Hi Jim,

You wrote "I mentioned 'Ballads of the Banner' earlier - a fascinating anthology of 172 sporting songs, some dating back to the 1800's, right up to the 1990s, when the book was published; all made about famous sporting people, matches, teams.... Even if they were never taken up generally, they have more claim to represent the communities they arose from than does a song from a Broadway Musical.
There are plenty of sporting songs in the tradition to compare them with - surely the difference is obvious?"

Sure, the difference appears to be that these songs are Celtic and printed in a book!!

Sorry, I'm being facetious. I'll start again. I am interested in songs that are sung as part of the community of fans that join together in support of a football club. For example, I recently put the words for the song "Poor Scouser Tommy", a Liverpool F.C. song, in a thread on sports songs I recently started.

The history of the song appears to be as follows: the second part of the song "I am a Liverpudlian...", sung to the Orange tune 'The Sash', was sung apparently in the 1960s; later (apparently in the 1970s) the first part "Let me tell you the story of a poor boy..." (to the tune of Red River Valley) was added to the song, to make it into a narrative.

Subsequently, there have been arguments over the words (should it be Libyan sun? Arabian sun? I get thrown out quite a lot or I go there quite a lot?), and various accretions about goals scored by Ian Rush.

So the song is not a mechanical reproduction, but a living process that is still heard in most matches. I would say that it's as close to a "traditional" song as I've learned from oral transmission. You'll hear the song sung at pretty much every Liverpool match. (some people say it's sung too fast, of course...)



Now, ok, going back to "You'll never walk alone". This is just as much part of the Liverpool F.C. canon as Poor Scouser Tommy. Ok, it's not something that the fans made up themselves, but still, it's something that's passed on as part of a community and which is meaningful as part of the shared experience of those fans.

Just as a working hypothesis: would you say that a song that emerges from the fans (like "Poor Scouser Tommy") is traditional, whereas a song that is reproduced from another source (like "You'll never walk alone") is not? I hope this is not seen as an unreasonable interrogation. I'm just trying to get at where you draw the line.


Interesting claim that "If someone were to take Y N W A and adapt it , say, You Never Wore Cologne, the parody would have some claim to have moved away from its beginnings, the re-maker would have put his/her own stamp on it. If then it was taken up by the terraces it could be said to have passed into some sort of a tradition." That would suggest that when fans of Chelsea, etc. sing "You'll never get a job" to taunt Liverpool F.C. fans, that has more claim to being part of "the tradition". Which seems unfair somehow!