The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #162666   Message #3897171
Posted By: Jim Carroll
03-Jan-18 - 12:34 PM
Thread Name: New Book: Folk Song in England
Subject: RE: New Book: Folk Song in England
"I don't smell much cow shit in that one."
Nor do I - it's a celebration of sex - the two don't mix (though I once went home with grass stains on my knees
"to the way rural life is presented"
Thbulk of our songs were collected when the tradition was on the wane, but even so the social misalliance songs were still a major part of the repertoire, as were the poaching, transportation and camp-follower songs - all aspects of working life.
Beckett Whitehead sang a remarkable radical song entitled 'Drinking' which never gained popular currency but was collected by MacColl and Joan Littlewood for the BBC
One verse went;

I'll drink till the high price of coals become small,
Till ale and roast beef, they cost nothing at all,
Till a dandy's worth nowt but the clothes he puts on,
I'll drink till old Peabody's money is gone.

It may well be from a local poet; it has a feel of the times that I never found in broadside, though that's not to say that it never got onto one
Jim Carroll