One of the things I realy like about folk music, in its broadest folk scene sense, is going to see people who not only wrote but lived the songs I love.

An early highlight for me was going to see Eric Bogle a few years ago and as well a the raw emotion of his account of how visiting a war cemetery in Northern France and observing how young the majority of the fallen were inspired no mans land, he told the story behind two of my favourites, Leaving Nancy and the Belle of Broughton.

Leaving Nancy I had always pictured a young soldier leaving his sweetheart behind, probably because Bogle is so well known for his anti war songs, but in fact the song relates the day when, as a young man, he left his mother on the platform of Edinburghs Waverley Station to go and live in Australia. At a similar time and similar age I had done the same thing (only moving away to London mind you. ) With me it was my father and Glasgow Central Station but the recollection of the wordless emotion reduced me to tears then ( I'm choking now writing this.

Belle of Broughton
A lovely simple song Bogle says he wrote it following the death of his grandmother. He says he could never remember his Grandfather aving anything nice to say about her when she was alive but that when she died he was really cut up and told him that when they were young in the borders village of Broughton she had been the village beauty and he could never really quite believe that she had chosen him. Bogle only remembered his grandmother as an ordinary old woman
and the two as constantly bickering but the old man told him he had been in awe of the beautiful girl who had chosen him all through their long years together. Again this chimed with me because I can only remember my own grandmother as a little fat grey haired Glasgow woman, but apparently she was a real stunner when she was young. My Grandfather had always seemed to me as a kid pretty indifferent to her but when she died he completely went to pieces.
He was physically a very strong man and lived outlived her by some years, but there was no life left in him.

Thats the strength of many great songs, they can be written specifically about one person but speak so much of the human condition you feel they could be about you. cf " Killing me softly", about a Don Mclean concert.