Lyr Req: Kitty Alone

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Nov 13 - 02:03 PM

Steve, a new thread listing your three groups and members found in oral tradition might be the start of a worthwhile discussion.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Nov 13 - 04:56 PM

I feel a little uncomfortable starting such a thread myself (rather blowing one's own trumpet) but if you want to start one I'll gladly contribute. I will be offline for a while from Monday but I will gladly put lists up with Roud numbers. It would take me too long to list all of the sources and their titles on broadsides but I could easily list the folk songs as they are now. The Child ballads are almost all well documented in Child anyway.
The A list is fairly short though the B list is quite long. It is the A list I will be presenting at the TSF meeting at C# House on the 14th. I haven't started copying the images of the B list yet. I hope to have this done by the TSF meeting at Sheffield in June.

I have Excel spreadsheets of the 3 lists but I don't know how they would copy to Mudcat format.

I ought to also add that the project is only based on folk songs found in oral tradition in England and therefore doesn't cover Scotland, Ireland or America where there are such songs from 17th century English broadsides.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Airymouse
Date: 29 Nov 13 - 05:37 PM

Saw an eagle in the sun
Kitty Alone, Kitty Alone
Saw an eagle in the sun
Kitty Alone am I
Saw an eagle in the sun
Making circles when his work is done
Kitty alone am I
Pull my ring

Off topic: Tailor of Gloucester was my favorite Beatrix Potter story. I recall "no more twist" and "paduasoy." Spell checker is telling me I'm misspelling "paduasoy", but it was on about the second page, and it's a pretty tough word for a six-year old: try it on an adult after you find out how it's really spelled.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim McLean
Date: 30 Nov 13 - 04:15 AM

I posted a Scottish version of this some time ago. It was from a recitation I have by Duncan MacRae and was called The Puddock, the Scotish word for a frog. The chorus, I think, was something Cuddy alane. I must try and find the previous posting. (Not the "a Puddock sat by the lochan's brim ....)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Nov 13 - 11:53 AM

There are three "Puddy" (Scottish) versions (Cuddy alone) in the DT. Neither paddock nor Duncan MacRae show up.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 13 - 04:03 AM

"earliest known version of at least a third of them came from a broadside or similar cheap print."
Hate to be the elephant in the room (again), but can I point out that the "earliest known versions" are merely those that have made it into print and that there is no evidence whatever to confirm that these originated in print.
After thirty odd years of field research among traditional singers I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that 'the folk' were not only capable of producing songs without the aid of professional song-makers, but that they did so in huge quantities in the form of anonymous local songs which never made it into the national repertoire because of their parochial nature.
Our field work includes a thirty year association and close friendship with a many who spent a section of his youth selling ballad sheets around the fairs and markets of rural Ireland in the 1940s and 50s.
He went to a printer and recited his father's songs or those he'd learned from his Travelling community over the counter - the printer then ran them off in the required number.
As our friend said - "why bother to write songs when there were so many about to just pick out of the air.
Humanity, by their very nature, are natural song-makers and until somebody proves beyond any doubt that our folk songs were the product of the broadside presses and not poetic expressions of everyday life and observation.
Sorry to interrupt, but I find this somewhat illogical drift towards 'broadside origins' more than a little disturbing - not quite ready to empty my shelves of more than a century's worth of folk song scholarship on the say-so of a very-much unproven theory.
Carry on!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 13 - 06:08 AM

Cuddy = donkey, also simpleton
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim McLean
Date: 01 Dec 13 - 10:03 AM

The version I have is an EP Scottish Records SR. 4517EP, probably mid seventies.
It a series if recitations by Duncan MacRae, including his well known Wee Cock Sparrow.
His The Frog and the Mouse is very Scottish and has the repeated lines " Cuddy alang, Cuddy alang, cock ma Cary, Cuddy alang, Cuddy alang and I " and "sing kinkum Kerrie con dum down, Cuddy alang and I".
After the wedding the drake takes the frog and the mouse runs up the wall.
There are some lovely scotch lines like "Fye gar busk the bride alang " is Uncle Rat's reply to his neice's suitor meaning "quickly dress the bride for the wedding".
We know a Cuddy in Scotland generally means a horse but in this poem the words are meaningless, adding only to its music and rhythm.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 Dec 13 - 02:25 PM

Airymouse: I never heard of paduasoy until you mentioned it (or maybe I had forgotten it) and I was sure you had misspelled it, but Project Gutenberg has the text of "The Tailor of Gloucester" on file, and there it is, in the first sentence:

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

I suppose your spell-checker doesn't recognize it (neither does mine) because it's just too obscure a word.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Dec 13 - 09:18 PM

paduasoy = peau de soie

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Airymouse
Date: 02 Dec 13 - 12:37 AM

Jim Dixon: What a joy to see the book again thanks to your selecting Project Gutenberg. My copy, I hope, is with my grandchildren. Although Gibson is a precocious reader, he seems more interested in dinosaurs than the rabbits, mice and squirrels that Beatrix Potter wrote about.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: AmyLove
Date: 02 Apr 17 - 05:33 PM

Recording of Uncle Rat by Elizabeth Cronin (and the lyrics are exactly as posted by Charlie Baum)

Uncle Rat (Kitty Alone) - Elizabeth Cronin

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 01:18 PM

The original song I believe was an old British folk song called kiss you alone I can't find it anywhere it's driving me crazy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 02:53 PM

"Recording of Uncle Rat by Elizabeth Cronin "
There's a nice BBC recording of it sung by Thomas Moran of Country Leitrim
He said he learned it from a neighbour who "never crossed a cow track" (never travelled anywhere)
This is said to be the first folk song ever mentioned in literature (in 1549 in "Weddeburn's Compalyt of Scotland"
It's described as a "shepherds song"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: GUEST,David Usher
Date: 29 Apr 24 - 11:01 AM

This is the best version I have heard, as done by Howie Mitchell. It was performed at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival in 1967 by a Michigan group called the Young 'Uns and is on the Fox Hollow "Pitter Poon, the Rain Come Doon" Vol. 1 LP Side B cut 6. This version is a captivating arrangement I do at shows. Audiences love it. this version in not on youtube yet but I am tempted to put it out there.

I am not sure where this version came from -- it may be documented by Howie Mitchell somewhere. It does not appear to be related to the more common Appalachian versions referencing the "little bat" kiddie tunes on many recordings.

Kitty Alone
Howie Mitchell
Key of A for non-soprano singers,
Key of C is singable for many, best key for banjo instrumentation (As done by the Young 'Uns.

Saw a crow flying low
Kitty alone, kitty alone.
And a cat spinning toe
Kitty alone-alee,
Saw a crow flying low and a cat spinning toe
Kitty alone-alee, rocka-ma-rye-ree.

Saw a possum in a log,
Kitty alone, kitty alone.
Looking like a big groundhog
Kitty alone-alee,
Saw a possum in a log, looking like a big groundhog
Kitty alone-alee, rocka-ma-rye-ree.

Big ol' owl in a tree
Kitty alone, kitty alone.
Just as sleepy as he can be
Kitty alone-alee,
Big ol' owl in a tree, just as sleepy as he can be
Kitty alone-alee, rocka-ma-rye-ree.

Way up yonder above the moon
Kitty alone, kitty alone.
Bluebird sleeps in a silver spoon,
Kitty alone-alee,
Way up yonder above the moon, bluebird sleeps in a silver spoon,
Kitty alone-alee, rocka-ma-rye-ree.

Way up yonder above the sun
Kitty alone, kitty alone.
Eagle flies when his work is done,
Kitty alone-alee,
Way up yonder above the sun, eagle flies when his work is done,
Kitty alone-alee, rocka-ma-rye-ree.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kitty Alone
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 02 May 24 - 06:57 AM

Kitty Alone - Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsenhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy2LcEnNKDg
Kitty Alone - Howie Mitchell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3c3XEgZNwU
Kitty Alone -Jean Ritchiehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKFaO4LiOCk
Kitty Alone · Martha Hallhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QgFDjL2U2U
Kitty Alone - The Woodsheephttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJxOq4oYdeU
Kitty Alone · Mary Zettelman Greer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZI0INIiAYE
Kitty Alone · Kevin Rothhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W42zP8bF3w