This is something that has been bugging me for years. In the 70s I went to a talk by Charlie Bate at the Wadebridge folk festival. He talked about the Padstow May Day song and was keen to emphasise the difference in the way the two teams (red ribbon and blue ribbon) played the song. I think Charlie was in the red ribbon team. The differences were:

1. For the last note of the first line 'Unite and unite and let us all unite', Charlie's tune went back to the tonic, i.e. if you are playing in G, you go back to a G, whereas what I hear these days from both teams is the note E.

2. There is a verse that starts 'All out of your beds' and Charlie pointed out that this verse is shorter than the others and must be played as such. Again, I can't detect it in today's singing/plsying.

3. The two teams used to leave a different interval between the verses (I think the blue team used to put in an extra beat or two, but can't quite remember). Charlie said that this used to cause problems when the 2 teams met in evening around the Maypole as they tended to get out of time with each other. Again, these days, I don't hear any difference in the gap between verses between th3 2 teams.

I get the impression that there is much less emphasis these days on singing the song and more on just playing the tune. And I get the impression that these differences that Charlie talked about no longer apply as now everyone plays the tune the same.

Comments?

Tradsinger