FOLK SESSION – Howard Arms, Brampton

Did we say we were packed at last month’s folk session, with 20 people? Last night (18^th August) we had 24 contributors, the most since the Howard Arms opened its doors to us in 2011, plus some visitors who came to listen! A warm welcome to Gill and Polly, joining us from Hartlepool, and to Ben, and welcome back to Jo.

The theme was ‘Fish/Sea Creatures’ (perhaps we should mention that we had ‘a whale of a time’?)

To start with the items that were definitely pushing their luck: Richard sneaked humpback whales improbably aboard the ark (The Unicorn by Shel Silverstein – oh groan! Richard). Kath and Geoff B sang There’s a Pla(i)ce for Us (groan again) as a duet. We’re not quite convinced, Paddy, that polar bears are sea creatures, though we enjoyed Have You Got Any News of the Iceberg?  Polly’s poem Ottava Rhyme Concerto, comparing the ocean to a musical composition, was ingenious rather than devious!

Is fish meant to be aphrodisiac? One would imagine so from The Oyster Girl (Charles) and Fresh Fish (Chris), both loaded with double entendres! Humorous, but perfectly respectable, were Anne’s song about an angling competition, Big Jim; Phil’s parody Shelves of Herring; and the dark comedy of Gary’s ‘Enery My Son.

Fantastic sea creatures included a kelpie in Steve’s own song, The White Mare of Solway Firth; a mermaid in Adrian’s music-hall tall tale, The Man at the Nore; a talking fish in Chris’s story The Greedy Wife; and a siren (by implication, at least) in Jo’s Sleepless Sailor. Not fantastic, but certainly less common, were catfish and crocodiles (Alan’s own song, Biggest Little River) and cuttlefish (Jo – Wrecking Days).

The sea provides us with food, and we remember it in music. John G played us Jenny Picking Cockles on mouth organ, and Kath sang Cockles and Mussels. Sally wished the bride ‘plenty herring, plenty meal’ at Mhairi’s Wedding; Gill described The Fishwives’ Complaint when the Newcastle fish market was moved from Sandhill; Jane remembered the Cornish ‘jowster’ Dolly Pentreath; and Katy hoped for ‘muckle luck’ to maintain the ‘mackerel and the creel’ (The Boatie Rows). Ben, however, protested Fish Are My Friends!

There were several songs about over-fishing and environmental degradation: Tiny Fish for Japan (Gerda); Valley of the Tees (Ron); No More Fish, No Fishermen (Linda). The sea is also a dangerous place to earn a living, as we heard from Jane (Listing in the Gale); from John L (the tragedy of Davey Lowsten); and from Sam Millington’s Harvest of the Sea, sung by Phil, which commemorates the sinking of the Kirkcudbright dredger, the 'Solway Harvester'.

And we mustn’t forget whales: whale hunting in Paddy’s Little Pot Stove and John L’s Wellerman; a lullaby for a whale in Linda’s Baby Beluga and an Ode to Big Blue (Gary); and Jonah’s whale in Gerda’s It Ain’t Necessarily So.

We next meet on 15^th September at 8pm in The Howard Arms, Brampton. The theme is ’Means of Communication’ – letters, messengers, serenades, carrier pigeons, telephone, semaphore…  Someone has pointed out that roads, railways and rivers are ‘means of communication’ within a country! ALL WELCOME!