Subject: RE: Any August Songs? From: GeoffLawes Date: 26 Sep 22 - 09:30 AM SCARBOROUGH FAIR
In medieval times, Scarborough Fair lasted 45 days and started every year on August 15th.

In 1891 Kidson published a version "sung by a ballad singer in Whitby streets twenty or thirty years ago".
And he got a second version from Mr. A. Wardill, a railway pointsman of Goathland, refrain; Rue, parsley, rosemary and thyme.
The Whitby and Pickering Railway, one of earliest railways in Yorkshire, had opened throughout on 26 May 1836.
Cecil Sharp in 1913 collected a tune and three verses from Richard Hutton, aged 65, also in Goathland.
Ewan MacColl claims he collected the famous melody from Mark Anderson (1874–1953), a retired lead miner from Middleton-in-Teesdale, County Durham in 1947.

Jim Boyes, born Bridlington, 1945, and Belinda O'Hooley, born Leeds, 1971, notably perform Kidson's words to Mr Wardill's tune on Sensations of a Wound, The Long, Long Trail of Robert Riby Boyes. (No Masters NMCD44 2015).
Robert Riby "Croppie" Boyes, Jim's grandfather, was bred and born in Scarborough. Jim also chose the song because of the reference to the shirt, which leads to a song later in the story.

Pete Coe and Alice Jones sing the same version on the Yorkshire Garland page, The Search for Frank Kidson; https://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/kidson.cfm Scarborough Fair