Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 30 Sep 13 - 10:21 AM

I don't know if the sign language is legit or not but it was entertaining.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 13 - 06:29 PM

The Froggy a-Courting tune that time, to be sure!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Sep 13 - 05:51 PM

Supplemented by alleged American Sign Language gestures. Are they legit?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmvECqEpLdg

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 28 Sep 13 - 01:49 PM

Well, somebody out there wants one, judging by the effort that goes into marketing:

http://www.extremerestraints.com/fucking-machines_48/maestro-multi-faceted-fucking-machine_7584.html

Not clicky'd for fairly obvious reasons...

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 28 Sep 13 - 01:43 AM

Really. Really guys. You have to come up with a contraption like this?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 01:12 AM

Your experience sounds about right.

"Dammit Neil, the name is Nuwanda!"

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 10:15 AM

Which experts have done that, SJL?

In my experience, it is only postmodernist, deconstructionist philosophers who have done so - along with the entire, multi-zillion dollar entertainment industry except for some public television documentaries and the like, which seem to be fighting a losing, losing battle.

Take the average person. Why, according to the mass media and independent postmodernist mouthpieces, should he/she give a crap about anything that happened to anybody (outside of his own family) more than a couple of years ago, if that?

Carpe diem, dudes!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 02:56 PM

Oh, cut it out Steve. If you are "gone""," it's simply because you have things to do.

Lighter, it's not the common folk's refusal to listen to experts. Quite the opposite. It stems from the fact that the "experts" have taught the folk that the past is irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. You know that too, otherwise you would not be doing what you're doing.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 12:56 PM

It's also pretty obvious that the "common people" have little interest in what the "experts" have to say.

That's life.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 12:54 PM

> any group that spends a lifetime studying historical material tends to remove itself from the sphere of the common people in that context.

The alternative, of course, is to let the material go unstudied.

Theough it's obviously true, if we take Steve's observation to heart, the "common people" become the only ones allowed to study it; yet, by lacking the education and methods that would make them "uncommon," they're unable to give much more than a few personal, subjective comments.

Lloyd and MacColl, for example, started out as "common people" in this sense but became writers and performers. So did Stan Hugill, who as a former "common person" was rather uncritical of his so-called "desk sources."

Singers who stayed "common" rarely had much to say about their songs, especially from a historical, sociological, or anthropological perspective.

How could they? Nor should others have left it at that.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 11:14 AM

I've never been called 'elite' before!

I do completely agree with your first paragraph and I also prefer the word 'traditional' although that has other connotations as well.

And again you're probably right about resonating with common people in that any group that spends a lifetime studying historical material tends to remove itself from the sphere of the common people in that context. But in the rest of my life I live amidst the 'common people' and was born one of them.

I don't worry too much about the word 'folk' and not many of the scholars I associate with do. Many words have multiple meanings. I don't think it's worth wasting time arguing what is and what isn't. The people I associate with have a pretty good idea what the loose boundaries are of the material we sing and study and that is sufficient.

I'm just as interested in the cultural and anthropological aspects of the material as the next man and try to read around the subject as much as possible but there's an awful lot to learn and one can't be an expert in all of it.

'Repeatedly ridiculed'. As I've already stated this is not the case. You have made some very useful contributions and sparked some interesting debate. We can be forthright and outspoken here and don't pull the punches, but that leads to lively and useful debate.

Most of the people on this forum are willing to give of their extensive knowledge and time and I for one appreciate that. I can also take the criticism and appreciate that more than any compliments.

If a snob is someone who says what he/she likes and rejects what he/she doesn't like then yes I hold my hands up.

I'm gone!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 10:33 AM

Steve, I really do believe that most of the the "trad" songs that come up for discussion here are a tainted product of Victorian times. The "song hunters" were looking to "collect"(as in things?)outdated songs to improve and publish and that's basically what you have. I don't think it matters how one approaches these efforts, the songs themselves are more or less fixed from that era. How much they do or do not resemble the popular music of preliterate, preindustrial England or wherever is anybody's guess.

I prefer the word traditional as opposed to folk because people like you and your associates belong to an elite group. Consequently, your approach is diametrically opposed to any that would resonate with the common people. The word folk becomes a misnomer anywhere near you guys. No one was really using the word folk before the mid-1800s anyway. It annoys me that you don't seem to think that anthropology or cultural history have any real bearing on what you discuss here but the bottom line for me is who cares? I have had my fun coming up with various ideas on my own but being ridiculed for them repeatedly has caused me to lose interest in this sort of discussion. I liked it better when you were taking the time to teach me things.

So Steve, you're definitely a snob but you should not imagine that this interferes with my ability to appreciate what you do. And you shouldn't imagine that I don't like you. Too late for that. I already do. Now go away.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 09:23 AM

Susan,
You are beginning to worry me. You are exhibiting schizophrenic tendencies. Our approaches are diametrically opposed to the website page you have flagged up!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 12:30 AM

Do you know what I think of all this?

Arcane.

And this is where you live:

http://www.answers.com/topic/merrie-england-3#page2

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 12:09 PM

Agreed, Steve. But I couldn't quite see what she was getting so exercised about above either.

~M~

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Jul 13 - 11:17 AM

Guest,
I'm afraid I disagree. Susan has some excellent contributions if you look back through her other postings, which is why I used the word 'uncharacteristic'.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 07:10 PM

Exactly which of these "uncharacteristic outbursts" would you be referring to?

Poor Susan. She seems to want to be involved in our discussion but obviously has no idea what she is talking about. It gets annoying. I think she should keep quiet from now on and let us do the talking because we know what we're talking about.

Cheers!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 06:06 PM

Susan!

What brought on that uncharacteristic outburst?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 10:03 AM

Ya think?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 09:49 AM

So true.

Consider gangsta rap.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 09:19 AM

Some over-conceptualising going on here. One of the functions of music is to create and define social groupings, and one very effective way to do this is to have unacceptable material. If you join in, you're in the in-group, and if you look on, shocked, you're in the out-group.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 09:10 AM

Oh go away and play and sing your dirty little songs. I am tired of the lot of you.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 08:55 AM

Dick, I'm interested in precisely that.

However, causes and effects in such cases are nearly impossible to draw reliably.

I would suggest, though, that "BGW" is more effectively the product of a certain sort of masculine subculture (i.e., youngish rowdy smart-aleck misogynists in an still-novel industrial age) than it is of, say, Anglo-American culture in general.

Of course, even if I'm right, I'm not sure what it tells us.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 08:53 AM

No, Dick.
There's at least John M, Jon, Ed and myself who find this branch of folklore fascinating. It's just that Jon has just about cornered the market on this one. I'm still working on my long term project of an anthology of songs containing sexual euphemism.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jul 13 - 01:33 AM

Susan ~~ Never take any version of any Child ballad [or any song likely to be mentioned on this forum] as the definitive one. Many of them have nonsense choruses in some versions, or defective variants, which in no way detract from their 'ballad' status or seriousness.

~M~

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 08:20 PM

Am I the only one interested in the influence of a paticular culture upon the bawdy (or "dirty") songs that culture has produced?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 07:47 PM

Uh-uh. No way. Steve is pulling my leg. If that's a ballad, I want to hear it from him.

Lilliwham, lilliwham, what then, what then?

Indeed.

Jon, don't trust Steve. He will have you second guessing yourself everyday of the week. He's very good at it.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 12:08 PM

No prob.

Maybe the original topic has nowhere else to go.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 10:46 AM

Jon, I apologize for the thread drift as well.

Steve, if you sing it then it is indeed a ballad.

MtheGM, look how I get in over my head. I gotta stop doing that.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 10:08 AM

Susan,
21 is certainly not a burlesque. It's a very ancient and venerable piece with precedents all over Europe. It is at least mid 17thc. I don't sing the last 2 lines and while they do look rather odd to us, they are in keeping with the period. It would certainly make an interesting exercise sorting out which of the words have a meaning of some sort. I would refrain from ascribing 'burlesque' based on chorus alone.

The 'while' is not certain in the manuscript. I prefer 'white' which is what I sing.

Jon,
Apologies for thread drifts.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 02:19 AM

Yes, I know what 21 is, Susan. And I agree it's a hoot. And dubiously a ballad.

But still much exercised why you mentioned it here?!

❤~M~❤

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 02:03 AM

No Michael. 21 is "The Maid and the Palmer." Not our ballad Michael, but it's a hoot.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 12:19 AM

What do you mean by that gnomic utterance, Susan? If you are referring to Child #s, the one under consideration is 20.

If not, then ????

And why not, anyhow?

And the Maid Freed whom you ref above is just as often a man, despite the title Child stuck on it.

And how the hell did we drift on to all this anyhow?!

♫♫Round and round goes the Bloody Old 'Cat
We whitter of this, we natter of that...♫♫

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 06 Jul 13 - 12:01 AM

21 isn't even a real ballad. It's not.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 11:55 PM

Nice, Yorkie, but I have a better one. This here is a "Papist incantation."

   While shee washte and while shee ronge,
      Lillumwham, lillumwham!
While shee washte and while shee ronge,
      Whatt then? what then?
While shee washte and while shee ronge,
While shee hangd o the hazle wand.
      Grandam boy, grandam boy, heye!
      Leg a derry, leg a merry, mett, mer, whoope, whir!
      Driuance, larumben, grandam boy,

Burlesque, without a doubt.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 10:46 PM

I've always thought that the male parent beiung a clerk was the reason the lady just didn't marry him. Which still has nothing with the Wheel or bawdry in general.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 02:46 PM

"Lurk"!!!!!!
The earliest and most examples have 'York' and 'clerk' pronounced 'clark' or even 'clerk', not a great rhyme for 'York'

It should actually run
There was a lady lived in York
Was courted by some local dork.

or
Courted by a lad from Cork.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 05 Jul 13 - 01:29 PM

In order to see the big picture, you must also take the Counter-Reformation into account. The true Catholic culture of "The Dark Ages" can only be uncovered in pre-Reformation history and culture. Certain aspects of it, which one might call socially enlightened, particularly attitudes toward the mad and the poor, are directly linked to primitive society. The fool for example...

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,dick greenhaus,GUEST
Date: 04 Jul 13 - 09:37 PM

"Attitudes toward sex in the Victorian Age are more or less the culmination of attitudes that began with the Protestant Reformation"
Sounds perfectly reasonable. But what about bawdy songs from, say, Italy or Spain, where the Reformation had much less impact? I'm, sadly, a monoglot, but can anyone more informed than I give us his or her thoughts on the matter?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 04 Jul 13 - 05:01 PM

Rhymes with "Lurk" :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 06:05 PM

Susan,
I see, so the fact that she's a lady and he's her father's clerk is totally irrelevant. I wonder why they bother to mention it then!

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 03:18 PM

A handful of truly nasty songs appear in _Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period_, all of which appeared between about 1835 and 1840.

Most, however, involve exuberant, humorously erotic adventures and predicaments - certainly "unprintable" in quantity until recent years but practically quaint by today's publishing standards.

As the price of the songsters was quite high, one assumes that their principal readership (and the principal patrons of the "coal-hole" drinking clubs where the songs were evidently popularized), was made up of well-to-do young rakes rather than the average thrill-seeking youths of the period.

I doubt that more than a half dozen of the hundreds of songs have been collected since their appearance in the 1830s. Their style is more broadside/music-hall than it is "folk."

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 03:09 PM

16 is our age of consent. It is not 18, as often confused, eg by Kingsley Amis in his novel Girl 20. Nor is it a law of nature but a piece of mid-C19 legislation ~~ I have read idiotic essays about Will Shax showing people breaking the law in R&J when no such law existed at the time.

Re female collectors ~~ you overlook eg Lucy Broadwood, Iona Opie ... tho the earlier ones like Broadwood did suffer from informants reluctant to sing them songs becoz they were, as they said, "outway rude".

~M~

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 12:23 PM

Actually, I meant 16. 17 is the age of consent. In fact, I know of a "sex offender." They are married now with 2 kids.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 12:07 PM

Severe repression leads to perversion of what would otherwise be a natural impulse. I don't think the Victorian influence is behind us either. In the marketplace, they cater to every kind of sexual perversion and promiscuity. It is out there, everywhere, to the point that it cannot be hidden from children. At the same time there is a great obsession with sex crimes to the point where a nineteen year old can be labeled a sex offender for cavorting with a 17 year old girl. There is no more school boy's dream either because society has become ultra-dogmatic about the issue of age and don't seem to realize (as they used to) that an older man and an underage girl is generally exploitation whereas an older woman and an underage male is, well, a school boy's dream. So much (most certainly not all!) sex offender dogma seems like a disingenuous attempt to protect children whilst letting the media run rampant with a hyper-sexualization that is bound to impact children and young people in a negative, innocence destroying way.

Another Victorian hypocrisy is alive and well in the non-legal status of prostitution. It's society's way of saying even thought we call it the oldest profession in the world for good reason, such women will be judged and condemned by not affording them the benefit of police protection and access to the courts in cases of abuse and hardcore exploitation by their clients and handlers. It's an oversexed, hypocritical society's way of saying, "You are a bad girl and therefore, you deserve every and any bad thing that happens to you." And, if caught, you will be pinned with one of the three violations that will not be sealed (in NY state at least), and the man goes free.

Attitudes toward sex in the Victorian Age are more or less the culmination of attitudes that began with the Protestant Reformation. And in tragic ballads prior to the PR which address themselves to sexual morality (like the Cruel Mother), there would be more pathos and less condemnation prior to the PR, more empathy and compassion for a desperate woman. Look at your laws.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 09:56 AM

I strongly suspect that the "dirty" songs--the ones featuring "nasty language" and scataology and misogyny--are almost entirely Victorian and post-=Victorian in origin. Burns' "Merry Muses", for example were certainly bawdy and certainly explicitly sexual, but, generally speaking, a good time was had by all.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: GUEST,SJL
Date: 03 Jul 13 - 09:34 AM

Now here's a man who does this ballad justice IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00mJyNWo_8I&sns=em

No fiddle on this one. Please.

I based my former opinion on my knowledge of anthropology and history (which is considerable). There were only a few early song collectors who were women. Generally speaking, the "mouths of the spinning wheel" did not receive much credit as song carriers- even when they began to have real names it was not a game changer. Credit has gone to the male collectors until very recently. You cannot alter or erase early history as it has everything to do with the shape of things in the present.

One interesting difference between these few early woman collectors and their male counterparts is that that women weren't much for taxonomy. They just wrote them down and put them in a book- ballad, bawdy, what have you. Women do have a different approach to just about anything. They have received little credit for their approach. Consequently, when they have sought recognition for their efforts in any field, they have striven to emulate men. So are you very sure your consensus doesn't rely on more recent history and modern sensibilities? Are you the SCA?

As I stated before, I have never known women to embrace dirty songs. Naturally, we have heard them from brothers and playground boys. To us, they were just another cultural reminder that our bodies are meant to be a source of shame and ridicule whereas men are permitted to celebrate theirs, very often, perhaps most often, at our expense. Women have also been under tremendous social pressure to accept the situation and be good sports about it. I can do that now but it took me several years to get there.

With all due respect Steve, you are entirely wrong. The purpose of using nobility in the Cruel Mother is to make the point that all women - from the highest to the lowest- are vulnerable to an insincere lover, and more importantly, that this a situation in which the cost to a woman always was and remains far higher than to a man. It always was and remains a joke to men to trick a woman into sex. And they never did or do empathize with the pain they inflict on women in this regard. The use of nobility makes the message universal. It is a warning to all girls that none are immune to male treachery in matters of the heart.

You may recall the well-heeled young lady who turned the tables on False Sir John? He was nobility himself but he was a murderous wretch who got what he deserved. What's the message there? And in Maid Freed from the Gallows, her family clearly had the means to help her so she wasn't a thief. They turned their back on her because she was a "bad girl" who had disgraced her family. Her crime had to do with her true love who fortunately came through in the end and also clearly had the means to do so. What's the message there? Moreover, I would say that using nobility to make a universal point would be a woman's approach when speaking to all women. Male universality is expressed in songs such as the subject of this thread- and of course drinking. There's always that. Otherwise men address matters of class or opposition in terms of who is superior.

There is a rather lengthy article posted in a thread about militant atheism. Very brilliant article. You should read it, and if you do, I would explain how I think it relates to this discussion.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 02 Jul 13 - 05:24 PM

Well, you are the experts so I must stand corrected.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Jul 13 - 04:50 PM

> I have the same info on women as significant or primary carriers of songs on sex.

But doesn't it depend on what we mean by "songs on sex"?

IIRC, the rustic or mildly double-entendre songs collected by Sharp but not published till Reeves were indeed mainly from women.

OTOH, the "BGW" stuff (not to mention the "Hog-Eye Man"/ "A-Rovin'" type of shanty) with descriptions of absurd giant organs and so on come overwhelmingly from men. Also grotesque fantasies like "Columbo," "Kafoozalem," and "Eskimo Nell," which often mix sex with scatology.

I would suggest that such songs are not so much "about sex" as they employ aggressive and exaggerated sexual images to blow off steam (so to speak) humorously, angrily, swaggeringly, etc., mainly for same-sex consumption. Cf. the "gross-out" contests of middle school.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'The Bloody Great Wheel'
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Jul 13 - 02:48 PM

Susan,
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'This is a woman's ballad'. I hope you're not suggesting that I shouldn't sing it, because I do and it's one of my favourite ballads. As you know, I'm pretty certain it was written as a warning to well-heeled young girls to avoid liaisons with servants.