Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle

Subject: Searching for a song - man with baby - help please
From: GUEST,Riverside_Wren
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:01 AM

Hello all,

I have been 'lurking' on this forum for a while, but a musical dilemma has prompted me to come out of the woodwork....

I am looking for a folk song I once heard aaaages ago, which involved a man at home looking after a baby while his drunken/partying wife was away - I also seem to remember that the baby wasn't his. I have tried every possible googling combination of this, (and tried looking here), but no joy. Does anyone know what I am talking about?

It was a very moving song with a lovely tune, and I want to perform it at my local session sometime. It's also driving me mad that I can't remember anything about it! (Apart from the fact that it was sung by a woman - I thought it was June Tabor, but seems not).

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:11 AM

Sounds like this one to me,

Rocking the Cradle

John

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: cetmst
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:31 AM

Wade Hemsworth recorded it on a 10 inch Folkways LP (FP821) Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods with the title 'Aidel O'Boy' "rocking the cradle for somebody's baby who is not your own". The lady is not drunk but is out partying with another man. May be able to post the lyrics if life calms down and someone doesn't get there first. I also have recordings with a different title which I cannot at the moment recall.
- Charles

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: cetmst
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:35 AM

That's it

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: GUEST,Riverside_Wren
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:42 AM

Blimey, you lot are awesome! Thanks for such a quick reply.   Now it's time to see if I can learn it in time for the session tonight...

Looking on Spotify, I think I may have heard the Bill Jones version at some point, although I am also sure I have one somewhere with less jazz.

Many thanks,

Wren

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:44 AM

Indeed. As I recall the great Seamus Ennis [it was one of the very few songs he would accompany on the pipes], sang "She goes out and she leaves me and sadly deceives me, Leaves me with the baby that's none of me own."

There are fanciful interpretations [I seem to recall a thread dealing with this aspect a while back] that the man was originally Joseph & the baby the Infant Jesus -- and indeed Joseph did find himself having to bring up a baby who was none of his own; but as the Angel Gabriel had enunciated all about it, that was all right then!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: cetmst
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:57 AM

A.L. Lloyd recorded an Australian version on his CD The Old Bush Songs. Liner notes - Ït seems to have begun life in Ireland, originally perhaps as a lullaby purporting to be sung to the Christ Child by disgruntled Joseph.... It has undergone many changes as a cowboy song in the USA and a mildly bawdy piece among students everywhere in the English-speaking world, besides flourishing in a number of variants (mostly deriving from the same broadsie print) among folk singers. Our version here is substantially that sung by an outstanding Australian traditional singer, Mrs Sally Sloane of Teralba, NSW .... she learnt it in her young days from a neighbour in the small-farming country around Parkes.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: GUEST,Riverside_Wren
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 06:58 AM

These are the lyrics I knew.   Longer than Bounty Hound's version. I have read (though I don't know how accurately), that it was Irish first, and changed when it went to Australia.   Also heard some sing "a ball or a ceilidh" which I quite like. Interesting interpretation MGM. If I find the thread, I'll link to it.


On a bright summer's evening I chanced to go roving
Down by the clear river I rollicked along.
I heard an old man making sad lamentation;
He was rocking the cradle and the child not his own.

cho: Hi ho, hi ho, my laddie lie aisy
    For perhaps your own daddy might never be known.
    I'm sitting and sighing and rocking the cradle,
    And nursin' the baby that's none of my own.

When first that I married your inconstant mother
I thought myself lucky to be blessed with a wife.
But for my misfortune, sure I was mistaken
She's proved both a curse and a plague on my life.

She goes out every night to a ball or a party
And leaves me here rockin' he cradle alone.
The innocent laddie he calls me his daddy
But little he knows that he's none of my own.

Now come all ye young men that's inclined to get married
Take my advice and let the women alone.
For by the Lord Harry, if ever you marry
They'll leave you with a baby that's none of your own.
                              (or "and swear it's your own"

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 07:05 AM

"undergone many changes as a cowboy song in the USA "
.,.,

The Lomaxes pointed out that Git Along Little Dogies has a similar tune and narrative structure (of the narrator 'walking out' and overhearing the main singer's lament), and some vocabulary and sentiments in common -- "It's your misfortune, 'tain't none of my own..."

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - help please
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 07:07 AM

The song goes by many different names. The Australian women's a cappella group Blindman's Holiday recorded it as The Man From Kiandra in 1991.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 08:04 AM

This is more or less the (Irish) version I first heard about 40 years ago. It's on the excellent An Goilin website recently announced here.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 11:43 AM

It was recorded by Willie Clancy )singing) on an early Topic LP called I think the 'Minstrel from Clare' and even earlier one, an EFDSS LP of John Doherty of Donegal- sometime in the early sixties?
Jimmy Hutchison of South Uist/Fife has a fine version, which he likely got from Willie Clancy direct

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 11:48 AM

The version I know (ish) has a very annoying chord sequence - a three chord trick, but the three chords never come round in the same order and it is VERY easy to trip over the chords.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 04:46 PM

Whilst this ballad was very likely crystallised in Ireland, it has a close relative from earlier tradition in Scotland. The earliest extant Irish version was printed by Nugent of Dublin in about 1860 and this seems to owe quite a lot to a related ballad printed in about 1800 in Scotland. There is a whole family of related songs going back to 17th century broadsides, possibly earlier, almost all using the title 'Rocking the Cradle' or something similar and all the cuckolded husband's lament in being left at home to rock the baby that isn't his.

The Nugent printing can be seen in Vol 4 of the Mercier Book of Old Irish Ballads, ed by James N Healy. p120. Unfortunately the Scottish ballad is still buried in the mountains of similar stuff in the BL. Some of the earlier related pieces can easily be found online. At least one 17thc piece is available to view in the Santa Barbra Uni English Ballads website, from the Roxburghe Collection in the BL.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 04:51 PM

Strange - I did my Masters on emotions in 16th century broadsides at Ox, and never went to the physical copies of the BL collection. Always used Bodley Ballads or EBBA...
The name Roxburghe brings back many memories of ballad hunting! :)

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: GUEST,Riverside_Wren
Date: 05 Oct 14 - 04:56 PM

For interest, people might want to look at these

http://bodley24.bodley.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/acwwweng/regsrch.pl

or indeed the shiny new version of the site

http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/?query=rocking+the+cradle

p.s - that was me above - forgot the username

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 06 Oct 14 - 12:02 PM

I see Bounty Hound has posted the words. It was the first ever Folk Song I sang in Birmingham, way back in the early 70's. I learned it from the late John Dunkerly, then the banjo player with The Ian Campbell Folk Group who I was aquainted with for many years. It appeared on their first album 'Presenting The Ian Campbell Folk Group' in the early 60's The song comes from Australia I believe. Great days

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Oct 14 - 05:27 PM

First version I heard was sung by Tommy Gilfellan in the late 60s, probably the Willie Clancy version, and shortly after Mike Waterson started singing the 'Charlady's Son' version.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 06 Oct 14 - 06:25 PM

It's interesting that the version on the An Goilin website has the man being from the town of Kiandra. I think I read somewhere recently that Bert Lloyd was responsible for inserting that particular name into his version. Whether or not that's correct, anyway it seems that an Australian version had found its way (back) to Ireland.

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 06 Oct 14 - 08:54 PM

Kiandra

Subject: RE: Searching for a song - Rocking the Cradle
From: JennieG
Date: 06 Oct 14 - 11:19 PM

Himself and I have driven through what's left of Kiandra....a stunning place in summertime. It must have been interesting when the gold rush was in full swing.