Folks

It's a pity Masato didn't post the relevant part of the link above, or else you would probably have read it. I'll do it now to avoid too many red faces.

Re:George Dunn - Chainmaker - 2:

Dear Rod,

I've just seen the booklet and notes accompanying your recent George Dunn CD and can add the following information with regard to one of George' songs, Lay Him Away on the Hillside, and its connection to the circumstances surrounding the execution of Private Jim Daly of the Connaught Rangers in India in 1920. I should point out that what follows represents prolonged correspondence among and meetings with all the principals (living!) mentioned below to whom credit must be due for additions, adjustments and corrections.

Firstly, Alfred Williams collected a version from a Mrs W(h)infield (the name was used variously) of Holwell Green, near Burford, Oxfordshire which was entitled Sentenced to Death. The chronology of Williams' activity puts this before November 1916, though Andrew Bathe, who is researching the collecting of Alfred Williams, points out that, since there is no forename attached to the singer, there are several candidates in the village to choose from. At any rate, this date of collecting throws some light on the Connaught Rangers episode - which Roy Palmer referred to first in his book, What A Lovely War (1990), but which connection had been made earlier by Gordon Cox in an article in Lore and Language (1982). Mr Cox's article contained two somewhat conflicting suggestions; the first to the effect that the song was 'about the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers' and the second, less specifically, that it was 'just one of the songs that was a fairly recent composition at the time'. Given the Williams version, it does seem that the Jim Daly affair must have been, as it were, an afterthought, attached to an earlier song-text.

:-)
Ian