2018 Letters

Re: Old Song - 2

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Music Division - Recording Laboratory.  FOLK MUSIC OF THE UNITED STATES Issued from the Collections of the Archive of Folk Song Long-Playing Record L55.  FOLK MUSIC FROM WISCONSIN Edited by Helene Stratman-Thomas.  The notes on that song were as follows:

How Happy is the Sportsman
[Sung by J, L, Peters at Beloit, 1946. Recorded by Aubrey Snyder and Phyllis Pinkerton]

This ballad was brought to Wisconsin from England by the Cornish who settled in the lead-mining area of southwestern Wisconsin in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  Mr. Peters learned the song, when a small boy in Mineral Point, from hearing his father and grandfather sing it.  Baring-Gould, who collected the song in England, refers to it as a very old ballad which dates back at least to the early seventeenth century.  Around 1888 he obtained the song from an old quarryman at Merrivale Bridge in Devon, near the border of Cornwall.  The Baring-Gould version begins "There were three jovial Welshmen" and refers to the fox as Reynard.  In Mr. Peters' song the fox is called Bovena.  The verses of the two versions are similar, but the melodies have little in common.

The next to come was a fair maid, a-combing out her locks
She said she saw poor Reyny among the hills and rocks
How happy is the sportsman who love(s) to hunt the fox,
Hunting for Bowena among the geese and ducks.
Come hic, come hic, come high-low, along the merry stream,
With a ra-ta-ta, ti-pa-ti-pa-tan,
And with the royal bow-wow-wow,
The bewbine zing, fiddle-diddle-dee and dye-dee,
And through the woods we'll run, brave boys, And through the woods we'11 run.

The first he saw was a farmer, a-hoeing in his corn,
He said he saw Bowena across the waters lorn,
Come hic, come hic, come high-low, along the merry stream,
With a ra-ta-ta, ti-pa-ti-pa-tan,
And with the royal bow-wow-wow,
The bewbine zing, fiddle-diddle-dee and dye-dee,
And through the woods we'll run, brave boys,
And through the woods we'll run.

The next he saw vas a blind man, as blind as he could be,
He said he saw Bowena run up a hollow tree,
Come hic, cone hic, come high-low, along the merry stream,
With a ti-pa-ti-pa-tan,
And with the royal bow-wow-vow,
The bewbine zing, and dye-dee,
And through the woods we'll run, brave boys, And through the woods we'll run.

Vic Smith - 18.3.18

Re: Old Song - 1

Referring to the song fragment below, there is a variant of it, and much more complete, being sung in the Devon/Cornwall region.

I first came across it some 50 years ago being sung by Ken Penney of Exeter, and I'm pretty sure it was in the repertoire of Tony Rose and Cyril Tawney.  My gut feeling is that it's source is probably Exmoor.

Here's the chorus, as I know it:

With a hip, hip, hip, and a holler, and away went the merry, merry band.
With a ran-tan-tan, and a chivvy-chivvy chan, all over the merry, merry strand.
With an oogle-oogle-oogle on the bugle horn, fallie-rall, fallie-rall, fallie- rallie-ray.
As thro' the woods we go, brave boys.  As thro' the woods we go.

Vic Legg - 16.3.18

Old Song

Old Song

Listening to some of the old songs and tunes you broadcast puts me in mind of a song and tune which I heard in Shoreham (Sussex) on the Saturday before Easter, after the hounds had been at a Meet at Bramber Castle in 1874.  I was staying at a little beer house in East Street, called 'The Otter'.  And the song was sung in the smoke-room nearly all the night.  I had never heard it before, and have never heard it since.  There are a large number of verses, but only these two stuck in my brain.  The chorus is some eight or ten lines, but what I have written is the gist of it.  Does it belong down South, for I have never heard it up here, and have not heard it on the air, either?
The next we met was a fair maid,
As fair as fair could be;
She said she saw bold Reynard
Run up an apple tree.


With whack fol-diddle-day-do,
And away went the royal dog
On that merry strand.


The next we met was a beggar,
As blind as blind could be;
He swore he saw bold Reynard
Run into a hollow tree ...

Mike Yates - 15.3.18

Book help, please

• Folksongs form Newfoundland by Maud Karpeles.  Published by Faber, this book included a great number of traditional songs she collected form the outports in the 1920's!!  Very courageous for a woman on her own at the time and breaking with social conventions.  It included her transcription of She's Like the Swallow.
• They also had Folksongs and Singers from Ontario by Edith Fowke
• and Songs and Ballads form Nova Scotia by Helen Creighton

If anyone knows where I can find copies of these books, please let me know.

Thanks to various friends, Brad now has access to these three books - Ed.

Brad McEwen - 16.2.18
mill_race@yahoo.com

Re: 'Austerity Bites' editorial

Dear Rod,

I had a quick look through your recent Musical Traditions editorials, and wanted to briefly respond to your 'Austerity Bites' piece published last November.

I very much sympathise with your evaluation of the younger end of current folk scene, but wanted to offer myself as an example of how all is perhaps not too glum?  I am 'only' (ha!) 35, but am very much committed to real traditional singing.  I came to it from a background of studying traditional singers in Bulgaria when I was at university, and a desire to find out whether we had anything similar closer to home.  I found out that we most certainly did when I came across the recordings Percy Grainger made of Joseph Taylor.

Since then its been a slow process of following leads into what has felt like a lost world.  I have very little interest in (though nothing against) the contemporary folk scene, though to be honest, I've never really felt inspired to investigate it too much.  Instead, I've taken most of my inspiration from the sort of field recordings you have devoted yourself to making publically available, various printed and online resources, and amazing friends from Ireland (and further afield) where, as you say in your article, there is so much more value attached to traditional singing.

I don't sing in public very often.  When I do, it is within events that are more part of the art/performance scene than any branch of the music world (where funnily enough, I think people are much more open minded about listening to someone sing a long song with no accompaniment), or those rare occasions when you're at someone's house for dinner, they ask you to sing, and it somehow feels like the right moment.  Predominantly though, I just sing at home, in the kitchen!

Please don't lose heart.  Your efforts to make rare and indescribably precious singing available to a wider audience really are filtering down through the generations, even if it might not seem like it sometimes.

Regards,

Phil Owen - 14.2.18

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