686)  COME ALL YOU GARNERS GAY  This was recorded by Fred Hamer in 1960 from William (Billy) Bartle of Wrestlingworth in Bedfordshire.  Midi made from the notation in Hamer's book Garners Gay (EFDS Publications 1967).  Billy Bartle may be heard singing it on A Century of Song  (EFDSSCD02, 1998).

Although it's not on the missing list, this would be the moment to add another tune for  JOHN BARLEYCORN,  which seems to be a hybrid text.  Verses 2, 3, 6 and 7, and the chorus, appear to be from the version of the song recorded by Fred Hamer in 1960 from William (Billy) Bartle of Wrestlingworth in Bedfordshire, of which Steeleye Span recorded an arrangement.  Verses 1, 4 and 5 appear to have been added from other versions.  The tune given is the best-known one, essentially the same as the one given in the  Penguin Book of English Folk Song,  and does not fit the text.  Midi made from the notation in Hamer's book Garners Gay (EFDS Publications 1967).

2443)  MY SON JOHN  Transcribed from a record by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior: this was their arrangement of a song collected by Fred Hamer from David Parrott of Bedfordshire in the 1920s.  I think they modified the tune a bit, but I haven't heard it in years; midi made from the notation in Hamer's book, as above.  Hamer commented:

"David's brother produced evidence that this song was sung by an ancestor of the Parrott family who had served at Waterloo.  Apparantly he was in the habit of singing the song at reunions of veteran soldiers at the Corn Exchange in Bedford, and he invites us to imagine that this is a conversation that takes place when a father takes his son, wounded at Trafalgar, before a naval surgeon, who tries to swindle him out of his disablement pension by claiming that it was his own fault."

Malcolm