Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)

Subject: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Dec 07 - 06:16 PM

Right now the BBC are running a serialisation of Cranford - pretty good too. Basically soap opera, but I like good soap opera. (And in many ways it seems to me that real life is a lot closer to living through a soap opera than it is to living in a novel.)

Anyway in the last episode I say one of the characters sang The Parting Glass - but he used a different tune I'd never heard before. Anyone out there recognise it and can identify it?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Dec 07 - 06:24 PM

I hope we get to see it over here, soon. It looks great!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Dec 07 - 06:35 PM

It would be quite possible that somebody at that time would have sung "Good night and joy be with you all", the Scottish song that "The Parting Glass" is based on. It was often used as a leavetaking song for social gatherings in Scotland (in the way "Auld Lang Syne" and "We're No Awa Tae Bide Awa" came to be later), and maybe further south to some extent. The tune is only slightly different from the modern Irish one you know.

Does the book imply any particular song? Which chapter was this episode based on?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Dec 07 - 06:43 PM

"Three Elizabeth Gaskell novels have been woven together to create this uniquely rich and comic drama about ordinary human lives during the course of one extraordinary year in this small town."

- from the BBC Press Release

not easy to pin it down to the original books Jack and I confess to not having read them all despite Knutsford only being a stones throw away.

Nevertheless a delightful and "addictive" series with a sparkling cast list. Loved "The Parting Glass" too.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Dec 07 - 07:41 PM

Yes; more details, please. I am working frankly bizarre hours in the run-up to Christmas, and haven't been able to watch the serial. Usually in such adaptations, introduced songs are not even mentioned in the books adapted. I recall a radio dramatization of a Hardy story (was it 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'? I don't recall) some years ago, in which 'A Brown Bird Singing' was used as a recurring motif; a lot of people wrote in to complain about the crass anachronism (the song hadn't yet been written when Hardy wrote the story).

'Good night and joy be with you all' was, as Jack has already said, extremely popular in Scotland at the beginning of the 19th century. 'This tune is played at the Conclusion of every convivial Dancing meeting throughout Scotland', as the Gows put it (Gow's Repository of the Dance Music of Scotland, II, 76). It was certainly known also in the North of England; Armstrong of Liverpool, for one, printed a broadside text in the early 1820s.

I don't have time just now to render the tune as printed by Gow to abc, but here is a link to a midi, which includes the bass part: Good Night and Joy be wi' ye a'. The tune has also been found with oral forms of 'Just as the Tide was Flowing', and first appeared, so far as I know, in Aird (1782) as The Peacock.

Probably, these are forms that you will recognise. If that's the case, at least they may serve to show potential helpers what you are not looking for. Although the producers may have commissioned proper research for the material introduced, it's all too rare for the same attention to be given to matters such as song and accent as is usually devoted to costume; so we can't rely on that.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 07:46 AM

I a finding, as a Gaskell fan, the change in the order of events somewhat bizarre.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Brakn
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 12:26 PM

Tell us more Linda.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: GUEST,Jim McLean
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 11:59 AM

It's also in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 4, (1745-1760).

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 03:18 PM

We watched the episode of Cranford and made comments about it being a nice tune and sufficiently different from the usual one to be worth tracking down.

Just had a look through Mudcat and found this thread
BLICKY. My recollection of the tune sung is not all that clear, but I think that it may be the one from the film Waking Ned linked to by Jeri in the 8th posting in the thread.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 03:46 PM

Thread 37399: Origin, The Parting Glass, has a version from the Bodleian Library as well as the Scottish "Good Night...."
Parting Glass

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 04:47 PM

I've been tracking down a couple of links.
The Internet Movie Database (scroll down to the lower end of the page or search for "Music Department" lists an arranger for "the parting glass". It also lists members of The Voice Squad as singing in the film.
Looking further, the parting glass is listed on a Voice Squad record BLICKY although there isn't a sound clip to listen to and check if it is the tune of interest.
Maybe someone out there has the album and can tell us about the tune?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 07:19 PM

I'm pretty sure Waking Ned had the generally sung tune.

I don't think the version in the episode of Cranford sounded too like the midi Malcolm linked to. But maybe it was the song used.

The BBC website has this: "The song sung by Jack Marshland in the same episode was The Parting Glass. It's a traditional song, often sung at the end of a gathering of friends. It was allegedly the most popular song sung in both Scotland and Ireland before Robert Burns wrote "Auld Lang Syne". Thanks to David Wake."

Maybe someone will get the DVD of the series when it comes out in January, and can find out that way.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Betsy
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 08:54 PM

Let's get back to the original song and tune . My Missus was watching the programme - whilst I was having a kip on the couch ,after my Sunday lunch - and the whole thing spoilt my slumber - nice singing - but the wrong tune. Why do we need to keep re-inventing traditional songs , maybe the BBC is afraid of copyright issues . Leave things be !!!!!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: GUEST,martin ellison
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 02:47 AM

Keep watching and you'll see Leyland Morris Men in a later episode.
Martin

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 03:43 AM

Didn't we see them last night during the May Day celebrations?

Apparently the tradition of May Day in Knutsford, along with Jack in the Green, post-dates the period of the series by about 50 years. But it still looked very charming.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 03:59 AM

David Wake seems to be a playwright with nothing at all about music on his website, it's anybody's guess what he might have told the programme makers or where he got the info from. Why on earth would the BBC use him as a consultant on this?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: GUEST,martin ellison
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 06:03 AM

Ruth - you may be right, I didn't see it last night.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 06:12 AM

I suspect the tune used was every bit as "authentic" as the one we normally sing, Betsy. Songs don't just exist in a single version, not the best songs anyway.

"Wrong tune" is a term that doesn't really belong in a folk music context.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: GUEST,Ruth at work
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 08:11 AM

It's a bit blink-and-you-miss-it, Martin. In fact, you pretty much only saw their sticks being shaken behind Imelda Staunton's head.

There was also some "sanding" the doorsteps in last night's programme, something I've heard of as a May Day custom in Knutsford but never seen.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 12:43 PM

Knutsford.....as in the the motorway stop........?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Emma B
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 01:14 PM

Royal May Day in Knutsford

"One tradition which has now become almost unique to Knutsford's celebrations and is still perpetuated is the custom of "sanding", whereby the pavements of the town are decorated with motto's and patterns in coloured sand. One local legend refers to King Canute for its origin, who is supposed to have wished a bridal couple as many children as grains of sand. Sanding was then a wedding custom before it became a May Day event in Knutsford."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Brakn
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 01:17 PM

I knew a barmaid in Knutsford - we used to call her "Junction 19" - the Knutsford turnoff. ;-)

(joking of course!!)

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 01:59 PM

Of course "wrong tune" makes sense in this context - it's a historical context, not a "folk context" whatever that may mean. If the programme was showing people singing in the 1850s, using a tune composed more than a century later, it was wrong.

The song people in northern England would have been singing in the mid-19th century would have been "Good night and joy be with you all", in one of the versions by Scott, Hogg or Alexander Boswell, and using the tune current around 1800 (which was reproduced so many times without significant variation that the idea of a "folk process" applying to it back then is nuts). They would NOT have been singing Dominic Behan's take on a twentieth-century Irish version of the words, and they would not have been using an unrelated tune.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 02:09 PM

I'm not even sure what "Betsy" meant about "the wrong Tune" as there's a COMPLETELY different one (same words)that I've heard sung in England, as well as the one sung by various Irish singers such as Dominic Behan, Tommy Makem and the Clancys.
The one used in Cranford did resemble the latter tune, and I (maybe naively) took it to be the original tune from which the later versions had evolved thro' the "oral tradition".

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 02:19 PM

No reason to assume that the tune used would have been one "a tune composed more than a century later". (And "north England" isn't particularly relevant in is case, since the character doing the singing was meant to be Irish.)

As for Dominic Behan, the version he sang was essentially the same, tune and words, as the one in Colm O Lochlann's Irish Street Ballads, published 1938, which was, in Colm's words "learnt by my mother from my grandfather".

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Dec 07 - 02:41 AM

Since we don't yet know what the tune used in the tv adaptation is (except, apparently, that it isn't the familiar one), there is every possibility that it is an anachronistic modern setting. Or it may not be. Can't reach any firm conclusion without hearing it or without some details from the producers of the programme.

I'm dubious about David Wake's claim that it was 'the most popular song in Scotland and Ireland...' (etc); it was popular in Scotland at the time the Gows printed the tune, yes, but that isn't the same thing. Was the character 'meant to be Irish' from Gaskell, or a fanciful introduction of the adaptors? Did the other characters in the scene appear to be familiar with the song, or was it introduced as a novelty to them?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 11 Dec 07 - 07:24 PM

Well again, I have to ask, "What is the familiar tune?"
Answer: "the one you're familiar with".
The one I heard first is the Clancy's version tune, which, as I said above, is close, but not exactly, as sung in "Cranford".
The other tune, if I must name names, as sung by "the Barden of England" in the Bedford bar at Sidmouth Festival is totally different (tho' very/equally pleasant and well sung!)
So if you've only ever heard it sung to one tune instead of (as I have )two, you'll be thinking the tune you've heard is IT!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Parting Glass - Cranford (BBC)
From: Flash Company
Date: 12 Dec 07 - 04:55 AM

Another 'sanding' legend is that Canute, having forded the river at Canute's Ford, sat down and shook the sand and water out of his shoes.
I was born within 5 miles of Knutsford and grew up in the area, going to Primary School at Tabley, just down the road. At my last siting of my old school it was a clock museum!
I think the incident of the cow in the lime pit may have been based on a real happening, I seem to remember Gran telling a similar tale.

FC