The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #18026   Message #4056391
Posted By: GUEST,henryp
01-Jun-20 - 03:05 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Solvay, Solvay / Sovay
Subject: RE: Origins: Solvay, Solvay / Sovay
There's a very persuasive version by Polly Bolton - with John Shepherd and Steve Dunachie - on her album Woodbine and Ivy (1990).

From Mainly Norfolk; Martin Carthy sang Sovay;
in 1965 on his first album Martin Carthy.
A slightly different version is on the 1983 LP Brass Monkey,
re-released in 1993 both on the CD The Complete Brass Monkey and on Rigs of the Time: The Best of Martin Carthy and in 2003 on the Martin Carthy anthology The Definitive Collection.
A live recording with Dave Swarbrick at the Folkus Folk Club in 1966 is available on Both Ears and the Tail,
another one — recorded at Focal Point, St. Louis, Missouri in 1990— is on their album Life and Limb.

A.L. Lloyd sings a very similar version (same tune, slightly different words) of Sovay, the Female Highwayman on First Person. This was re-released, for example, on the CD reissue of Bold Sportsmen All and on Classic A.L. Lloyd. From his sleeve notes:

Lucy Broadwood found this “an exceedingly favourite ballad with country singers”, and every collector of prominence has found versions of it.
The good Dorian tune here is akin to the one Sharp published to the words of The Flash Lad (he called it The Robber) in his Somerset series, Vol. V,
and is substantially the same as H.E.D. Hammond's Sovie tune from Long Burton, Dorset.