The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #114147   Message #2433461
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
07-Sep-08 - 02:59 PM
Thread Name: Tune Req: AL Lloyd - The Singing Englishman
Subject: RE: Tune Req: AL Lloyd - The Singing Englishman
It may be helpful to note that the full texts printed by Lloyd can be seen in the online transcription of The Singing Englishman at Musical Traditions:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/tse4.htm

Comments on two more for now.

(4) Roud 3447, 'The Plooman Laddie'. All examples listed are Scottish, and I suspect that Lloyd's 'version' is a cut-down, anglicized re-write of the text printed in Ord. If that's the case, then the tune would be 'The Rigs o' Rye' (also in Ord, p 31).

(6) Although this is a 'Cruel Mother' text, the only example listed in Roud that begins with that line is Marina Russell's; she only had two verses and didn't use that refrain, which, though not especially uncommon, isn't usually (I suspect never, except here) found with this song. Lloyd may have 'collected' it, but he may equally well have cobbled it together himself from various sources. No clue as to the 'right' tune, then, though Mrs Russell's (Bronson, I, 281, and Journal of the Folk-Song Society, III (11) 1907, 70) could be made to fit.