The Dream of Napoleon

Napoleon's grave on St Helena

Napoleon died in exile on the island of St Helena 190 years ago today on 5 May 1821, although it was several weeks before the news of his death reached Europe. His body was initially buried on the island in a willow grove as shown in the illustration above taken from 'A Series of Views Illustrative of the Island of St Helena' by James Wathen, 1821 before it was transferred to Paris for reburial in 1840.

Jon Boden's song blog A Folk Song A Day features The Bonny Bunch of Roses as the song for today - a song about the enduring memory of Napoleon, but an earlier recording, for 15 August 2010 featured The Dream of Napoleon. 
This song came from the singing of the Norfolk fisherman, Sam Larner, and it expresses the myth of Napoleon as a liberator from tyrants. It may have been safer to express such views after Napoleon's death, but nevertheless it does give some evidence of one strand of English radicalism that looked to Napoleon for inspiration.

"Ye princes and rulers whose station ye bemean
Like scorpions ye spit forth venem and spleen
But liberty all over the world shall be seen
As I woke from my dream cried Napoleon."

Shanties in Ellesmere Port

Delicious meal at the Bunbury Arms!

Hissyfit on board the barge Bigmere

Keith Kendrick and Sylvia Needham

Bob Conroy and Hughie Jones

Evening at the Boat Museum

The first Easter Maritime Festival at Ellesmere Port Boat Museum was a great success over the Easter weekend. The warm sunny weather helped a lot in attracting crowds to come and enjoy days out among boats of all sizes. It was a very enjoyable social occasion too; good for meeting old friends and making new ones.



There were some great performances over the weekend, but the highlight for me was the Saturday evening concert with Shantyjack, Trim Rig and a Doxy, the Enkhuizen 4 who sang some lovely Dutch songs, Hughie Jones with Bob Conroy, Nine Tenths Below on a very successful first outing, and a magical performance from Hissyfit.

Congratulations to Derek and Julia for organising this event, and I'm looking forward to next year already!

Shantyjack

Trim Rig and a Doxy (Derek and Julia)

Matthew

A Song for Saint George

The historical evidence for England's patron saint, Saint George, is decidedly thin; Edward Gibbon in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire identified George of Cappadocia, (d.361 AD) Bishop of Alexandria and a former contractor to the Roman army as the probable original for the saint. This particular George seems to have lived a far from saintly life, and was killed by a mob after he had behaved in an especially oppressive manner towards the citizens of Alexandria. 

This song attempts to find something praiseworthy to celebrate in our national saint by associating him with one of the greatest dishes in the English cuisine:-

The Ballad of Saint George

Come all you loyal English folk, and pass around the flagon;

While I sing about Saint George – though he never slew a dragon -

For the tales of this bold hero have all probably been forged,

And there’s not one single undisputed fact relating to Saint George.

According to some histories, (although they may be mistaken),

George was a black market crook, who served Roman troops with bacon.

He served them a full English, long before English was a language,

But his culinary masterpiece was the kosher bacon sandwich.

George cheated once too often, and when his customers grew angrier,

He had to flee from justice, and he decamped to Alexandria.

There he deposed the archbishop by methods quite unruly,

Became bishop in his place, and he taxed the people cruelly.

He was imprisoned for his crimes, until one December morning,

A mob of angry pagans stormed the jail without a warning.

And as they attacked the bishop he was heard to cry in anguish;

“Pray let me have one last bite of my breakfast bacon sandwich.”

George was trampled to death by the mob in all its fury,

They humped his body out of town aboard a dromedary.

Then they chopped his body up into tiny little pieces,

Then they threw them in the harbour and fed him to the fishes.

Now a paragon of virtue, George of Cappadocia ain’t,

But the cruelty of his martyrdom qualifies him as a saint.

So now in many countries, and in many a strange language,

People worship Saint George and his holy bacon sandwich.

At the Siege of Jerusalem when the English knights were famished,

In a halal market stall they discovered George’s bacon sandwich.

Which gave them strength to conquer, and in memory thereafter,

They founded in its honour the Noble Order of the Garter.

The flower of English chivalry will scorn the tasteless BLT,

White bread, brown sauce and margarine alone command our loyalty;

Cry England, Harry and St George! Salute the glorious land which

Still venerates the noble bacon sandwich.

Matthew Edwards 23 April 2010

I sang this at the Beech Inn for Saint George's Day in 2010 to some mild applause, but I have to thank Fred McCormick for some of the more outrageous rhymes which first appeared in his song of The Bacon Butty.

A sunny spring afternoon at the Beech

The Beech Band in full swing

What could be more pleasant than spending a sunny afternoon at the beach Beech in Chorlton listening to tunes from the Beech Band while drinking a pint of Copper Dragon?

These are some photos I took last Saturday, 10 April, when the sun blazed down on a little corner of Chorlton near Manchester. I arrived too late for the clog dance workshop held earlier in the morning, so I just settled down at a bench to listen to a very enjoyable tunes session.
                                                                                                                                                                   

Jenny Coxon on dulcimer

The band played a selection of tunes from what I think is now their 5th music book, while Jenny Coxon on dulcimer also played a few very interesting tunes from a forthcoming edition of an 18th century Derbyshire musical MS. Jenny's husband was sporting a particularly elegant pink seersucker jacket that raised the sartorial standards by several notches.

Ken Deeks singing 'Waters of Tyne'

 Unfortunately I forgot to cover my head so that the skin on my bald patch is now peeling in a most unsightly manner. There was some discussion during the afternoon about the new shopping mall fad for dipping one's feet into a public fishtank for fish to nibble at the dead skin, and whether this could work for other body parts. There were some very impractical suggestions for head or full body immersions, where you could see that the treatment might be on the lines of "a great success, but alas! the patient died."

Still if the enterprising brains behind the Beech Band can come up with a practical model no doubt the Chorlton Arts week in May will feature a stall offering a special scalp tonic treatment from flesh-eating fish!

Les Jones on banjo

Born in the NHS

A friend who is 62 today is very active in campaigning against the so-called "reforms" to the NHS promoted by the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley - reforms which threaten to undermine the whole ethos of free and universal healthcare in Britain. So here is a little song by way of a birthday present for her.

Born in the NHS

I was born in Britain after the War.

My parents knew what they were fighting for;

It wasn’t King and Country they aimed to save,

But to get a Welfare State from cradle to grave.

I was born in the NHS;

Nye Bevan spoke

And my mother said, “Yes,

I want to give birth in the NHS.”

I don’t want choice in 57 varieties,

I want high quality not Big Society.

I put my trust in my doctor and nurse,

Don’t make them put their budgets first.

I was born in the NHS;

Nye Bevan spoke

And my mother said, “Yes,

I want to give birth in the NHS.”

Nye Bevan promised us, loud and clear,

A civilised community, free from fear;

So Mr Lansley, don’t make it a mess –

It’s mine, it’s yours, it’s our NHS.

I was born in the NHS;

Nye Bevan spoke

And my mother said, “Yes,

I want to give birth in the NHS.”

© Matthew Edwards 6 April 2010

From Matthew for Corrie to wish her a Happy Birthday.

Note: A recent Diary article in the London Review of Books by Andrew O’Hagan  tellingly contrasted the forthright clarity of the language used by Bevan in introducing his National Health Bill in 1946 with the obfuscatory prose used by Andrew Lansley in his proposals for reforming the NHS. While Bevan's speech is worth reading in its entirety there are some resonant phrases which deserve to be recalled at this time:-

            “I believe it is repugnant to a civilised community for hospitals to have to rely upon private charity. I believe we ought to have left hospital flag days behind. I have always felt a shudder of repulsion when I have seen nurses and sisters who ought to be at their work, and students who ought to be at their work, going about the streets collecting money for the hospitals.”

 And

            “... the first evil that we must deal with is that which exists as a consequence of the fact that the whole  thing is the wrong way round. A person ought to be able to receive medical and hospital help without being involved in financial anxiety.”

Matthew Edwards

A great record shop - Coda Music

There aren't many record shops left today, and still fewer which specialise in folk and world music. So it is good news when one such shop seems to be making a success against all the odds. This is Coda on the Mound in Edinburgh which has a huge stock of excellent CDs, books and magazines and where the staff are knowledgable and very helpful.

I could happily spend a lot of time and money here - and I just did so during a short trip to Edinburgh!
I hope the shop continues to be a success so I can go back again for more.

Matthew Edwards

Lancashire Pride

Tommy Thompson (1880-1951)

Tommy Thompson was best known as a writer in the Lancashire dialect, and he wrote short sketches of Lancashire life for the back page of the Manchester Guardian from the late 1920's until his sudden death on February 15 1951. He also appeared regularly on the North Regional programme of the BBC in the 1940's, where he gave Wilfred Pickles his first break as Owd Thatcher in the barber shop where many of the sketches were set.

Most of the sketches from the Manchester Guardian were published in a series of books which were very successful in their day, and apparently were also very popular with American servicemen stationed in the North of Britain during World War II. He also wrote three novels Blind Alley, Crompton Way, and Cuckoo Narrow which were less successful, as well as a one-act comedy Stick-in-the-Mud, and his "little autobiography" Lancashire for me written in standard English.

Bernard Wrigley, the folksinger sometimes known as "the Bolton Bullfrog" has read some of Tommy Thompson's sketches on BBC Radio Lancashire, but I don't think he has recorded any of them. I hope the best of the sketches, and the autobiography, will one day be republished, as they well deserve a new readership.

The short pieces are full of a gentle humour, which can actually be quite sharp at times, and his characters are fully rounded individuals who come to life in a few short, pithy phrases. The rambling discussions in Owd Thatcher's barber shop are excellent of their kind; Tommy Thompson had a real genius for dialogue. The language is rich and expressive, and it is a real pleasure to read slowly while relishing the clear picture Thompson draws of some very extraordinary 'ordinary folk'.

Here is a short extract from a piece in 'Lancashire Pride': Music Hath Charms where the men in the barber shop are talking about music.

  "When Ah wor in th' village band we played 'Faust,' " said Jim Gregson.

  "Which on 'em?" said Young Winterburn, "Gounod or Berlioz?"

  "Both," said Jim. "We'd only five copies o' either. Ah wor on Gounod an' our Sam wor on Berlioz. Ah showed him who could play cornet. He never played a note after that do."

   "It'd sound like Wagner," said the barber.

   "When Ah wor a choir lad," said Farmer Platt, "we sung under the vicarage window when th' parson lay on his death-bed. He didn't tarry for an encore."

   "It con be terr'bly soothin'," said Owd Thatcher, "con music. That's why they play it in eatin'-houses. If tha chews a bit o' tough steak to a good tune tha con down it in no time."

   "Ah like chamber music," said Young Winterburn.

   "What's that?" asked Owd Thatcher.

   "Why," said Jim Gregson, "there's about four or five on 'em sits in a ring, an' one fiddle says 'Tiddley oom,' the t' other fiddle says 'Piddley pom,' then th' owd big fiddle chips in wi' 'Grunt, grunt,' then they o' han a do at each other 'ell for leather until it's oppenin' time."

   "In th' owden times," said Young Winterburn, "folks used to stop in an' sing madrigals."

   "They knew no better," said Alf Higson. "We're civilised now."

From:Tommy Thompson, Lancashire Pride, 1945

Celebrating Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month

This month, June 2009, is being marked in Britain as History Month for the Gypsy, Roma and Travelling communities to remind people both within and outside these communities of their real and lasting role played in history and culture.

In the wake of the gains made by the BNP in England, by the Jobbik anti-Roma party in Hungary, and by other extreme parties elsewhere in the June 2009 European Parliamentary elections let us remind ourselves how these communities have been victimised and marginalised in the past. The attempts by the Nazis to wipe out the Roma are only recent history. Even more recent was the killing of 15 year-old Traveller Johnny Delaney in Ellesmere Port in May 2003, which is not widely known about. Read the BBC report of the trial of Johnny's killers; the police investigation treated this as a racist crime but the judge in the case decided otherwise.

The big event in the Travelling community this month is of course the Appleby Fair in Cumbria, but the website of the Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month GRTHM shows other events being organised all round Britain. The GRT Achievement Service in Leeds has an online shop with a new DVD 'The First Traveller' for sale with songs, stories and music from such Travellers as Sheila Stewart MBE. The GRTHM has also produced a small collection of songs in the downloadable Romano Drom Songbook.

Here is a great cultural tradition to celebrate, and one which should be valued for its vitality and vigour.

Nicodemus
8 June 2009

BBC Sound Archive

There was an excellent programme broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday 1 Sept 2007 about the work of Marie Slocombe in saving and preserving many historic sound recordings. The broadcast can be heard again through the BBC's 'Listen Again' facility by clicking on the audio button here:- Saving the Sounds of History.

There is some more background information in the BBC online Magazine in an article by Sean Street who presented the programme.

One of the jewels in the crown of the BBC archives is the substantial collection of folk songs and music built up largely in the 1950's. A fraction of this collection was broadcast in the radio programme 'As I Roved Out' between 1953 and 1958, and a few items from the collection have been released on records. However the collection remains generally unknown which is a scandalous fate for a fabulously rich resource. There are contributions of songs, tunes, stories and folklore from all over Great Britain and Ireland which are part of our heritage today.

Marie Slocombe wrote about the collection in an article for the journal 'Folklore and Folk Music Archivist' in 1964 and the article can be viewed or downloaded in PDF from the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music.

The collection is now stored at British Library Sound Archive where it is available for listening - but you have to know what you are looking for! This is a clear example where resources ought to be online so that we can all share this wealth which surely belongs to us all in the first place.

Billy Bowman's Band

While browsing in a Cumbrian bookshop at the weekend I found a collection of Cumbrian Memories published by the local WI Federation; inside was a short piece (undated) recalling Billy Bowman and his sister arriving on a motorbike and sidecar to play at hunt balls and village dances. Denis Westmorland has a lovely song about Billy Bowman's Band, and Colin Armstrong's excellent song The Pride of Lorton Town has the line "Oh, I saw her at the hunt ball dance to Billy Bowman's band".

I wonder if there are any more memories of the band out there? Or even, by some miracle, some recordings of the band perhaps.

A Liverpool ballad singer

Some of the best observations of mid-19th century life in England come from outsiders such as the American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving and Herman Melville. They noticed and recorded what English writers often took for granted.

Here is a wonderful description of a Liverpool ballad singer by Herman Melville.

In Redburn, a semi-fictional account of his voyage to Liverpool in 1839, Herman Melville describes the character of a street ballad-singer.

"But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ; and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.

I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character. He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern; and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the seamen."

The ballad is probably now lost to view; given the speed of composition the ballad singer in the tale above may simply have reprinted a ballad from stock which more or less told the same story. Murder ballads were pretty commonplace; most printers would have had a few to hand which could be utilised to fit any particular set of circumstances. A really sensational story like the Red Barn murder however would generate lots of new songs which could sell very well indeed.

Christmas Waits

In addition to the street singers and musicians already described, Nathaniel Hawthorne also wrote in his journals about some of the English Christmas customs. While the family was staying in Southport in 1856 they were entertained by what he termed 'Waits'.

"The Christmas Waits came to us on Christmas eve, and on the day itself, in the shape of little parties of boys or girls, singing wretched doggerel rhymes, and going away well pleased with the guerdon of a penny or two. Last evening came two or three older choristers at pretty near bedtime, and sang some carols at our door. They were psalm tunes, however. Everybody with whom we have had to do, in any manner of service, expects a Christmas-box; but, in most cases, a shilling is quite a satisfactory amount. We have had holly and mistletoe stuck up on the gas-fixtures and elsewhere about the house."


This was a change from Hawthorne's previous Chrismas, spent in a Liverpool lodging house;- "Early in the morning of Christmas day, long before daylight, I heard music in the street, and a woman's voice, powerful and melodious, singing a Christmas hymn. Before bedtime I presume one half of England, at a moderate calculation, was the worse for liquor." However it may be that he was feeling the pain of being separated from his wife who was abroad in Lisbon while he was confined to his Consular duties. Certainly Christmas in 1854 had been a moment of great personal contenment, and Hawthorne then wrote "I think I have been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and with my wife and children about me,--more content to enjoy what I have,--less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it."

He was struck by the abundance of food in the shops before Christmas; this is London in 1857 - "The shops in London begin to show some tokens of approaching Christmas; especially the toy-shops, and the confectioners',--the latter ornamenting their windows with a profusion of bonbons and all manner of pygmy figures in sugar; the former exhibiting Christmas-trees, hung with rich and gaudy fruit. At the butchers' shops, there is a great display of fat carcasses, and an abundance of game at the poulterers'." Elsewhere in the Passages from the English Notebooks Hawthorne comments on the English fascination with meat on a visit to Skipton Market, "The English people really like to think and talk of butcher's meat, and gaze at it with delight; and they crowd through the avenues of the market-houses and stand enraptured round a dead ox."

Another Chritmas practice that Hawthorne noted was that of kissing under the mistletoe "On Christmas Eve and yesterday, there were little branches of mistletoe hanging in several parts of the house, in the kitchen, the entries, the parlor, and the smoking-room,--suspended from the gas-fittings. The maids of the house did their utmost to entrap the gentlemen boarders, old and young, under the privileged places, and there to kiss them, after which they were expected to pay a shilling. It is very queer, being customarily so respectful, that they should assume this license now, absolutely trying to pull the gentlemen into the kitchen by main force, and kissing the harder and more abundantly the more they were resisted. A little rosy-cheeked Scotch lass--at other times very modest--was the most active in this business. I doubt whether any gentleman but myself escaped. I heard old Mr. S----- parleying with the maids last evening, and pleading his age; but he seems to have met with no mercy, for there was a sound of prodigious smacking immediately afterwards. J-----[Hawthorne's son, Julian] was assaulted, and fought most vigorously; but was outrageously kissed,--receiving some scratches, moreover, in the conflict. The mistletoe has white, wax-looking berries, and dull green leaves, with a parasitical stem."

Ballad chanters and croakers

Nathaniel Hawthorne was the American Consul in Liverpool from 1853 to 1857, and during his posting he kept journals of his life in England. He published some of his impressions in his book Our Old Home, and further extracts from his journals were published in two volumes after his death as Passages from the English Notebooks.

Within these Notebooks there are several references to street musicians and singers; the references are not all complimentary but they do show us something about the kind of people who played or sang in public, and what they sounded like to an educated American gentleman. Hawthorne doesn't claim any musical expertise, and his tastes appear to be quite conventional; he appreciates the singing of Jenny Lind, but is more moved at hearing Samuel Lover sing his Irish songs, or by one of Robert Burns' sons singing one of his father's compositions.

Hawthorne clearly found the street singers quite difficult to listen to:- "The ballad-singers are the strangest, from the total lack of any music in their cracked voices." (Passages from the English Notebooks, entry for June 20 1854) This may be a general observation based on his first encounter with a ballad-singer in Chester; "I passed, to-day, a man chanting a ballad in the street about a recent murder, in a voice that had innumerable cracks in it, and was most lugubrious." (Passages, November 5 1853) At any rate he seems to have met enough similar examples to describe the style thus; "Ballad-singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are often to be met with in the streets," (Passages, 1 December 1853)

Later, while on a visit to London, Hawthorne was favourably impressed by one particular street singer - but it turned out there were extenuating circumstances:-
"There is a woman who has several times passed through this Hanover Street, in which we live, stopping occasionally to sing songs under the windows; and last evening, between nine and ten o'clock, she came and sang "Kathleen O'Moore" richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat in our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me more deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale suddenly shot; ... It seems she was educated to sing at the opera, and married an Italian opera-singer, who is now dead; lodging in a model lodging-house at threepence a night, and being a penny short to-night, she tried this method, in hope of getting this penny." (Passages, October 3 1855)

Hawthorne lived on the Wirral bank of the River Mersey in the elegant gated enclave of Rock Park, travelling across to his Consular offices in Liverpool by ferry. Aboard the ferry he was struck by the abject poverty of so many beggars, yet he recognised the dignity shown by these people and his journals describe one such "elderly beggar, with the raggedest of overcoats, two great rents in the shoulders of it disclosing the dingy lining, all bepatched with various stuff covered with dirt,...--a miserable object; but it was curious to see how he was not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was one of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much right to live as other men." (Passages, December 10 1853)

Among the beggars who travelled on the ferries were bands of musicians; Hawthorne may not have thought much of the music, but the sadness of their situation clearly affected him.
"On board the ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were always some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, performing during the passage, and, as the boat neared the shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, and must have made a very scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a timbrel,--which, being so shattered that she could not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in." (Passges, December 1 1853)

The young boy with the accordion made a deep impression on Hawthorne, as he recorded in his journal two years later: "There is a little boy often on board the Rock Ferry steamer with an accordion,--an instrument I detest; but nevertheless it becomes tolerable in his hands, not so much for its music, as for the earnestness and interest with which he plays it. His body and the accordion together become one musical instrument on which his soul plays tunes, for he sways and vibrates with the music from head to foot and throughout his frame, half closing his eyes and uplifting his face, as painters represent St.Cecilia and other famous musicians; and sometimes he swings his accordion in the air, as if in a perfect rapture. After all, my ears, though not very nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially when confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years old, perhaps, and rather pretty; clean, too, and neatly dressed, very unlike all other street and vagabond children whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give him their halfpence more readily than to any other musicians who infest the boat." (Passages, June 11 1855)

Elsewhere in the Notebooks Hawthorne also describes the holiday scenes of "pale-looking" factory workers enjoying days out on the river, or in resorts such as Southport, where music and dancing and fairground entertainments provided a release from the toil of the mills and factories.

This is a valuable contemporary account of England in the early 1850's as seen by a sympathetic outsider; Hawthorne made a record of scenes which others simply took for granted, and even if he didn't much enjoy the songs or music he heard in the streets he still was sensitive to the people who produced them.

Magdalene Laundries: Bizarre Opening

It is a bit late in the day to catch up with the film 'Magdalene Laundries', but as it has just been broadcast on Channel 4 on 30 November it has been my first sighting of it. It is a powerful film which portrays the sheer awfulness of treatment issued to 'errant' women in Catholic Ireland in the 1960's - although such treatment isn't confined to Ireland, or to Catholics, nor to the (not so distant) past. Young women and girls who had illegitimate children, or who were thought to be morally at risk were sent to institutions run by nuns - portrayed in the film as cruel and sadistic, but who were probably in reality as much victims of a harsh moral climate as the inmates themselves.

The film began badly; there is a wedding scene with Irish music playing but a sinister note is introduced by a priest singing the song 'The Well Below the Valley' which tells of a girl who has had illegitimate children and will have to pay penance in purgatory for her sins. The scenes then show a girl being raped by her cousin while the wedding celebrations merrily continue.

BUT - and this reveals huge difficulties. The song 'The Well Below the Valley' had a reputation as an unlucky song as the full version describes incest and infanticide; by the 1960's hardly anybody in Ireland sang it except a few among the travelling community. No priest would have sung it. It would never, ever, have been sung at a wedding. ( I shall pass over the sheer anachronism of the highly decorated bodhran the priest is seen to be playing.)

The song was popularised in the 1970's by the Irish folk band Planxty who had learned it from the recording of an Irish Traveller, John Reilly, who had died from malnutrition in 1969. But its theme ensured that it is still seen as a 'difficult' song and other recordings of the song are still relatively rare.

Above all it isn't a song for a social occasion and it is this inability to understand cultural contexts that grates so much that for me it undermines the truth of the rest of the film.

Celebrating the last shantyman

Last weekend, November 18 &19, a large and very loud group of singers met in Liverpool to wish a happy hundredth birthday to the last of the working shantymen, Stan Hugill. Stan may have died in 1992, but his spirit was very emphatically present at this celebration of the songs of the sea which he did so much to preserve.

Stan was born on the other side of the Mersey at the Coastguard station in Hoylake, Cheshire in 1906 where his father was one of the Coastguards. His father and grandfather were both singers, and their songs were written down in notebooks which were passed down to Stan. The family moved to other stations before returning to Liverpool where Stan finished his schooling, and from where he began his sailing career in the early 1920's. On board the last of the commercial sailing ships Stan learned the work songs of the sailors; the shanties which accompanied the heavy tasks of heaving and hauling. Stan was the shantyman on the Garthpool, the last British four-masted bark, which was wrecked off Cape Verde in 1929. After further adventures ashore and at sea, including four years in a German POW camp, Stan became an instructor at the Outward Bound School at Aberdovey, Wales from 1950 to 1975.

It was during a period of enforced rest from his work at the School following a broken leg that Stan began to research sea shanties, the results of which he published in 1961 in the magisterial "Shanties from the Seven Seas". The book met an enthusiastic response in the atmosphere of the post-war British Folk Revival, and Stan himself found an welcoming audience for his songs in the folk clubs during the Sixties and later. To his delight and surprise the new generation were able to replicate the rough and ready sound of a ship's crew that to his ears was nearly as good the original. In Liverpool the Spinners folk group especially found inspiration from Stan, and he wrote regular articles in his 'Bosun's Locker' column for 'Spin' magazine. A group of Liverpool singers, Stormalong John, sang with Stan frequently, most memorably perhaps at the 1984 Garden Festival. Until his death in 1992 Stan travelled all over the world inspiring new audiences with the real salt flavour of shanties. This weekend in Liverpool was a chance for the younger generation to pay tribute to Stan.

As yet there is no memorial to Stan where the old Coastguard Cottages once stood in Hoylake; perhaps his songs and his books are his best memorial, but he well deserves some kind of permanent tribute in Wirral or in the port city of Liverpool.

Matthew Edwards

What makes a traditional singer?

In a fascinating article on the Musical Traditions website Mike Yates considers how he 'mistakenly' took the Sussex singer Bob Blake for a genuine traditional singer.

Mike Yates is probably the most experienced collector of traditional songs alive today, and clearly he has thought about this topic for a long time before publishing his thoughts. It seems that in this case the singer learned his songs almost wholly from printed sources, rather than learning them through oral tradition from his family or community. However Bob Blake seems to have been accepted by other 'traditional' singers as one of their own, and possibly it was this desire for acceptance that motivated Bob Blake in the first place. He wanted to be able to sing songs in the same way as the old timers he heard in the pubs in Sussex.

I wish more people were moved by this same simple aim; to be able to join in with other singers and to be accepted by them on equal terms. Singers like to hear each other sing, and nothing is more valuable than the respect of one's peers. Clearly Bob Blake did win such respect - and, on the basis of his few recordings, he richly deserved it.

Bob Blake didn't seek to win fame; he wanted the approval of the crowd in the pub. If somebody like Mike Yates came along and "collected" his songs that was well and good, although he was suspiciously reticent as to where he came by these same songs.

In the end it may be more a matter of how the songs are sung, and listened to, than how they are learned, that defines what is 'traditional'; communal acceptance by one's fellow singers (and audience) may be more significant than an authentic history.