a folk song with lots of incarnations

Subject: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,emmie
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 06:15 AM

I was wondering if mud catters could help me think of a traditional British folk song that has been recorded in lots of different styles. It could be a song with lyrics or an instrumental. Its for a teaching project.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 06:24 AM

Could you give a bit more info on your project,that might help a bit. there are many songs that Come to mind , one is the ballad Geordie, I have heard dozens of versions of it. The same could be said of many folk songs. so, hep us out with a bit of direction. thanks

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 06:29 AM

Early One Morning, recorded by opera singers like Kiri te Kanawa, Nana Mouskouri, Angharad Rees in the original Poldark, Michael Crawford as Frank Spencer, Pernell Roberts in Bonanza, a truly dreadful version by Eva Cassidy, Roger Whittaker, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and countless English female folk singers.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 06:49 AM

By far the most varied folk song in the British language is The Unfortunate Rake - Streets of Laredo, Sailor Cut Down/Soldier Cut Down/Airman Cut Down/House of the Rising Sun/St James' Hospital.... endless variations.
The Song actually divides into male and female variants - the female ones listed under 'The Whore's Lament.
Folkways issued an LP under the title 'The Unfortunate Rake' in the late fifties - the extremely helpful notes are freely downloadable as a PDF.
This is our note to the song from our 'Claree Song Collection website; we give two Irish versions; St. James' Hospital and Young Rebel Cut Down in His Prime.
Carroll/Mackenzie Clare Song Collection
Jim Carroll

St James' Hospital - Tom Lenihan
This song originated as a street ballad, which appeared around the end of the eighteenth century; entitled "The Unfortunate Rake" in Ireland and "The Unfortunate Lad" on a Such Broadside in England.
Since its first appearance it has divided into two distinct songs, so much so in the Laws index it is given two numbers. It has probably assumed more forms and locations than any other song, despite the "sensitive" nature of the subject of many of its versions, that of a man or woman dying of syphilis.
The male 'Unfortunate Rake' form covers soldiers, sailors, troopers, cowboys, airmen, Fanore singer Martin Howley sings of 'The Young Rebel Cut Down in his Prime'.
The female versions tell of a young woman 'gone to the bad' and are found as 'House of the Rising Sun', 'St. James' Infirmary', 'Bad Girl's Lament', 'Whore's Lament'....      
Some of the early collectors and anthologists obviously found the theme difficult to deal with; Yorkshire collector Frank Kidson said of the version he found in Knareborough, Yorkshire;
"The Unfortunate Lad" is a ballad that will scarcely bear printing in its entirety".
Elsewhere he writes of this and similar pieces;
"I must say, I do not like the insertion of this ballad… we ought to decide how far "unclean" words should be admitted".
Lucy Broadwood wrote of one she found in The South of England ;
"A version of this was sung to me, inappropriately enough, by a little girl of seven in a Sussex field".
Carl Sandburg, in his note to "Those Gamblers Blues" said;
"This may be what polite society calls a gutter song. In a foreign language, in any lingo but that of the U.S.A., it would seem less vulgar, more bizarre.
Its opening realism works on towards irony and fantasy, dropping in its final lines again to blunt realism".
The Norfolk singer, Walter Pardon, told us how everybody knew it locally when he was young, "but nobody liked to sing of somebody dying of a disease like that".
Despite such reservations, it has taken firm root in the tradition under such titles as, The Young Soldier, Sailor, or Trooper Cut Down In His Prime, The Dying Cowboy, The Whore's Lament, St James' Infirmary, The House Of The Rising Sun, the list is huge. The Lomax's recorded two magnificent blues versions in a Texas prison in the nineteen-thirties from black convicts, James "Iron Head" Baker, and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt.
There was a set recorded in Newfoundland in 1959 in which a child is mentioned:
Mother, dear mother, take care of the baby,
Teach her and guide her along the right way
When she gets sixteen please tell her my story,
'Twas of her young mother who was led astray.
We got a version from Kerry Travelling woman Peggy Delaney in which the girl version is named Hannah Franklin, elsewhere she is called Annie.
Tipperary Traveller Mary Delaney version is set in "North Long", almost certainly Knocklong, County Limerick, just over the border from Tipperary, where the shooting took place and the dying man "a cowboy".   
Mary also gave us a few verses of a political song entitled "The Station of North Long", which tells of an ambush by Volunteers in The Irish War of Independence at Knocklong, Tipperary in 1919.
A breathtakingly beautiful version called "When I was on Horseback" was collected in Belfast from Wexford Traveller Mary Doran in 1952.
Folkways Records devoted an entire album of versions to the song in the early 1960s.
It is possible that the once disreputable area around Fishamble Street, adjacent to Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin, once called Copper Alley, refered to the said cure for the disease that gave life to the song – a Hampshire version is entitled 'The Lass of London City' refers to 'White Copper Alley'.
Other English nautical versions frankly instruct the pall-bearers to:
"Get six young sailors to carry my coffin,
Six young girls for to sing me a song,
Let each of them carry a bunch of red roses
So they won't smell me as they bear me along".
The songs was still being remade right up to the First World War, when 'The Dying Aviator's fellow pilots were instructed to:
Take the cylinders out of my kidneys
The connecting rod out of my brain
From the small of my back take the crankshaft
And Assemble the engine again
As well as being one of the most prolific ballads in the English language, it is probably one of the most beautifully tragic.
Reference
Songs From The Collection of Mr Frank Kidson; Folk Song Journal (English) 1904
Songs From Various Counties                                       Folk Song Journal (English) 1913
An American Songbag Carl Sandburg
Songs of The Newfoundland Ourtports Kenneth Peacock,
Airman's Song Book C.H. Ward Jackson

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 07:10 AM

I'm not going to start looking right now, but Greensleeves must be up there.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 10:39 AM

Superb note above by Jim on the "Unfortunate Rake", "Cut Down In Prime", "St James Infirmary/Hospital", &c, group of songs. For the sake of completeness, I would just add that Burl Ives sang it, and included it in his Song Book, under title "The Streets of Laredo", where the dying man is a shot cowboy; and the very handsome air of that version was TinPanAlley·pinched in 1952 for a sentimental song called 'The Old Homing Waltz' ("A crowd stood around you the day that I found you; They all wanted you for the Old Homing Waltz") by T. O'Connor/M. Reine, originally recorded by Dickie Valentine - also recorded by Vera Lynn.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 10:47 AM

But the "Unfortunate Rake" family is not one song, but a whole flock of them. (It also includes The Banks of the Devon", "The Brown Dairymaid" and a bunch of other Scottish-connected songs and tunes which are generally not as focused on VD).

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 11:00 AM

Why "But", though, Jack? Who has said any different? The thread title, & posts thus far, surely make the point that that is the very aspect of the matter that we are discussing here.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 11:00 AM

"Unfortunate Rake"
This, as far as I know, is the title given to the earliest version and the plot of the genre is fairly consistent, whatever offshoots there might have been.
Steve Gardham might be able to clear this up for us.
Thanks Mike - I never mad the connection with 'The Old Homing Waltz - blast from the past
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 03:48 PM

The air sometimes known as The Streets of Laredo is used for the hymn "At Eastertide", which is in at least the current UK Methodist hymn book, Singing the Faith.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 29 Dec 15 - 06:15 PM

For what it is worth.

I remember reading about thirty years ago of an American student doing a doctorate based on the 2000 + variants of a well known traditional song.

Barbara Allen (Ellen).

The Everley Brothers recorded a version.

Could be a winner!

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: banjoman
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:40 AM

Is Barbara Allen a traditional song?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:55 AM

'The Trees They Do Grow High' family of songs - 'The College Boy'/'Long A-Growing', etc... must be pretty popular. When I was doing research in the School of Scottish Studies archive there were over 30 recordings of this song type listed in Scotland alone.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:58 AM

"2000 + variants"
A bit of an exaggeration I think Malcolm, performances maybe - hardly variants - Bronson gives around 200 - hardly likely to have increased that much in the intervening years.
There is a Library of Congress LP made up entirely of different versions of Barbara Allen - 30-odd, I sem to remember.
"Is Barbara Allen a traditional song?"
It i probably fair to describe it a THE traditional song.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 07:45 AM

Barbara Allen (Ellen).
The Everley Brothers recorded a version.

So did Art Garfunkel. And Porky Pig.

'Early One Morning' is a good one. To Guest Dave's list (Michael Crawford!?) could be added the Benjamin Britten setting. It would be good for Emmie's project to include one art music arrangement.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 08:01 AM

Exactly Guest guest - "Lang a'Growing" was the first family of songs I thought of when I saw the title of the thread.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 12:22 PM

GUEST emmie, you might find it helpful to know that 'Lang A-Growing' is number 41 in the Roud Folk Song Index, and 'Barbara Allen' is number 54.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 01:00 PM

is Barbara Allen a trad song, thats a good one. Is the world round?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 01:22 PM

... and what do bears do in the wood?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 01:30 PM

I rather think it is, Dick. And the most popular traditional ballad, going by the number of times it's been collected.

However, what I think Emmie was after (is she still here to comment on our efforts, by the way?) was a song with multiple recorded arrangements in different musical styles, not necessarily variants.

Here are a couple of 'Barbara Allen' recordings from the days of early Country music (also different variants, as it happens).

Vernon Dalhart

Bradley Kincaid

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 03:01 PM

Some beautiful Irish variants of Barbara Allen - Joe Heaney, Sarah Makem, Elizabeth Cronin...

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 03:51 PM

Sumer is Icumen in (surely more traditional even than Barbra Allen) also has a Benjamin Britten arrangement, and has been recorded by the Magdalen College choir, Richard Thompson, The Futureheads, Glenn Close (!), the mice in Bagpuss, and of course the classic version at the end of The Wicker Man.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 05:05 PM

Sumer Is Icumen In is not 'traditional' at all, although anonymous. It is a composed work, known from manuscript in only one version, and not recorded in any oral traditional context; which surely precludes its being regarded as traditional in any sense which would satisfy a folklorist. It is not ∴ a folksong, & lacks any multiplicity of 'incarnations': both factors specifically demanded by the thread title.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 05:08 PM

re read my post,Brian.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 05:15 PM

Hi, its Emmie here. Many apologies for my absence! Lots of festivities going on in my house with son and partner having birthdays! Anyway, to clarify further I am looking for one traditional song that has been performed by several different artists. I would like the song to have recognisably the samish melody and lyrics but to have been recorded in a wide range of styles perhaps ranging from punk to bluegrass to rock something like that and ideally something that has had a reasonably recent interpretation that sounds quite contemporary. The project is for EFDSS and I will be teaching some teenagers with SEN. We will probably look at a few versions of one song and then do our own interpretation. We will have access to the library at Cecil Sharpe House. I will be using resources such as ipads to make music as well as more traditional instruments.

I have really enjoyed reading posts on this thread and found your post very interesting Jim in regards to the unfortunate rake and all the songs that have evolved from it both for women and men!

I am going to have a think about the Barbara Allen song as this had occurred to me also. It was one of the songs that people were invited to sing a version of for the Cecil Sharpe collection on radio 2. I loved the version that stick in the wheel did of the song! Me and my singing partner Aimee did a version of Claudy Banks!

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 05:29 PM

Hi emmie, here is another version of barbara allen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_PoPY-mDpA

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 05:32 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_PoPY-mDpA

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:09 PM

Emmie, if you're going to be working at Cecil Sharp House you'd be advised to start by spelling it correctly!

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:23 PM

Jim,
The earliest extant version I have is about 1790 'The Buck's Elegy'. The common broadside c1840 was generally titled 'The Unfortunate Lad' and then 'The Sailor Cut Down' type I have nothing earlier than about 1900. The title 'Unfortunate Rake' was I think a later editorial title used for some oral versions, notably Lloyd.

I would guess it's earlier than 1790 though.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST, 34
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 06:58 PM

The Gallows Pole/Hangman/Maid Freed from the Gallows/Prickle-eye Bush
   Even Led Zeppelin did a version.

The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies/Seven Yellow Gypsies/Gypsy Davy/Black Jack Davy/The Gypsy Laddie

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 07:42 PM

Bedlam Boys is a pretty good one that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Janie
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 08:35 PM

Barbara Allen is probably a good one to go with. Just go to youtube and search under Barbara Allen, Barbry Allen, etc. and also Scarlet Town and Charlotte Town. Should get lots of examples in different styles.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 09:08 PM

If you want to take it in a multicultural direction, you will easily locate versions of Auld Lang Syne in dozens of languages and innumerable styles.

eg

Scots/Russian/Armenian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm64RQN8iJ4
Scots/Arabic/French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfarJuLT-Cs

BBC story about it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25402099

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 30 Dec 15 - 10:03 PM

Auld lang syne.

Is that the traditional song written by a chap called Roberet Burns?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Taconicus
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 12:51 AM

There are so many. John Barleycorn, for one. Many more.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 04:08 AM

Burns didn't write ALS and never claimed to have done. He may have added one verse, but the song was in existence by 1700.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 04:24 AM

MGM, Barbara Allen is also composed, if we are to believe Pepys, or at least Roud's interpretation of Pepys' comment on that song. Unlike Sumer is Icumin in, a manuscript does not survive. Hence the variety of different renditions which survive, people performing it had no written reference. Oral transmission is necessarily less precise than working from a preserved written record. Some may think thats a good thing.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 05:44 AM

Quite, Dave. Everything was composed at some time by somebody -- including all the 100+ versions of B Allen which Sharp found just in Virginia, apart from all the others. But what of it? Not quite clear as to point you are making. My only point to you was that Sumer Is Icumen In could not be rubricated a folk song by any definition I could think of, so I just wondered why you had mentioned it on a thread which specifies "folk song" in its title. Barbara Allen, OTOH, whatever may be deemed to be its multiplicity of origins, can.

Happy New Year

≈M≈

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 06:11 AM

This is great thanks folks! I had thought of John Barleycorn also as I know there are some good contemporary versions and as it is a personal favourite anyway. I will definitely look in to some different versions of bedlam boys and raggle taggle gypsy and The gallows pole. I like the idea of there being a Led Zeppelin version. Really interesting about an Armenian auld lang syne. I probably wouldn't use auld lang syne as the main song to work on but its a great suggestion as a song to refer to as its timely for the season and is also a song people would recognise which is always great for peoples confidence.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Brian Peters
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 06:57 AM

The gallows pole. I like the idea of there being a Led Zeppelin version.

They got it from Leadbelly: Leadbelly: Gallis Pole

The website with the curious name of 'Mainly Norfolk' is very useful if you want to know about different recordings of a particular folk song. For example:

Mainly Norfolk: Maid Freed from the Gallows

There doesn't seem to be an orchestral arrangement of that song, which is a pity - it ticks plenty of other boxes.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 07:03 AM

Wikipedia reference has the first line

"Auld Lang Syne" (Scots pronunciation: [ˈɔːl(d) lɑŋˈsəin]: note "s" rather than "z")[1] is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788[2][3] and set to the tune of a traditional folk song (Roud # 6294).

Better get in there and put them right Jack.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 07:50 AM

That's three gross mistakes in one sentence.

But I can't be arsed arguing with Wikimorons. I have tried editing stuff before and given up; it's wrestling with tar babies if you know more than the people who've edited the page before you. That's why I put my stuff on my own site.

I haven't heard it for a long time and can't listen on this machine, but I thought Gallows Pole was a version of Macpherson's Farewell? Or is that considered a variant of The Maid Freed From The Gallows, even though he isn't a maid and isn't freed?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 08:03 AM

From the official 'Scotland' website
The History and Words of Auld Lang Syne
It is one of the many folk songs from the great Lowland Scots tradition collected and fashioned by the pen of one of the world's greatest songwriters. Burns devoted the last years of his life to the song tradition, and often a mere fragment from some old ballad was transformed by his alchemy into a memorable love song or Scots poem. With Auld Lang Syne, though, the brilliance was already there; this is the Bard's first mention of it in a letter to Mrs Dunlop in 1788:
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Mo the caller
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 08:57 AM

Bedlam Boys is on the latest Time Bandit's album

Oh, and Barbara Allen too

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Brian Peters
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 09:11 AM

I thought Gallows Pole was a version of Macpherson's Farewell?

The formulaic verses describing the arrival of successive empty-handed friends and family mark it down as Child 95. The sex of the protagonist can be fluid in ballads (see The Unfortunate Rake) and even the complete reversal of an ending is not unknown.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Amos
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 03:43 PM

The Waly, Waly--Water Is Wide -- Carricfergus string should be considered as well, no?

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: Lighter
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 07:51 PM

Speaking of styles, Mary Doran's "When I was on Horseback" was beautifully recorded in folk-rock style by Steeleye Span and Maddy Prior on the album "Ten Man Mop" a bit over forty years ago.

*Well* worth comparison with the original.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 31 Dec 15 - 10:35 PM

You are correct of course Jack.

Unfortunately once something becomes "the standard" people tend to believe it.

I did take the bother to read the remainder of the article and the bald statement is refuted later - but of course most people would not read that far.

I suppose I was tempted to highlight this for all our benefits and should perhaps have said so in that posting.

I gave up long ago on "experts" putting things on Mudcat regarding Whitby Folk Week but at least I got the chance to correct some errors in Sally Atkinson's affectionate 50th anniversary booklet.

And of course ALS appears in the recent compendium of Burns songs recorded by various excellent performers.

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 02 Jan 16 - 12:57 AM

hup!

Subject: RE: a folk song with lots of incarnations
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 02 Jan 16 - 04:36 AM

I believe The Gyosy Rover may be british ir origin. I recall readin in the 80's that it had 42 versions up to then, and no doubt a few more since then, it did hold the distinction of the most oovered folk song