English traditional song lyrics. But I was equally determined not to omit Tom’s defiant last line

I shall never die for love, young man, believe me

In the end I added a whole extra verse, and turned the final stanza into a 6-line verse. And I think it works rather well. I am certainly enjoying singing the song, and when I make a visit to the Lewes Saturday Folk Club in April I think it’s pretty much certain that this will be on my setlist.

You can find recordings of Tom Willett singing this song in various places now. The Topic album The Roving Journeymen is available for download. There’s a Musical Traditions 2 CD set, Adieu to Old England, and a 2 CD release on Forest Tracks, A-Swinging Down The Lane, which (because Paul Marsh and Rod Stradling basically had the same brilliant idea at pretty much the same time) contains almost exactly the same recordings, made by Ken Stubbs in the early 1960s. Of the two I’d say the Forest Tracks album is marginally the better – apart from anything else the CD booklet contains the only photograph of Tom Willett you are ever likely to encounter. I know not everyone shares my enthusiasm for listening to field recordings of traditional singers, but if you do, A-Swinging Down The Lane is an essential purchase.

If you just want to dip your toes in the water, or if money is tight, you’ll now find Ken Stubbs’ field recordings available via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library archive catalogue.

Catalogue record https://www.vwml.org/record/RoudFS/S393817 includes the pages from Stubbs’ notebook shown above, and his 1960 recording of Tim Willett singing ‘The Blacksmith’.

There’s much more in this collection, given my particular interest in songs from Kent and the South of England, that I really must explore. Often recorded in noisy pubs, often mere fragments of a song or tune, but fascinating none the less – try this recording of an unidentified singer delivering just one verse (almost!) of ‘Hopping down in Kent’; if nothing else, you certainly get a sense of atmosphere.

The Blacksmith Courted Me

Week 115 – The Game of All Fours

I learned this from octogenarian Gypsy singer Tom Willett, via the Topic LP The Roaming Journeyman.

That album – Topic’s very first release of traditional English singers – is a bit of a classic. When  Mike Yates, Keith Chandler and various other writers on traditional music nominated Ten Records that Changed my Life for Musical Traditions, this record was, I think, the most frequently selected. It’s been available as a download for a couple of years now, but I was very excited to learn last week that Rod Stradling has now released a 2 CD set of Willett family recordings, Adieu to Old England on his Musical Traditions label. This contains a number of previously unreleased recordings of Tom Willett, and his sons Ben and Chris. I don’t have my copy yet, but there’s one on its way to me.

In case you fancy recreating this song in the comfort of your own home, you can …er… find the rules of All Fours at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hoyle’s_Games_Modernized/All_Fours.

The Cards – printed by Pitts, Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials, between 1819 and 1844. From Ballads Online.

The Game of All Fours

Week 85 – The Old Miser

Another song learned from the Willett Family LP, The Roving Journeymen, where it is sung by Chris Willett. The song was also included on Farewell, My Own Dear Native Land,  Volume 4 in Topic’s Voice of the People series.

I previously recorded this song for the compilation of Kentish material, Apples, Cherries, Hops and Women, one of three (to date) masterminded by Pete Castle.

I don’t exactly rush the song, but I’ve just listened to Chris Willett singing the song and was struck by how much slower he takes it – over six and a half minutes, compared with my insubstantial three minutes 54 seconds.

The Old Miser

Week 31 – The Rambling Sailor

Ballad sheet from the Bodleian collection; printed by H. Such between 1863 and 1885

Next weekend I will be appearing – in what seems to have become a bit of a tradition – at the Frittenden Festival in Kent. The theme for the afternoon session this year is “Sea, ships and sailors”. Now I don’t sing many songs about life at sea; but I do seem to have a lot of songs about sailors on shore, making a nuisance of themselves with members of the opposite sex. Here’s an example which I’ve known for years, although I’m not sure that I’ve ever sung it in public – can’t think why though, and I certainly intend to rectify that next week.

I first heard the song back in the late seventies, sung by Tim Hart on the LP Folk Songs of Old England Vol. 1; then Cathy Lesurf sang a version on the Oyster Ceilidh Band album Jack’s Alive. And more recently, of course, it has been popularised once again by Spiers & Boden / Bellowhead with their stomping version. The way I sing it is based on the recording of Chris Willett on the old Topic LP The Roving Journeymen (now also available on We’ve Received Orders to Sail, Volume 12 of the Voice of the People set).

As well as the fine tune, I’m very taken with Young Johnson’s boast that he has “received commission from the King, to court all girls is handsome”. A likely story, but no doubt the dream job of many a tar.

If you’re after a less well-known version of the song, you could do much worse than investigate the way it was sung by the wonderful Australian singer and musician Sally Sloane – that’s on an excellent 2 CD set of Australian field recordings called Sharing the Harvest: highly recommended.

The Rambling Sailor

Week 26 – Lord Bateman

Another fine song from the Willett Family repertoire. It’s the very first song on the Topic LP The Roving Journeymen, sung by the octogenarian Tom, and his performance is a real tour-de-force.

He gets very nearly to the end of the tale, too, by the simple expedient of missing out the first few verses! A number of traditional singers – Joseph Taylor for instance – make the fatal mistake of starting this song at the beginning: Lord Bateman sails to the East (to fight in the Crusades?), is imprisoned by a Turk, and tied to a tree. Then, just when the Turk’s daughter makes an appearance, the singer runs out of verses and the song grinds to a halt. Tom Willett dispenses with all the back story, and starts the tale at this point. And where the words might normally be

The Turk he had one only daughter

he does a brilliant bit of rationalisation and sings

Now the turnkey had but one only daughter

It doesn’t matter about his captor’s nationality – the important fact is that he’s a gaoler, and his daughter is going to set our hero free.

I used to finish the song at the same point as Tom Willett, with the verse where Lord Bateman realises the identity of the beautiful, richly attired visitor who is asking him for a slice of bread and a bottle of wine

Now Lord Bateman flew all in a passion
His sword he broke it all in pieces three
Saying I’ll seek no more for no other fortune
Oh it’s since Sofia now have crossed the sea

But I was singing this at home one time when my Dad was around. I finished, and he immediately said “Well, what happened then?” Now admittedly this was what he used to say at the conclusion of pretty much every episode of Play for Today. But this isn’t modern drama, it’s a traditional ballad, and it deserves a proper ending. So I added on three final verses as collected by Sharp, and printed in Maud Karpeles’ The Crystal Spring.

Thanks Dad – you were right.

Lord Bateman

Week 23 – The Roving Journeyman

The title track from the 1963 Topic LP The Roving Journeymen featuring members of the Willett family. On the LP it is sung in slightly different versions by both 84 year old Tom, and his son Chris. Tom’s version was included on volume 20 of The Voice of the People where it is titled ‘The Roaming Journeyman’ – quite rightly, since that’s what both father and son actually sang. What I sing is a bit of an amalgam of the two versions – influenced very largely, I suspect, by the words printed in Peter Kennedy’s Folksongs of Britain & Ireland.

I’m always surprised that the Willetts’ songs are not more widely sung on the folk scene. But John Kirkpatrick has recorded this song, and ‘Riding Down to Portsmouth’; while there’s a striking arrangement of ‘The Roving Journeyman’ on the recent CD by the Woodbine & Ivy Band – sung with great gusto by James Raynard (at the time of writing, if you follow that last link, you can in fact listen to the track).

The Roving Journeyman 

Week 7 – My Dog and I

Another song from the Willett Family LP The Roving Journeymen. This one was sung by Tom Willett on the album, and given the title ‘While the Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping’, although those words don’t actually appear anywhere in the song. Neither do ‘Hares in the old plantation’, or ‘Dogs and ferrets’, which are other common titles for the song, so I’ve just used the first few words as the title It was only when I came to record this that I realised I’d never really given any thought to what I called the song. I’d guess that quite possibly Tom Willett never did either.

The Roud Index  currently has 53 entries for this song, nearly all from Southern England, and quite a few – like this version – collected from travelling singers.

My Dog and I

Week 1 – Riding Down to Portsmouth

Welcome to Week One of A Folk Song a Week.

I’m beginning with possibly my favourite song to sing, from one of my favourite records, The Roving Journeymen by the Willett Family. The Willetts – Tom and his sons Chris and Ben – were English gypsy singers recorded in 1962 on a caravan site near Ashford in Middlesex, by Bill Leader and Paul Carter. This song was sung by Tom – at 84 years of age, not the strongest singer, but still a singer of enormous character, and with some great songs. The Roving Journeymen was, I believe, the first full-length Topic LP to feature English traditional singers, and had a major impact: it was chosen by several of the contributors to Musical Traditions’ Ten Records that Changed my Life feature. Although it’s never been released on CD, you can get it as a digital download from Amazon, iTunes and the like; and this track is included on Volume 2 of Topic’s monumental Voice of the People set.

Riding Down to Portsmouth