The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #75823   Message #1446155
Posted By: mandoleer
29-Mar-05 - 04:10 PM
Thread Name: Songs you thought were trad
Subject: RE: Songs you thought were trad
When you come down to it, every song or tune was made up / composed by someone somewhere somewhen. In the case of Linden Lea, often taken to be trad, the composer was Ralph Vaughan Williams. In the case of the equally beautiful The Water is Wide, we just don't know. Hughie Jones was rather tickled to find Ellan Vannin recorded and listed as trad on more than one Irish LP - and that the trad versions had a slightly different tune to the chorus to the original one he wrote! Another Liverpool one is, of course, In My Liverpool Home - by Pete McGovern who is still around to collect royalties on what most people regard as a totally trad part of the Liverpool heritage. Of course, we must remember how 'trad' works. Many years ago, my duo partner and I went to Leyland and heard a group from Blackpool sing a song they'd pinched from another group. The words were a Victorian poem. We liked it, noted down the words - and forgot the tune. So I wrote another one for it, and we performed it all around. And someone pinched it off us.... So if you hear anyone singing the song Pendle, the words ain't trad no way, and whichever tune you hear, that ain't anon neither. You just don't know which one of us wrote that particular version....