Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs

Subject: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST,Wild.seas
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 12:46 PM

If anyone is familiar with songs associated with the craft of drystone walling (as in working songs sung by wallers) I'd be really interested to hear about them, anything about them

Many thanks

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: maeve
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 12:57 PM

I suggest you begin with Dave Goulder.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 01:01 PM

Beat me to it, Maeve, but here's a link to his website:
http://davegoulder.ntpr.co.uk/

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: maeve
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 01:22 PM

Thanks! Great minds, old friends, and all that!

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 02:13 PM

and there are two or three other threads with walling questions


links here
thread.cfm?threadid=160123#3796792

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 05:31 PM

Getting in touch with the Noble Family of Shepley, Yorkshire, would be a must. If Lydia or Cuthbert haven't written any yet they perhaps ought to.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 06:44 PM

I was at a Dave Goulder dry stane dyking and singing weekend near Comrie a couple or three years ago - really great!
Check Margaret Bennett's website for future ones?

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 08:48 PM

The Dry Stone Walling Association has a forum too, might be worth asking there.
Here is their forum page on poems
http://forum.dswa.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Tradsinger
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 03:59 AM

I am a dry stone waller
All day I dry stone wall.
Of all appalling callings
Dry stone walling's worst of all.

By Pam Ayres

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 09:36 AM

Here come stone walling among the fields so green
Here we come stone walling so fairly to be seen.
Now is summer time when we build the walls up high
And we wish you, hope you, keep your stone walls dry!

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST,Wild.seas
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 10:42 AM

Thank you all very much

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Newport Boy
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 11:53 AM

Another poetic verse:

STONE WALL
Frank Mansell

For monument of native skill
In timeless texture living still
For austere beauty, slowly grown,
Give me a wall of quarried stone.

A wall of Cotswold stone I mean
With toppers set on edge and clean,
Not of the smooth cemented kind
But stone, rough-hewn, with small to bind.

One of the walls that trophies bear
Of rusted scythe and worn-out share,
Of clay pipe stem and cattle bone,
Back to the times Napoleon.

A sturdy wall with middle filled,
The kind of wall they used to build
When horse and cart from quarry plied
The white lanes of the countryside.

A wall where truant tom-cats roam,
That hunting weasels know as home,
A wall where man may cool his head,
Or sleep beneath, or lie down dead.

Blaze on my shield, posterity,
A horse, a plough, a headland tree,
A furrow turned and, circling all,
A tidy stretch of dry stone wall.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 01:19 PM

Atop of Whernside in a wintry squall
Thank the Lord for a dry stone wall!

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: JHW
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 04:46 PM

Scowie's lovely song as posted by Moorley Man in an earlier thread

Walling   (Keith Scowcroft/Derek Gifford)
(The last line of each verse is repeated.)

I've walled the in-bye to the peewit's wild cry,
On the fell with the wind in the heather,
I've laid the rough stone on the hill all alone
For to shelter the yow and the wether;
Stone wall and stone drain, in the wind and the rain,
I've fettled and set them together,
I've heard the snipe drum by an early pale sun,
And the grouse call a change in the weather.


I've a spade in me sack which I take on me back
And a tommy-bar short and well-hipped
To clear all the fall from the gap in the wall
And to dig out the founds that have slipped;
With the rack of my eye I can tell a stone's lie
And I'd never have courses that's dipped;
Yet a stone once selected is seldom rejected,
With copings all tight and well-nipped.


There's no fortune made at this stonewalling trade,
Ten shillings a rood is the rate;
Stoop, stile and smoot hole are all reckoned as whole
And there's no waller paid for a mate;
Still it's gritstone for me, that's as rough as can be,
For I care not for shingle nor slate;
And it's faster headway at the end of the day
That pays for the coal in the grate.


Now I said to me dad when I was a lad
That I'd wall for a trade if I could,
For the winter storms bring you fresh work every spring
As the drifts give the stone walls a shove;
So as man, lad and boy, I've found full employ,
And when Jesus calls me up above*,
I'll ask the Great Caller does he want a waller,
For walling's the trade that I love;
Yes, walling's the trade that I love.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 05:48 PM

Wow! That's a hell of a song. Well done, Scowie! Looks like it would sing well to MacColl's 'Manchester Rambler'.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 08:58 PM

There is a thread for the Scowcroft/Gifford 'Walling Song' with links to the tune on YouTube.
thread.cfm?threadid=158068

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST,flush
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:18 AM

There is a very good song written by Andy Hill

Starts off with:
I am a tailor of the dales
I work in any weather
I make a patchwork of the land
and sew it all together
My cloth is pasture moor and fell
Dry stone it is my thread
I lay my 7 yards a day
then weary home I tread

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 10:03 AM

Thanks flush. There are two or three Andy Hills about but found this on soundcloud

Tailor of the Dales by andyhillfolk #np on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/andyhillfolk-1/the-tailor-of-the-dales

And here he is 2016
https://youtu.be/za5GAsJRgpw 


https://myspace.com/andyhillfolk 

And this lead me to Dry Stone Radio which might be worth following up?
https://audioboom.com/posts/4632439-antony-lynn-chatting-to-the-bard-of-earby-andy-hill-on-drystone-radio 

maybe it's worth an email to them?
http://drystoneradio.com 

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 01:56 PM

Check out my song Tailor of the Dales on youtube/andyhillfolk.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST,Wild.seas
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 01:57 PM

Thanks for all the links
Following them up it seems the songs have been written fairly recently, and i found a reference on Dave Goulder's website to traditional stone walling songs having died out.
Any thoughts on this?
What has been shared here is really interesting and rich

Subject: Lyrics Add:Tailor of the Dales' - Andy Hill
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:59 AM

The Tailor of the Dales            
      Copyright Andy Hill/PRS 2008
Capo 2

  C               F      C        F           G
  I am the tailor of the Dales, I work in any weather.
   C                 F      C         Dm         G
  I make a patchwork of the land, and sew it all together.
      C                G                   C                 F
  My cloth is pasture, moor and field, and rough stone is my thread. 
    F               C      Am        F     G      C
  I build my seven yards a day, then weary home I tread.
  
  
   Chorus
  
  G                                     C                  F
  Give me a line and bring me stone and good cheese for my bread. 
     F              C       Am        F     G      C
   I build my seven yards a day, then weary home I tread. 
  
  
  There is no hill can turn my line, a steady course I follows.  
  I build across the rugged fells, cross becks and shady hollows.
  Dry lime and mortar are no use to me, a drystone man.
  My walls will stand three hundred years, I build to nature's plan. 
  Chorus 
  
  When winter comes, the snow will drive me from my normal toil.  
  Then like the mole, go underground beneath the frozen soil.
  Down in the mines I'll break my back to dig for silv'ry lead. 
  For 'tis my lot in this hard life to keep my family fed. 
  Chorus 
  
  In spring and summer I enjoy the fruits of Mother Earth.  
  High skylarks and sweet meadow flowers.
  And good lambs at their birth.
  Young children laughing in the dale, and sunshine on my head. 
  I build my seven yards a day, then weary home I tread. 
  Chorus 
  
  For Im the tailor of the Dales, I work in any weather.
  I make a patchwork of the land, and sew it all together.
  My cloth is pasture, moor and field, and rough stone is my thread. 
  I build my seven yards a day, then weary home I tread.  
  Chorus 
  
  I build my seven yards a day, then weary home I tread.
   
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  https://youtu.be/df_coFNQPk8 
  
  https://m.soundcloud.com/andyhillfolk-1 
  
  AndyHill - Bard of Earby - Facebook   




	

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 30 Jul 17 - 06:09 PM

podcast about walling in Ireland.
No folk music but a lovely programme.
http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Documentary_on_Newstalk/Newstalk_Documentaries/191681/Stone_Mad_Documentary_On_Newstalk


info
"...Walls are usually seen as divisive obstacles, things that separate people. Here in Ireland, however, building a dry stone wall was an activity that brought a community together. It was a unifying occasion where a meitheal was summoned to lend a hand ensuring the land could be farmed. Stone Mad brings us down the western seaboard where we encounter people who are passionate about making dry stone walls, as well as artists who draw inspiration from them. ..."
http://www.newstalk.com/Documentary-On-Newstalk:-Stone-Mad 

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 30 Jul 17 - 06:51 PM

one of my ancestors, I think my great grandfather and possibly his father before him? was a dry stane dyker in Angus.
He / they were responsible for all the walls on the Lindertis estate and perhaps wider afield. He - or his father - built the cottage in which the family lived for several generations near Kirkton of Airlie.
No songs passed down that I know of -- - having done a very little of the craft myself I am not sure it lends itself to singing while you work? Not regular/rhythmical activity- -needs some focus on the size and shape of stones required and then finding them from the available ones spread out waiting to be selected. The walls I learned on during the various courses I attended were all double sided with infill between so did involve more than one person (quite a number when on a course!) - a partner working the opposite side and assisting with the 'ties' that linked both sides at certain points, also the coping stones on top.
The smaller hands of children and women in the family would have tucked all the little infill stones and pebbles into place, making sure not a chink of light could be seen through the wall!

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: StephenH
Date: 30 Jul 17 - 09:45 PM

The thread subject caught my eye and immediately made me think of a poem I found when visiting family in Yorkshire in 1977. I did a fair bit of rambling around Yorkshire and somewhere I came upon a series of cards for sale which had Yorkshire dialect poems printed on them. They were evidently issued by Asgill press, about which I know nothing.
Anyroad, one card had this poem, "Walls", by Tobias Malthouse, on it:

Whoivver maad yon wa's o' stane
must 'a bin stane his-sen
streeat up an' down an' Yorksheer-like,
maist gaffer-like of men

'ee must 'a bin a gradely chap
to leave yon fellside walled
an' raise sich-like memorials
to nivver bein stalled

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: GUEST,Bob Gilbert
Date: 12 Apr 20 - 03:32 AM

Lancashire poet Keith Scowcroft wrote a cracking poem about walking which was put to music by Derek Gifford. Well worth seeking out.

Subject: RE: Origins: Dry Stone Walling Songs
From: r.padgett
Date: 12 Apr 20 - 03:38 AM

Yes Scowie's poems with Derek's tunes including The Walling song are great for chorus singing

Established popular song some years now

Ray