FOLK SESSION – Howard Arms, Brampton
We had a good turnout when we met on 15th July in the Howard Arms. A warm welcome to John Garner and his harmonica, joining us for the first time.
It is all too seldom that we have purely instrumental music, so it was a pleasure to hear John G on harmonica playing Charleston No 1 and The Gold Ring, and Adrian on melodeon with Duncan McGillivray (all with cunning links to the theme).
The theme was ‘Family Relationships’ which, seen through the prism of folk music, turned out to be unexpectedly tragic, not to say criminal! Witchcraft, murder, child sacrifice, bigamy and suicide all featured: John L introduced us to the mother-in-law from Hell who casts a spell on Willy’s Lady, intending her to die in childbirth. Jane sang The Bonnie Bows of London and Gerda The Two Sisters, respectively English and American variants of the old murder ballad in which the older sister drowns the younger. John L linked The Story of Isaac to the modern sacrifice of youth for ideology. Not all songs about crime were so grim: Les claimed that Humpty Dumpty was pushed off the wall because his mother had insured his life, and the children in Geoff’s song remonstrated Don’t Jump off the Roof, Dad because he would spoil the garden bed! Nor indeed did Phil seem too disturbed to discover his father’s multiple bigamy at Dad’s Funeral. Chris told us the story of fairy abduction (including the bearing of the fairy’s baby) in Molly and the Hiring Fair.
Chris’s singing of Kipling’s poem Cells made the link between crime (‘drunk and resisting the guard’) and tragedy (the effect that the protagonist’s drunken spree will have on his wife and child). Morecambe Bay (Charles) was the scene of the death by drowning of 23 Chinese cockle-pickers, whose ‘broken-hearted parents’ mourned them back in Fujian. Romantic tragedy featured in Steve’s She Moved Through the Fair, where the heroine dies before her wedding day and Phil’s Lost at Sea, where the young father dies at sea and his wife in childbirth with their baby. The mother holding her Silver Dagger (Gerda) intends to protect her daughter from false young men, whereas for the luckless girl in Jane’s London Lights, homeless with her illegitimate child, the warnings come too late. (Young men with illegitimate children fare better, as Charles recorded in The Foggy, Foggy Dew).
After so much that was sombre, it is good to record some cheerful families: in It Seems Like Only Yesterday (Kath), the uncle, sister and mother celebrate an Irishman returning from America. Les expressed Gratitude with Loving Thanks for ‘ohana’; Steve rejoiced that You Shine on Me; Anne happily celebrated her daughter’s wedding in her Wedding Song, and Kath and Geoff urged us to Let Union Be. Both Adrian and Katy traced traditions of work passing down the family in Clittering, Clattering and Generations of Change. Even the small boy bewailing the arrival of his baby sister, (I Tell Thee Dick - Anne) is simply humorous.
We next meet on 19th August at 8pm in The Howard Arms, Brampton. Our theme will be ‘Money and Reward’. ALL WELCOME!