Hi everyone.

We saw the movie in North Carolina before we came home and both thought it was a very powerful film. Neither of us have read the book, but I guess we might now. Agree with lots of the comments above - I found the violent scenes very disturbing and watched through my hands, but it never felt like gratuitous violence, it was necessary to show the horror to put the film into context.

Loved the music, although would have liked it to have been given more prominence. We do feel though that it made lots of the scenes even more powerful.

Dani, the song that Riley sang when he was over in the UK was "I wish, I wish" He said that only one verse had been collected in the Appalachians and the two other verses had been added for the film. This is a verse from a song I sing that has been collected in the UK in many versions. My particular song is called "A brisk young sailor courted me" but it is also known as "I wish, I wish". I sang the song at the club Riley performed at and he was really interested to hear the complete song. My variant was collected by Ann Gilchrist from a 70 year old carpenter called Mr James Bayliff, probably from Cumbria (The Lake District, England). I learned it from an old vinyl record by Paul and Linda Adams called "Far over the fell" (Songs and ballads of Cumbria) SFA 027 recorded in 1975.

The tune differs from the film one but as the words are the same, the rhythm is pretty similar. If you are interested, I will post the other verses, just let me know.

Love, Sue vG