Another Collection Of Traditional Folk Songs

Introduction

This piece was inspired by a comment by Sally Whytehead in The Ballad Tree: Traditional Folk Ballads and Songs who provided this link to

Index of Songs and Tunes from Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music

Basically, I am going to choose songs from that link that have Roud numbers. The link to the song details will be in the "More Here" links under each song link.

Apologies I can't make the links open in new windows.

"Annan Water" (Roud 6562) - Nic Jones

Nic wrote in the album notes: "Annan Water is not such a well-known ballad. I have altered and simplified it considerably. The original verses may be found tucked inconspicuously away in an appendix of volume 4 of the Child Ballads. The tune used is an adaption of The Brisk Young Lively Lad, found in The Folk Song Journals."

More Here

"The Bonny Black Hare" (Roud 1656) - A L Lloyd and Dave Swarbrick

A rather naughty folk song for you. A song of love and lust with further information below and A L Lloyd almost loses his cool and bursts into laughter at one point. He does know what he is singing about.

More Here

"Canadee-I-O" Roud (309) - The Outside Track

Every time I share this song it's the Nic Jones version which has the most beautiful acoustic intro that I have ever heard (I still can't play it) but this is a great version, I think filmed by the Forth Bridges.

I used the Nic Jones version to accompany my first ever Top Story on Vocal, a poem that you can read here:

More On The Song Here

"Clyde’s Water / The Drowned Lovers" Roud (91) - Nic Jones

Sorry to include so many Nic Jones performances but this is another wonderful performance.

More Here

"Erin-Go-Bragh (Ireland Forever)" Roud(1627) - Dick Gaughan

Dick Gaughan has the most distinctive voice I have ever heard, and this is his take on this traditional song

More Here

"High Barbaree" (Roud 134) - Bob Roberts

High Barbary was the romantic name of the Rif Coast of North Africa. It was the home of the Barbary pirates or Barbary corsairs who preyed on European shipping to capture Christian slaves from the 16th century up to 1830.

I probably heard this in school as we did sing sea shanties but the last one I remember is the Joseph Arthur version on the first "Rogues Gallery" CD release.

More Here

"Glasgerion / Glenkindie / Jack Orion" (Roud 154) - A L Lloyd and Dave Swarbrick

Malcolm Douglas noted

"Lloyd didn’t say where he got the tune that he set Jack Orion to, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Where’s Your Trousers. Whether this was an inscrutable joke on his part, or whether both melodies were based on the same original (something not unlike Johnny Cope, perhaps) I really don’t know."

I first heard this by Pentangle, but again we go back in the company of A L Lloyd and Dave Swarbrick.

More Here

"Now Westlin Winds (Song Composed in August)" Roud(6936) - Band of Burns ft. Ríoghnach Connolly

This is a Robert Burns composition.

This song has the ‘twin sports’ of guns and girls and Seán Ó Baoill in his book The Irish Song Tradition (Gilbert Dalton 1976) says with regard to this category of song—“The twin arts of hunting and love-making go together in the mind of the country poet.” I would say from the tone of this song and also Burns’ reputation, that the latter was closer to his heart!

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"The Wiltshire Wedding / One Misty Moisty Morning" (Roud 13910) - The Virginia Company

Believed to be based on the initial lines of the song The Wiltshire Wedding, printed in 1680, this children’s nursery rhyme could be even older; the original tune to it is The Friar and the Nun.

This was a favourite of my mums, but the first one I remember is the Steeley Span version. My mum must have known an earlier version and she sang it to me as a youngster.

More Here

"P Stands for Paddy / T Stands for Thomas" (Roud 419) - Líadan

These B for Barney, P for Paddy, J for Jack songs are usually Irish in origin though common enough in the English countryside. Often the verses are just a string of floaters drifting in from other lyrical songs. So it is with this piece, which derives partly from a version collected by Cecil Sharp from a Gloucestershire gipsy, Kathleen Williams

I first heard this by Five Hand Reel but there are hundreds of versions on YouTube if you want to search.

More here