The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110424   Message #2491183
Posted By: Phil Edwards
11-Nov-08 - 06:09 PM
Thread Name: England's National Musical-Instrument?
Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
Or, slightly less unpredictably, this (which came out the year before the one above). There's the voice, of course, but there's also the rather plodding 'electric Morris' arrangement (which sounds very 70s and very English) and the wonderful brass section* that comes in halfway through (which sounds timeless and very English). And there's the knowledge that this song, or something very like it, was circulating on broadsides in the seventeenth century... It's powerful stuff.

*Actually sackbuts - a word which in turn sounds incredibly English, but actually comes straight from the French 'saque-boute', meaning 'pull-push'. Whereas 'trombone' comes from the Italian 'trombone', meaning 'daffodil'.