Child Ballads, #2 The Elfin Knight

Child Ballad 2: The Elfin Knight. The core of this ballad includes demands by a woman that her suiter perform impossible tasks including making of a garment with no seams. One varient is widely known as Scarbourough Fair. This is not that variant. Sung by Kate Rushby.

Child Ballads

So I've been gone over a year. Sue me.

I've decided to see how many Child Ballads I can find.

Child Ballad 1: "Riddles Wisely Expounded" sung by The Askew Sisters. I never heard of them before I found this, but they are quite good.

City of New Orleans

I'm not much of a train guy. Never got that "romance" thing that so many guys see in them. Part of it might be that I don't have much experience with trains. I've seen freight trains all of my life but, have very little experience riding them. A couple of times on the Durango-Silverton, and about a month riding trains around Europe, pretty much sums it up. (I do have fond memories of the ride down the Rhine valley though.) On the other hand, I've lived in towns bisected by tracks. Nothing like getting stuck for half an hour watching a train go by a 1/4 mile per hour to make you hate the damn things.

So why this song then? Partly because of the melody, which I think is just about perfect, especially the chorus. The lyrics really make this song though. "Dealing cards with the old men in the club car. Penny a point, ain't no one keeping score." Has any one every caught the boredom of long distance travel so well? This song is so good that it can almost make someone like me see the what the train guys see in the them. "And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their fathers' magic carpets made of steel".

Why Willie? I think he sounds better than Arlo.

Those Were the Days

Some songs are nostalgic. This song is nostalgia itself. I was first attracted to this song when I was in my early twenties, which just show how early one can become nostalgic. I suppose that everyone has a tavern that comes to mind when they hear this song. I have three. First is Papa Rollo's in Waco. Coming in a distant second is Eskimo Joe's in Stillwater, from before the time that they became a restaurant. Finally there is St. Michael's Alley in Tulsa, which wasn't really a tavern, more of a coffee house. St. Michael's Alley is gone, Eskimo Joe's has become civilized. Perhaps Papa Rollo's still continues.

This song has an interesting history. Gene Raskin took the melody of a Russian Gypsy folk song, Dorogoi Dlinnoyu (The Long Road), and wrote or translated English lyrics. (Not knowing Russian, it is hard for me to tell if it is a translation or not). It was recorded by several people in the late sixties. The definitive version is by Mary Hopkins, although it was recorded at the about the same time by Britain's Sandie Shaw. Later cover version were done by host of people, including Bonnie Tyler, Dolly Parton and Liam Clancy.



The song was also a hit in French as Le temps des Fleurs (The Time of the Flowers) for Dalida. I like this version very much as well.



And, since we are being international, here is the Russian version, sung by Nikolay Baskov:

Rhymes and Reasons

This was from John Denver's first solo album, and is one my favorite songs of his. OK, so it's a bit naive, but isn't that what's best about Denver? Several commenters on YouTube have noticed a connection between this song and 9/11, all stemming from the opening lines of the second verse: "Oh the cities start to crumble and the towers start to fall around us / The sun is slowly fading and it's colder than the sea." Although I see the obvious connection, I'm sure I like connecting the rest of the song. I'm not sure it works, and I would have rather left the song unconnected in my head to that day. But, there it is, the connection has been made for me, and I probably won't be able to break it.

Blackwaterside

Anne Briggs is one of the most influential unknown artists in the history of folk music. Okay, she's not exactly unknown. She was quite well thought of in her day, and was considered a rising star in the folk world. However, at age of 27, she walked away from it all. She has not recorded or performed since. Her entire recorded output is about 30 songs. It seems that she didn't like recording, or the sound of her recorded voice. But others did. June Tabor is said to have been inspired to take up singing by an Anne Briggs album. She influenced all of the Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, and others. She has continued to influence singers such as Kate Rusby and Eliza Carthy. I think that she may be the reason that female British folk singers never went down that sterile crystal pure dead end that so many American female singers went down in the 1960s. Here she is sing Blackwaterside.

Agincourt Carol

I'm going to cheat here. This is a version of the "Agincourt Carol" sung by June Tabor and Maddy Prior. Maddy Prior sang with Steeleye Span and has had an extensive solo career. She teamed with June Tabor for two albums under the name Silly Sisters, the first being one of the best folk albums of the 70s. This from their second album, No More to the Dance, which was made a decade later.

The Agincourt Carol is a 15th century hymn celebrating the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt, during the Hundred Year's War. Agincourt was one of the the most lopsided battles of all time. The heavily outnumbered English slaughtered the flower of the French nobility. Because of woods flanking the field of battle the French cavalry was unable to flank the English archers. So they charged headlong across a muddy field at them. They were unable to get through the palings, pointed sticks implanted in the ground facing forward, to get at the archers, who, however, could shoot the French. The muddy field was churned by the cavalry into an impassable morass, so that the French infantry could not cross the field. Thousands of French were killed, including the Constable of France and three dukes and over 100 other members of the French nobility. Hundreds of prisoners were taken including the Marshall of France and the Duke of Orleans. Estimates of English casualties range from about a hundred to about five hundred. The Battle of Agincourt is the centerpiece of Shakespeare's Henry V

Tabor and Prior sing here a truncated version of the Carol, singing only the first and last verses.

Tam Lin

So last week was country music. This week is British Folk Rock, especially as sung by women

This is one of my all time favorite songs, and my absolute favorite version of it. This is the song that hooked me on Sandy Denny.

The song itself is a major example of the dark, wild side of Faerie that Tolkien wrote about. Aside from "Thomas the Rhymer" and Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci", there is scarcely a better work on the dangers mortals find in meddling in Faerie.

For Emily Whenever I Find Her

What did Art bring to Simona and Garfunkel? The obvious answer is that voice. Paul was the songwriter, and in the long run that was the more marketable talent. But despite his genius, Paul's voice is pedestrian. Art's voice can soar in way that is seldom heard in pop music.

This is a song that sneaks up on you, it is almost background music at the beginning, but by the end you are can't help but pay attention. It's not one of the most widely known songs by S & G, but it is one of my favorites.

Wild Mountain Thyme

If there ever was a "standard" folk song, this is it. Also known as "Will Ye Go Lassie, Go", it is widely sung by Scottish, English, Irish and American singers. My favorite version is by the Battlefield Band, which, sadly, I could not find. Despite that I found an embarrassment of riches, having found versions by the The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem , Sandy Denny, Dick Gaughan, Kate Rusby, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Long John Baldry, Don Williams, The Silencers, and the High Kings, amongst others.

I have gone with The Corries here, in art because when all is said and done, this is a Scottish song. The Corries were one of the prominent acts in the Scottish Folk Revival.

G.I. Jive, D-Day Dodgers

Today is the anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Rather than put up something predictably patriotic, I thought I would put up a piece that the boys listened to in '44. Sorry Mike, it's more swing. One of the popular tunes of the day was the G.I. Jive in a version performed by Louis Jordan. I couldn't find that version, so here's one by Johnny Mercer.



Lest we forget, there was another European front in WW II, in Italy which had been active since 1943. Many of those troops, especially the British, felt that the Italian front was ignored by the public after the Normandy landings. "The D-Day Dodgers", set to the tune of Lili Marlene was their theme song. The Italian campaign was fiercely fought, and this song is bitterly ironic in a way that Gen-X, the ironic generation, can never hope to approach.

House of the Rising Sun

At the risk of getting called a baby-boomer by my wife, I am putting this song up. This is one of those songs that will get me to test the capacity of my stereo speakers every time. If my stereo went to 11, I would go there. Best rock adaptation of a folk song ever. (Note that this is different from a folk-rock song). The fact that the original is essentially a blues tune helps. This song also demonstrates that sometimes less is more. This is a really simple guitar line, but any thing more would wrong. It's shocking to see how young these guys were. That bass growl coming out of that baby face.

My only complaint with this version is that they changed the pronouns. This is a woman's song, the House is a whorehouse, and the song doesn't make sense when sung from a male perspective. Following The Animals in a Bob Dylan singing with female lyrics and Joan Baez singing as a female, of course.

On YouTube there is much discussion about the "real" version. For the record, the Baez version was recoded in 1960, the Dylan version in 1961, and The Animals in 1964. The song is older than all of them, of course. It was one of the many songs collected by Alan Lomax. The oldest known recording was made by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster in 1933. Prior to the 1960's versions were recorded by Roy Acuff, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Glenn Yarbrough.

The Animals



Bob Dylan



Joan Baez



Woody Guthrie



Leadbelly

Shipwrecks

Some shipwrecks become famous, while others become forgotten. Some like the Titanic capture the imagination and inspire multiple works of art. Others remain famous because of the works of art they inspired. Although the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was one of the largest ships to ever sail the Great Lakes, it would not be a famous as it is without the great Gordon Lightfoot song. The USS Reuben James was the first US Navy ship sunk during World War II. It was sunk more than a month before Pearl Harbor by a German U-Boat while on convey duty off of Iceland. It, however, was one of many destroyers sunk on convoy duty. It too would be largely forgotten without the Woody Guthrie song.

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is quite simply one of the best story songs ever written. If Gordon Lightfoot had never written another song, he would still be an important songwriter on the basis of this song alone. Hell, just the line "Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" would qualify him as great writer.

This video is the best of many I found. It combines contemporary news footage, the actual radio transmissions of the searchers, archival footage of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and footage of the wreckage itself.



I found fewer videos of "The Sinking of the Reuben James". I chose this one because the singer's voice has a quality similar to Woody Guthrie's. When Woody first wrote a song about the Reuben James, he wrote a version that included the names of all 85 crew members that were lost. He was convinced that this was too monotonous and so he used the "Tell me, What were their names" chorus instead. When I first was thinking about this post I wanted to find and list the names of all the dead on both ships. The video for the Edmund Fitzgerald list the names of her men. I could not find a listing for the men lost on the Reuben James. In an ironic twist, I did find a list of the men who served on the U-Boat that sank the Reuben James.