Help: Lemady - Confusion

Subject: Lemady - Confusion
From: Calhoon
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 02:28 PM

I'm getting a litle confused here can anyone help?

Tony Rose has recently brought out a new recording on which he has recorded a version of "Lemady" or "Sweet Lemany" which, he has told me, he sang during his performances of Larkrise. However, his recorded version only seems to bear a passing resemblance to the Copper's version and others. Can someone post me the words which ARE used for Larkrise and it would help sort out my confusion a little. I have Bob Copper's version ..... I need the Larkrise version please oh please .....

Subject: Lyr Add: LEMADY / ARISE AND PICK A POSY
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 11:07 PM

LEMADY ("Lark Rise To Candleford" version, as sung on the recording by Martin Carthy)

Hark, says the fair maid, the nightingale is singing
The larks they are ringing their notes up in the air
Small birds and turtledoves on every bough are building
The sun is just a-glimmering; arise my dear.

Rise up, my fair one, and pick your love a posy
It is the finest flower that ever my eyes did see
It's I will bring you posies, both lily-white pinks and roses;
There's none so fair a flower as the lad I adore.

Lemady, Lemady, you are a lovely creature
You are the fairest flower that ever my eyes did see
I'll play you a tune all on the pipes of ivory
So early in the morning before break of day.

(Arise and pick a posy, sweet lily pink and rosy
It is the finest flower that ever I did see
Small birds and turtledoves on every bough are building
The sun is just a-glimmering; arise my dear.)

This is the best transcription I can manage; Carthy seems still to have been in his "blurred" phase when he sang it. To be honest, this looks like the most garbled version I've come across (of not very many). The melody is a bit different from the Copper Family's set, which itself seems to have an incomplete text.

There's another version of the text on an earlier thread (you probably know anyway, but it's at http://www.mudcat.org/thread.CFM?threadID=11800 ) but I couldn't find any information as to where it came from. I've been promised a Cornish version of the song; if that's of any interest to you, I'll pass it on when I get it.

Malcolm Douglas

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Calhoon
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 06:44 AM

thanks v. much Malcolm any further help re the Cornish version will be appreciated. Sue B

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 07:37 AM

on which recording by Carthy??

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GeorgeH
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 08:11 AM

Wolfgang: I'd guess it was from the "Lark Rise to Candleford" album - which (IIRC) was attributed to The Albion Band. And certainly it was acknowledged as being an incomplete and not entirely coherent version (which leads to my getting it and "Flanders shore" - see "Flandyke shore" thread - confused.

However it has to be said it worked very well in the production, which WAS its point at the time . .

Do put me out of my misery, Calhoon - why are you so badly in need of the version from the Lark Rise production? I'm intrigued.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 08:24 AM

Oh, Albion Band, I see, thanks George.........Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Calhoon
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 06:54 PM

well George it's like this ......

I've heard Tony sing it on a number of occasions and have been thinking about recording myself in the near future. Poor old Tony's memory of its origins are a bit vague apart from the fact that he performed it in Larkrise. Martin C has since told me that it is in fact a May Day carol from Bradford and I am just trying to authenticate the Larkrise version's origins.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GeorgeH
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 07:08 AM

Calhoon: Thanks for satisfying my curiosity . . If you're in contact with Martin C have you asked him specifically about the Lark Rise version? He's reputed to have a remarkable memory for different versions of songs.

Also - I've been interested to learn that Tony Rose was amongst the multitude of UK Folk's "great and good" to sing in the National Theatre productions - I hadn't realised that.

G.

Subject: Lyr Add: LIMADIE (from Cornwall)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Sep 99 - 09:07 PM

LIMADIE

Oh early one morning as I was walking
The fields and the meadows they looked so green and gay
The birds sang so sweetly, so pleasant and so charming
So early in the morning at the break of the day.

Oh hark, oh hark how the nightingale is singing
The lark she is taking her flight in the air
The turtle dove in every green bower is building
The sun is just glimmering, arise then, my dear.

Arise, love, arise, I have plucked you a nosegay
The sweetest of flowers that grow in yonder grove
Oh I have plucked them fresh from the lily, pink and rosetree
And it's all for my Limadie, the girl that I love.

O Limadie, O Limadie, thou art the fairest flower
Thou art the sweetest flower that e'er mine eyes did see
And the tunes that I will play to thee shall be on flute of ivory
For my heart is so full of soft love melody.

Oh why should my true love be banished from me?
Oh why should she die and I never see her more?
Because that her parents look so slightingly upon me
I too will die for Limadie, the girl I adore.

As promised, a version from Mawgan in Cornwall, kindly sent to me by Jeremy Main. I don't have details of the book from which it was taken, but I gather that any copyright would belong to Inglis Gundry (1966). From the accompanying notes:

"...found...in the papers of the late Grand Bard, Morton Nance, at Truro Museum, together with the Cornish translation made by his predecessor, Henry Jenner....It now seems clear that originally this song was an aubade sung by a group of young men (or sometimes young women) to their "lemans" or sweethearts early on midsummer morning, or "leman-day", and that the imaginary person known as Lemady, or Limadie, or Lemminy (in the Catnach ballad with much the same words as ours) came into existence only after this custom of "sweethearting" fell into disuse and was no longer understood."

This version was collected by Jenner from William Gilbert of the Vale of Lanherne; Sabine Baring Gould had a (different) version from Gilbert's father, Samuel, who kept the Falcon Inn there.

Malcolm Douglas

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,Vic Blake
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 04:14 AM

I have also been trying to get a definitive version of the same song having heard Julie Murphy sing it (entitled 'Break of the Day') on Nigel Eaton's 'Pandemonium' CD. Again the words seem rather 'muddy' and I couldn't make them out. Peta Webb at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - Cecil Sharp House, says she can supply the 'words'. Would these arrive carved in a tablet of stone I wonder!

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 05:05 AM

I doubt it. You will have to accept that there are no "definitive words" for songs like this (and for a great many others), where a fair number of differing examples have been found in tradition and where (so far as is known) no early texts exist. There are 19th century broadsides, of course, but they are as obscure as many of the traditional texts; and may perhaps themselves have been harvested from tradition.

Are you expecting the words "as sung by Julie Murphy", or a reasonably full and coherent text from some other source? Since the sleevenotes of that particular record, as I understand it, name no source for the version of the song they have arranged, the sensible thing would be to ask Julie, I'd have thought.

Meanwhile, there are a few broadside editions to be seen at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads; they can be found under the titles Sweet Lemminy and The lad I adore. There's also an "answer" to the song that doesn't seem to have lasted in its own right. It doesn't throw much light on the subject, except to indicate that the song was sufficiently current in 1819 for it to be worth Catnach's while printing a spin-off as part of a larger songsheet.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Vic Blake
Date: 30 Nov 02 - 11:09 AM

You're right there, Malcolm - no sleeve notes on the CD. Hence the enquiry. I do quite like the version Julie is singing but I'm just being a bit of an old stickler really, not being able to work out the last line. I did e-mail her but no comeback. And I'm no hell-raising purist so at the end of the day I'll sing what suits (but it is nice to get it right sometimes eh what!)

You have been a great help. Thanks for that.

Vic

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: RolyH
Date: 30 Nov 02 - 01:46 PM

Heard an interesting version of this by Jim Moray on the Andy Kershaw program on BBC Radio 3 last week.(techno folk?)

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 06:24 PM

I have a recording of it by Martyn Wyndham-Read, but since it was taped from radio in the early Eighties I have no idea which album it comes from nor of the proper title. The words are more or less the Copper Family version. Ring any bells?

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 06:48 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 08:53 PM

It would seem to be Lemonay, from Martin's 1981 album Andy's Gone (Broadside BRO 134) -another Celtic Music hostage, I think. It was probably an arrangement of the Copper family set.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Stewie
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 11:24 PM

The note by Dave Arthur on the 'Andy's Gone' sleeve is:


LEMONY
Lemany, Lemody, Limady, Lemonday. Another folk mystery! What does the title mean? Is it a lovers-day carol from 'leman', the old word for 'lover'? However, as the song has every appearance of being an 18th century stage production, it seems likely the archaic 'leman' would have intruded into such a comparatively recent piece. Most singers appear to assume that 'Lemony' is simply a picturesque name for a girl.

The song appeared in many 19th century broadsides and has been widely collected in the south of England (though Frank Purslow suspects it may be Irish in origin), particularly in Sussex where Martin learnt it from the Sussex singer Bob Lewis.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 11:52 PM

Ah, better details. That "leman-day" business I quoted from Gundry, getting on for 5 years ago in this very thread when I was quite the newbie, seems even less likely now than it did then. One thing, though; Frank Purslow had days when everything seemed to be Irish. Sometimes it was, too, especially in the cases of late broadside songs, often set by migrant ballad-sheet sellers to melodies familiar in Ireland; but not so very likely in this particular case, I'd think.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 06:03 PM

Thanks a lot, Malcolm and Stewie! Another gap plugged. I'll have to think about those notes.

Subject: Tune Add: LIMADIE
From: Marion in Cornwall
Date: 29 Jun 03 - 06:07 AM

I was interested to see the Cornish version that Malcolm Douglas posted. Here is the tune, judging from the accompanying notes, it's from the same source as the words: Canow Kernow, Songs and Dances of Cornwall.


X:1
T:LIMADIE
I:abc2nwc
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:Bb
F|B2B3/2c/2 B2F3/2G/2|_A2BG (FD) B,3/2F/2|
d2B3/2B/2 e2d3/2c/2|BG A B c3c|d2BB e2dc|
B3/2c/2 BG (FD) EF|GG EE AG ED|G2(B3/2A/2) B2

Regards Marion

Subject: Lemady - Gundry Source
From:
Date: 09 Aug 04 - 07:17 PM

The source book is "Canow Kernow/Songs and Dances from Cornwall" by Inglis Gundry, pub. The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies 1966.
Jeremy Main

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,JMC
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 11:48 AM

My understanding of Julie Murphy's words is as follows:

As I was a-walking one fine summer morning
The fields and the meadows were decked and gay
The turtle doves and small birds in every bough a-building
So early in the Maytime at the break of the day

Hark says the fair maid, the nightingales are singing
The larks they are taking their flight up in the air
Come play to me a tune all on the pipes of ivory
The sun is just a-glimmering, arise my dear

Arise arise arise and pick your love a posy
All of the sweetest flowers that in the garden grow
Tis I will pick you posies both lily white pinks and roses
There�s none so sweet a flower as the lad I love

Oh why should my true love be banished from me
Or if he should die and I shall never see him more
It is my cruel parents that look so slightly on me
Because of the colour clothes that my love wears


You'd think the last word would be "wore" but never mind. If anyone would like to correct any of this please do.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 12:17 PM

I rather think that's the set that the Hammond brothers got from Mrs Marina Russell of Upwey, Dorset, in 1907. Frank Purslow printed it in The Foggy Dew (1974), but I still haven't managed to get hold of a copy of that, so it's just a guess based on the opening line.

Mrs Russell knew a lot of songs, but was often a bit vague about the words, so the text may have been augmented from elsewhere; I won't know until I've seen the book, but I'd suspect that was Julie's source. So far as I know, Mrs Russell's set has never been printed anywhere else.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Anglo
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 01:21 PM

From Frank Purslow, "The Foggy Dew":


SWEET LEMMINY

As I was walking one fine Summer's morning,
The fields and the meadows were pleasant, green and gay,
The birds sweetly singing, the boughs were adorning,
So early in the morning by the break of day.

It's hark! Oh, hark! how the nightingales are singing,
The larks they are taking their flight up in the air,
The small birds and turtle doves un every bough are building,
The sun is just glimmering, arise, my dear!

Arise, love, arise, and gather your love a posy,
The sweetest flowers that grow in yonder grove.
I will pluck my love a posy, sweet lilies, pinks and roses,
But none so sweet as Lemminy, the girl I love.

Oh! Lemminy, thou art the fairest creature,
All on her spinet so sweetly she does play,
I will play her a tune all on the pipes of ivory,
So early in the morning by the break of day.

It's why should they banish my true love from me?
Why should she die and I never see her more?
Because her cruel parents look so slightly upon me,
All for the white robes I'd have her wear.


Hammond Dt.779. Mrs Marina Russell, Upwey, Dorset. January/February, 1907.

As was usually the case with this singer, she had only portions of the text; in this instance they amounted to three verses, but these were not very consistent. I have therefore used the text printed by Pitts, slightly amended as per Mrs Russell. The origin of the song has puzzled many people, and it is obviously incomplete if not actually confused. Both Cornish and North Country origins have been claimed for it. Publications in the Journal of the Folk Song Society gave rise to various explanations and conjectures. (See also Baring Gould's "Songs of the West" - 'Midsummer Carol' - and "A Garland of Country Song" - 'Lemonday'.) About the only thing that commentators agree on is that the various names given to the young lady are in some way connected with the old English name for a sweetheart - Leman. At the risk of being considered a crank, I will stick my neck out and say that I am almost certain the song is of Irish origin even possibly a translation from the Gaelic. I therefore found it interesting to read Ann Gilchrist's comments (in the F.S.S. Journal) regarding the similarity of this tune, and that of Samuel Lover's once well-known song 'The Angel's Whisper', with folk tunes of undoubted Irish origin.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 16 Mar 06 - 09:49 PM

Thanks for that. Somehow I overlooked the fact that Mrs Russell's text was printed in The Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol VIII (issue 34) 1930, 201-2. It goes as follows:

Hark, says the fair maid, the nightingales are singing,
The larks they are taking their flight up in the air,
The small birds and turtle doves on every bough are building,
The sun is just a-glimmering, Arise my dear.

Arise, my fair one, and pick your love a posy
One of the finest flowers that in the garden grows.
Tis I will pick you posies, both lily-white pinks and roses,
There's none so sweet a flower as the lad I love.

Oh why should my true love be banished from me,
Or if he should die and I shall never see him more.
It is my cruel parents that look so slight-a-ly on me
Because of the colour clothes that my love wears.

Mrs Russell would be Julie Murphy's source, then (the last couple of lines would clinch it, I think) but via the Journal, presumably, rather than The Foggy Dew; and with the first verse introduced from elsewhere and some minor alterations made, perhaps inadvertently.

Miss Gilchrist's comments on the tune (Journal, V (19) 1915, 176-7) don't actually identify any of the "(Irish) folk tunes" to which Lover's song (which I haven't heard) bore, in her view, a resemblance, so I don't know how far we can extrapolate from that to include Lemady.

It's perfectly possible, of course, though it's all a bit vague at the moment. As to Frank Purslow's suggestion that the song might be "a translation from ... Gaelic", we'd need more than just one person's hunch by way of evidence. Still, you never know.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,JMC
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 06:28 AM

Fantastic, well that's part of the confusion cleared up, and it only took four years!

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,Jim Causley
Date: 01 May 06 - 12:15 PM

Can i just say a big thank you as well. We sing The Midsummer Carol in The Devil's Interval, which we got from Baring Gould and it too mentions Leman Day. It's great to see hear all these other versions and also to be aware of how many other bloomin' singers have recorded it! Although they all seem different enough even if the words are pretty consistant. The girls and i will sing you our version sometime soon!

best - Jim

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: Mary Humphreys
Date: 01 May 06 - 06:36 PM

Look forward to hearing it soon, Jim. What about at the Everyman in a few moths time?
Mary Humphreys

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST
Date: 09 May 06 - 01:01 PM

It's a date. Although that a bit of a way off, i hope to see you before then Mary!

Jim x

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,Elspeth
Date: 09 May 06 - 05:14 PM

I have a CD recording by Graham O'Callaghan singing the Gundry version of the song which is excellent as you might expect. The accompanying song notes are also very thorough.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion: tune guitar/verses
From: GUEST,Sim1
Date: 19 Oct 18 - 06:02 AM

Hi there,
I am struggling with the tunes though since I am only intermediate at best when it comes to playing the guitar, but would like to have it a go trying to play the song. What I would need is a matching line lyrics/chords... Perhaps someone could help? THANX!!

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 19 Oct 18 - 10:17 AM

Jarlath Henderson has what I think is a superb version of this song on his CD from 2 years ago, "Hearts Broken, Heads Turned". He stated his source as Peter Bellamy, and has it as "Sweet Lemany".

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,Jonathan Falkner
Date: 20 Mar 23 - 11:12 AM

The Gigspanner Big Band (Peter Knight etc.) are doing Lemonday as part of their Saltlines tour with Raynor Winn. They don't use the final (death) verse, and attribute the words to Baring Gould.

Subject: RE: Help: Lemady - Confusion
From: GUEST,Harriet Still
Date: 30 Mar 25 - 04:27 PM

From Peter Robson’s ‘THE TESS DURBEYFIELD SONG BOOK’ in the Thomas Hardy Society Journal pp. 31-32:

Once Tess knows which songs were Angel’s favourites she decides
that ‘To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised
them privately, at odd moments, especially “The break o’ the day”’ (TD
1990: 324). Hardy then gives the following lines of this song:
Arise, arise, arise!
And pick your love a posy,
All o’ the sweetest flowers
That in the garden grow.
The turtle doves and sma’ birds
In every bough a building,
So early in the May-time
At the break o’ the day! (TD 1990: 324–5).
31
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The song, which gives a townsman’s unrealistically romantic view of love
in a rural landscape, is known under a number of titles, most commonly
as ‘Sweet Lemminy’.23 It very likely originated in one of the London
pleasure gardens and was first printed in about 1815).24 It was very
popular amongst country singers and was collected by the Hammonds
from Mrs Marina Russell of Upwey, Dorset, in 1907.
Hardy included two and a half verses of this song in his ‘Country
Songs’ collection, listed as ‘Old song sung at Melbury Osmond about
1820’.25 Given the date he is likely to have obtained the words from his
mother, who would have been a young girl in the village at that time. He
has transposed and combined two half verses from the Melbury version
to give the complete verse in Tess. The final half verse from Melbury
Osmond, omitted by Hardy from Tess, reads:
So then he played it over
All on the pipes of ivory
So early in the morning
By [sic]
At the break of the day.26
‘Playing on the pipes of ivory’ was a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
Since Hardy’s grandfather’s manuscript song book includes ‘The Musical
Lovers’, which deploys the analogy more transparently, Hardy would
have been well aware of the innuendo. By choosing ‘The Break o’ the
Day’, which draws on the same sexual metaphor, as a favourite song of
Angel’s, Hardy subtly illustrates the character’s sexual naïvety.