Lyr Req: The Crafty Maid's Policy

Subject: Lyr Re: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: GUEST,Geoff Keyes
Date: 31 May 08 - 07:24 PM

This may or may not go anywhere. Whilst I was in college in the late '70 I heard a local PNW group, I believe it was the Howling Gael, do a song about a woman caught alone in the forest by one or more men, intent on raping her. This was in the mode of "dirty Elizabethan ballads". The woman asks politely to have what's between his legs, he agrees, dismounts, and she takes his horse and pistols and rides triumphantly off. That is pretty much my whole memory of the song.

Does that ring any bells, however faint, out there?

Thanks in advance.

Geoff

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: 8_Pints
Date: 31 May 08 - 08:21 PM

Sounds to me like "Sovay, Sovay" but I wouldn't describe as particularly Celtic.

Bob vG

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 31 May 08 - 08:25 PM

An English broadside song (Roud 1624) found occasionally in tradition in England and Canada and generally called 'The Crafty Maid's Policy'. Dealt with in a number of past discussions here: all of which, I think, can be found via thread  Help: Song about lady horse thief. Several sets of words (some more reliable than others) have been posted here at one time or another.

Some broadside editions can be seen, under various titles, at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

The crafty maid's policy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Susan of DT
Date: 31 May 08 - 08:50 PM

There are four versions of the Crafty Maid's Policy in the digital tradition. Search for DT #357

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Charley Noble
Date: 31 May 08 - 08:54 PM

Geoff-

It's a great song and I hope you learn how to sing it.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 31 May 08 - 09:20 PM

Three versions in the DT, not four: 'Lovely Joan' is an unrelated song on a vaguely similar subject which has been mis-classified here.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Skivee
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 03:03 AM

Claudia Schmidt did a nice accapella version of this song on her Midwestern Heart album under the title "Horsethief"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: The Doctor
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 04:51 AM

Sweet Joan, as in DT

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 06:53 AM

No, the Crafty Maid's Policy. I remember the line about that thing between your legs. Frankie Armstrong has a good rendition of the song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 07:57 AM

If anybody actually looked at the link I provided earlier, they'd see that all this has already been said.

Perhaps I had better mention, since there is obviously some confusion here, that 'Sweet Joan' in the DT is one of Stephen Sedley's eccentric collations. Under the mistaken impression that 'Crafty Maid' was a 'bawdy version' of 'Lovely Joan', he took a few lines from a broadside edition of the former, changed them a bit, and set them to a 'Lovely Joan' tune he had found in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (vol I, issue 5, 1904, page 270, as it happens; though he didn't say so at the time) and compounded the error by giving the mutant result the wrong title.

In the circumstances it isn't surprising that this has confused people. It is a 'version' of 'Crafty Maid', technically; but not a traditional one. Nobody had ever sung it like that prior to Sedley's book (1967).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: Celtaddict
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 01:52 PM

Thanks, Malcolm. I have long wished we could do DNA testing on songs...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Celtic song heard 30ish years ago
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 02:17 PM

Malcolm, I was responding to someone's assertion that it was Lovely Joan.