Origins: Willie O Winsbury (Child #100)

Subject: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 10:30 AM

ANyone have the words to Willie O Winsbury as sung by the great Anne Briggs? Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Watson
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 10:39 AM

It's in the database!
...well, that's one of many versions.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Watson
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 01:40 PM

...sorry, I just noticed you wanted Anne Briggs' version>
If nobody gets it before next time I'm on line, I'll look for it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 01:45 PM

That's the one, Watson! Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 02:32 PM

A tip on searching. If you enter Winsbury in the DigiTrad Search box, you get a hit. Near the bottom of that page is the Child number: #100.

If you then enter #100 in the search box, you'll get a bunch of variants.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 04:48 PM

The one Winston linked to is the one recorded by Anne Briggs, great version, I think her tune is a wee bit diff. but it is the words for which I was looking, and many many thanks to our brother winston, as to you dick. Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 12:05 PM

One of my fondest recent memories is of Thomas the Rhymer singing this at the Pacific Northwest gettogether... thanks for the reminder!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 12:49 PM

was just listening to Sweeney's Men lp last night and reading sleeve notes, talked about how Andy Irvine found it in Child's but set it to the wrong tune, I remembered, I thought, Sandy Denny doing that same version, but couldn't find it. Might it have been Dolores Keane? or somebody else? and is Andy's melody that different from other versions sung? sorry to say I haven't heard Anne Briggs' version as yet.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Wolfgang
Date: 03 Apr 02 - 10:51 AM

Andy's melody is totally different. It is used at least by Sweeney's men, Anne Briggs and Anne Byrne on the 'Come by the hills' LP.

If you want to hear a traditional tune for that song you can listen to R. Cinnamond on 'Songs of the People', CD No. 17, titled 'It fell on a day, a bonny summer day'. The Cinnamond track has the title 'There was a lady lived in the west'.

Dick Gaughan on his eponymous LP sings a tune to this song I can't place. He says on the notes that he doesn't 'remember where I got this tune'.

Some discussion about the tunes is already in the thread Arbutus

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Apr 02 - 11:17 AM

Dick Gaughan used the Fause Foodrage tune that Andy Irvine set to Willy of Winsbury, though he maybe changed it just a little.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: DonMeixner
Date: 03 Apr 02 - 11:26 PM

The onliest tune I have every heard to this song is by Anne Byrne. In fact she is the only person I've ever heard sing it.

Don

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 01:42 AM

I think Sandy Denny sang a different song to the same tune, on the album Liege & Lief. It starts 'Farewell, farewell, you lonely travellers all'

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,First Post-bob
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 07:27 PM

There is only one version of this song which is worth listening to - Dick Gaughan on the album handful of earth beautiful guitar and voice

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Alex
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 05:14 AM

The best version I have heard is by John Renbourn on his album Faro Annie. Great guitar work.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 11:40 AM

Andy Irvine sang it to the tune of the 'Fause Foodrage' entirely by accident. He had gotten the tune no. and the page no. mixed up.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: eleanor c
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 12:22 PM

Where is Winsbury? I always imagine it to be the unromantic and ex-industrial Wednesbury somewhere up near the Black Country. Which is still full of strapping young men. I guess if you go far enough back it was rustick.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 01:25 PM

As for the mis-applied tune, it's likely simpler than "Weasel" suggests. I've speculated in other discussions here that the page probably just flipped over while Irvine wasn't looking.

This old thread probably contains less useful information than the various others here on the same subject (see list of links above), but I expect that was why Bob and Alex revived it.

There are several candidates for Winsbury; Wednesbury would be as likely as any (and more than some), I should think. Child didn't discuss that aspect in this case, but see ESPB I, 399, footnote:

' "A William Wynnesbury, who was yeoman of the Guard at the time of Henry VIII, used generally to act as Lord of Misrule in the years 1508-19, and he was Friar Tuck at Greenwich in May, 1515 (see Collier's Annals of the Stage, and J. S. Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII), and this, no doubt, made the name popular with the ballad-makers." -Ward, Catalogue of Romances, etc., I, 532.   Undeniably the Lord Winsbury of our ballad might be said to have acted as a lord of misrule, but it was hardly an English (or Scots) ballad-maker of the sixteenth century that made this ballad; and Mr. Ward, probably, did not intend so to be understood.'

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 04:53 PM

I have wondered if this wasn't a garbled story about King Francis (the ???) of France, who had been prisoner in Spain.
Probably isn't though.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 05:56 PM

Kinloch (Ancient Scottish Ballads, 89) printed a text in which the king (not imprisoned) is the king of France on a long hunting-trip. He speculated that "Willie" was James V of Scotland, who went in disguise to "inspect" the Duke of Vendôme's daughter as a marriage prospect. He decided against her, but then met the French princess at a hunting party. She was keen, but was too ill to travel and died six months after her marriage. (see Child, II, 399). Unlikely, really; and we don't know whether the song started out in Scotland or England anyway.

On the whole, looking for real events behind classic ballads (especially when the ballads are probably much more recent than their supposed historical inspirations) is a bit of a lost cause. Once in a while you can get somewhere, of course, but an awful lot of effort has gone into inconclusive speculation (sometimes frankly bizarre) over the years.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: allanwill
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 02:58 AM

First version I heard was on one of Barbara Dickson's early folk-y albums before she became more interseted in smoothier, jazzier type arrangements and then acting.

The other best version I've heard was by Stan Rogers.

Allan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: allanwill
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 05:54 AM

Then again, Witch of the Westmoreland is a good song too! Oh well, too many W's.

Sorry.

Allan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,death metal morris dancer
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 04:08 AM

The tune is used in Paul Giovanni's superb score for the film "The Wickerman"

And he didn't get paid for doing it!!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 08:58 AM

Anyone ever figured out what chords to play to accompany this song? The Dick Gaughan chords don't seem to work very well.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:07 AM

Here is Dick Gaughan's own transcription of what he plays. Sounds pretty damn good to me...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:16 AM

Anyone have another version -- to repeat myself, these don't work very well.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:39 AM

To repeat myself, they work fine for DG. Maybe it's the way you play it? Just a thought. But if you have around six months to spare you could have a go at deciphering how Nic Jones accompanies himself on William of Winesbury. Or the consort of fiddles, trombone, trumpet and clarinet on Laurel Swift's Willie of Winsbury...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: belfast
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:54 AM

The tune given at the Gaughan website is not the same as the the mudcat midi one. Yes, the mudcat midi one is actually the tune for "Fause Foodrage" and possibly the tune used by DG is the "correct" one. So, if you use the chords for the DG version against the "Fause Foodrage" tune ... well, they won't work.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Davetnova
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 10:22 AM

The Dick Gaughan version is played in DADGAD and can be played with one finger at the second fret ( if you leave out the fills).3rd string, 4rth string, 3rd string, 5th string - repeat twice for each verse.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 10:39 AM

Many great versions of this song of course - but my all-time favourite is by John Leonard and John Squires. "Squigzies" fiddle interpretation is superb.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 11:10 AM

On revisiting it, the tune Dick Gaughan uses is much further removed from Foodrage than I'd remembered. Gaughan himself (I think this was mentioned in one of the other threads on this song) didn't recall where he got the tune: it sounds to me rather as if he started out with the tune in Child and subsequently mixed it up with bits of Foodrage.

Child's example was from William MacMath, learned from his aunt, Jane Webster, September 13 1886; she had learned it some 50 years previously from a Samuel Galloway in Kirkcudbrightshire. That was the tune that Andy Irvine had intended to use, though of course it didn't belong with his text, which was mostly Child's example A, anglicised and with some alterations and borrowings from other versions. The hero's name in the MacMath MS was John Barborough; in most English and Irish forms of the song he is John or Tom Barber.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 11:48 AM

Continuing thanks to all. It is hard work trying to figure out useable chords while triangulating between the three versions (all supposedly the same) I have -- Anne Briggs, Sweeney's Men, and Dick Gaughan!!

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 12:08 PM

Are there any recordings of the Fause Foodrage itself?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 06:29 PM

Very few. Brian Peters has one, on The Seeds Of Time (Harbourtown HARCD 021). Rather well executed, too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:08 AM

Don't know if anyone will read this, but... I heard and sang this amazing song some 30 years ago as a young teenager - and it always "took me out" even when I performed it. The song has haunted me all these years. Something about the pictures that it brings to mind, and the name, Willie of Winsbury, and singing down into those lower notes and forming that hushed name so softly... Perhaps there's a memory in my blood that takes me back. I am a Highlander of Scotland. Amusing to think on it...

Such a beautiful song, but it is more than a song - it is a memory of land and human relationship woven through melody and time. It lives when I listen, and it makes my heart "skip" ; I feel good tonight having made this connection across the miles of time and space.

Thanks for listening
Kristen Farquhar

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 06:29 AM

From: Peter T. - PM
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:16 AM

Anyone have another version -- to repeat myself, these don't work very well.
chords, g major dmajor eg [dyad]c major;g major dmajor eminor;
gmajor dmajor e minor];g major d major c major,so it finishes on the sub dominant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0zAr1t6nTE&feature=channel_page

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 04:48 PM

Thanks, Kristen, I read your thoughts with interest. The song is very special indeed.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Willa
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 05:53 PM

I too read your comments with interest.Do you still sing the song?

I'm busy learning it, having heard it sung by different singers recently - have not 'sung it out' yet.