Hello Everybody. Yes, it is me. I hope Mr Carroll's hip operation was successful.

To deal with various points:


1 Tom Lenihan's version and the Clare Library website. On that site it says: 'Tom says he learned this from 'his sister living in America.' It would appear from what Kevin says that something similarly ambiguous appears in a book on Lenihen as Kevin has interpreted it the same way that I did. For clarity, if it is now claimed that she taught it to Tom before going there, then perhaps the text(s) could be modified to make it clear that this is the case.


2 I have never claimed that Bert Lloyd invented the words St James' Hospital. My claim is that he wrote the song that is often quoted as being a 19th century broadside version of 'The Unfortunate Rake'.


3 Historically, the idea that the St James' Hospital in question was a hospital on the site of St James' Palace derives mostly from an LP produced by Kenneth Goldstein called 'The Unfortunate Rake'. That LP has a picture of what purports to be St James Hospital on the cover and Goldstein states in his liner notes that it was St James Hospital in London. Where did Goldsein get this idea? He tells us via the references he gives. These include an article by an American called Kenneth Lodewick that was published in a magazine called Western Folklore in 1955. If you want to read this article, you can do so at no cost by registering on a web site called JSTOR which publishes a great many old articles. Lodewick says, giving no rationale or evidence for the idea: 'The St James title is also common to all but the earliest Irish version, coming from St James Hospital in London.'

The only Irish version cited by Lodewick is a fragment called 'My Jewel My Joy', of which only one verse was collected. Lodewick incorrectly states that it was heard in Dublin. This is wrong, as you will see if you look up the text Lodewick cites, a collection published by PW Joyce of songs collected by William Forde. The song was heard and collected in Cork. Goldstein's liner notes repeat what Lodewick says about Dublin. So does A L Lloyd in his book on English Folk Song! (Lloyd claims that the song was current in Czech long before it hit the streets of London, but as usual he doesn't provide any evidence for this.)


If you want to check that Joyce did say Cork and not Dublin, you can find the whole volume online in digitised form free, and read it for yourself, which is what I did when researching this topic.


If you google Royal Residences you will find a website on St James' Palace, which Henry VIII began to build in 1531.


It is possible that this is the hospital referred to in the song, though why Irish folk should be singing about a London hospital for lepers demolished in the sixteenth century beats me. Therefore, I don't think it is likely.

4 I am afraid that the Clare County web site has a lot of muddled comment/'information' on this song. But it does provide us with a link to just one of the many early pieces writen about it, "Songs from the Collection of Mr Frank Kidson, Folk Song Journal (English), 1904." This piece may be the actual origin of the myth that there was an Irish version called 'The Unfortunate Rake'. Once again, you can read the original free on JSTOR. In case you would like to do this, it may be helpful to have a full reference to help you in the JSTOR process. It is Volume 1, no 5. To save you the trouble, I'll give you as much information about it as I can. It is very short.

The writer says that the song is called 'The Unfortunate Lad' and that he has a copy of it on a broadsheet with no printer's name, but, he says, possibly by Pratt of Birmingham. He only quotes one verse of the version collected by Kidson.


    As I was a walking in Rippleton Gardens
    As I was a walking one morning of late
    Whom should I spy but my own dear comrade
    Bitterly weeping so hard was his fate.
   
They give the tune, which is not the Unfortunate Rake tune. You'll have to play it for yourself and make your own judgment on this.

I have found various broadsheet versions of this song. They are all called 'The Unfortunate Lad' even one with no printer's name on it. Not one of them mentions St James anything, and nor does any English version reported in any of the articles that appeared in this journal and its successsor after the EFDS changed its name.


The writer then surmises

'The words are likely to belong to an Irish air named 'The Unfortunate Rake'. This melody will be found in Crosby's Irish Musical Repository circa 1808 and in vol ii of Holden's Irish Airs. These bear some slight resemblance to the traditional tune given above, which was originally learned at Knaresborough.'


I think 'some slight' is an overstatement. I would say 'very little' myself.

So then we have to check these two sources (Crosby and Holden). The words cited in Crosby are about a wandering harper, and nothing to do with unfortunate rakes!   I have not found Holden's airs, or if I did I cannot now find it again. But again, it might just be the tune, or different words, all information gratefully received. The point is that if Holden had given Unfortunate Lad type words, then the author of the EFDS piece would have said so, rather than guessing.

What this 1904 does not do is demonstrate that there was ever a street song in Ireland called 'The Unfortunate Rake'.


This takes me back to the comment I made on this thread, which is about 'The Unfortunate Rake' as sung by A L Lloyd on the LP of that name. This is plainly a composite version invented by A L Lloyd, though the liner notes twice describe it as a 19th century broadside version. The liner notes to that LP refer to an article A L Lloyd wrote on the subject in 1956, the second he had written on the topic.

You can get this from the British Library which has copies of everything.

Lloyd says he has read the old EFDS EFDDS articles, and by the time he wrote the second of his pieces he has also seen one of the 19th century broadsides called 'The Unfortunate Lad', as he quotes the last verse word for word. He discusses the various tunes that have been collected. The one he likes best is one collected in Cork and called 'My Jewel My Joy'. This is the one he sings.


The first person to surmise that My Jewel My Joy was a version of the Unfortunate Rake was a Harvard trained folklorist called Philips Barry. Barry claimed that PW Joyce had traced the connection, but Joyce did no such thing. I don't buy it, because I don't believe that somebody dying of pox would ask his lover to arrange his funeral. If he got it from her, logically she will die first, and he might not be thinking of her as his 'jewel, his joy'. If he didn't, then she is not going to be very pleased with him, whether or not she caught it, as he is to be supposed to have explained to her how he got it, which won't endear him to her.   

The words Lloyd sings are not those of the 19th century broadsheets.
Once you have read the pieces he uses as references you can see where he picked and chose bits for his song. Some bits I believe he just made up. This is what Lloyd is well-known for doing. For example, the broadsheets do not mention 'laurel'. Also Lloyd misses out a verse from the broadsheets in which the 2nd narrator bewails the fact that he ignored his parents' advice. I believe Lloyd does this because he wants to make the 'lad' seem unrepentant. In his essay he says that the lad wants 'harlots' to accompany him. But the broadsheets don't say 'harlots' or anything like it.

The 19th century broadsheets refer to 'lock hospitals'. There was a surge in building of these after the Contagious Diseases Acts had been passed, and there was one in Cork, which was a naval port with lots of soldiers and lots of contagious diseases, presumably.

The word 'lock' was originally the name of a hospital outside the City of London where lepers were 'locked up' and not allowed to enter the city. The same hospital was later called the 'lock hospital', following which the term came into general use for hospitals treating venereal diseases.


The liner notes to the LP refer to various articles by Wayne Hand, which I cannot read as they are in German. However, a 1958 article by Wayne Hand which I did read claims that A L Lloyd has finally sung a genuine broadside version. Lloyd must have had a good chuckle over all this.


Lloyd sang another version which he did call 'St James Hospital', and he changed the words about a bit. He adds the words 'me jewel, me joy' (obviously taken from the Cork fragment). In his book on folk song he includes an extract which is different again.

Thank you for reading.

The versions of the song that were known prior to Lloyd with the words St James Hospital in were a) a version collected in Dewey by Sharp and Karpeles and b) a version collected in Nova Scotia by Mackenzie. I have never denied that the words were known before Lloyd sand his piece. Indeed, Lloyd is said to be the first person to make a link between St James Infirmary Blues and The Unfortunate Lad.

One point I would make is this: if Waylon Hand and Kenneth Goldstein were right that Lloyd had found and was singing a genuine 19th century broadsheet version called 'The Unfortunate Rake', then where is it? How come nobody can say whose collection it is in, who printed it and so on?

Probably haven't explained things clearly enough. Sorry if so.