Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?

Subject: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: Tradsinger
Date: 15 Jan 20 - 11:27 AM

I am tryiing to find the provenance for the tune for the song "Joy, health, love and peace" AKA The Wren song AKA The King or Please to see the King. I have found the "original" words in Notes and Queries for 1864, with no tune, so I am wondering where the tune came from. Is there another source somewhere?

For info, I am not interested in knowing about who recorded it - I am surely interested in where the tune came from and when it first arose.

Tradsinger

Subject: RE: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 15 Jan 20 - 04:56 PM

A Folk Song a Week - Andy Turner

‘The King’ was recorded from two retired schoolteachers, Dorothy and Elizabeth Phillips, from Hook in Pembrokeshire.

They also gave first-hand reminiscences of the custom, which they remembered from the 1920s. The wren-party would go to ‘any manor houses in the neighbourhood where they would have food and drink and sometimes money’, during the period between 6 and 12 January, which they called ‘Twelfth-Tide’. The wren-house was ‘a little wooden cottage and dressed with ribbons really crêpe paper and the wren was inside and when they entered the house of course they all looked in and wanted to see the king.

The date of this recording is given as 1981, but I’m assuming this was a return visit and that these were the same “two old ladies in Pembrokeshire” from whom Andy Nisbet collected the song in the 1960s.

Martin Carthy has recorded this song at least three times in different settings. I learned it, as I’m sure many others did also, from the Steeleye Span album Please to see the King. But Martin had already recorded it with Dave Swarbrick on Prince Heathen (1969). In fact Norma Waterson told me that, a few days after Martin had first heard ‘The King’ from Andy Nisbet, he happened to meet the Watersons at a festival – and immediately taught them this song! A decade or so later, of course, Martin was a a member of the Watersons, and they recorded ‘The King’ on Sound sound your instruments of joy.

Subject: RE: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 16 Jan 20 - 02:28 AM

From Mainly Norfolk

Steeleye Span; Please to See the King

Musicians
Maddy Prior, vocals, spoon, tabor, tambourine, bells;
Martin Carthy, vocals, guitar, banjo, organ, bells;
Tim Hart, vocals, guitar, dulcimer, bells;
Ashley Hutchings, vocals, bass guitar, bells;
Peter Knight, vocals, fiddle, mandolin, organ, bass guitar, bells

LP Sleeve Notes
Thanks to: Two old ladies in Pembrokeshire via Andy Nisbet for The King

Subject: RE: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 16 Jan 20 - 03:23 AM

See also Welsh Traditional Music by Phyllis Kinney

Search for Dorothy and Elizabeth Phillips Pembrokeshire

Subject: RE: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: Tradsinger
Date: 16 Jan 20 - 04:15 AM

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks, Henry.

Subject: RE: Pembrokeshire Wren song - origin?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 16 Jan 20 - 04:26 PM

^^^^ Welsh Traditional Music by Phyllis Kinney

here are a few pages on googlebooks
p77-81
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0OWYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=wren+tune+Dorothabeth+Phillips+Pembrokeshire&source=bl&ots=