Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat

Subject: William Bloat - background
From: Branwen23
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 11:27 AM

Looking for backgroud / origin info for "William Bloat".

Every version I've found, the same as the one in the DT, attributes the tune to a Raymond Calvert. But I've been told that that version is different from the original tune, that the original tune was just the story and not an advertisement.

I'm told that the tune is pretty old. I'd be interested to know the background and original author, if it was in fact only modified by Calvert to be an advertisement.

Anyone know anything about this? Any truth to the "Whitman wrote it" story?


-Branwen-

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 02:19 PM

VERY interesting question, Branwen, am also very interested in the answer... this is such a great song!

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Branwen23
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 02:31 PM

as it is rather popular, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a response to the thread....
we'll see... maybe everyone's digging for info.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Robby
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 03:21 PM

It does make for an interesting commercial, does it not? Promoting the home industry, while disparaging foreign goods.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 04:05 PM

Look over on the Ulster-Scot thread. Seamus

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Branwen23
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 04:10 PM

got a blue clicky, Seamus?

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 05:38 PM

As for the tune it sounds the same tune as Raglan Road with one section cut out.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Jimmy C
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 06:18 PM

The tunes for both Raglan Roag and William Bloat are the same tune as The Dawning of the Day. I do not know if this tune is known by an older name ?. As afr as the author of William Bloat goes I do not know but will make inquiries.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 02 Nov 00 - 09:14 PM

I'll try a blue clicky for that other thread: Ulster Scots Music.

The Ballad of William Bloat was written by Raymond Calvert (1906-1959). Calvert was born at Helen's Bay, County Down (about five miles from where I am right now), and educated at Queen's University, Belfast. He wrote the ballad as a recitation for some bash at Queen's.

As I said in the other thread, any version that has "Dublin" instead of "German" in the penultimate line has got it wrong. In the last line, "Belfast" rather than "Irish" is also wrong. Our own Digital Tradition is wrong on this latter count: I think this mistake probably got its enormously wide currency when the poem was rendered into a song - by, I believe, David Hammond. The Oxford University Press is wrong on both counts, and for good measure has the poem as anonymous.

I am away from home at present and have been able to put my hands on only one correct version. This was in Rich and Rare, a magnificent anthology - surely the best - of Irish songs. poems, recitations, all authoritatively edited by Sean McMahon. He thanked Irene Calvert for permission to reproduce William Bloat. I have a feeling the ballad was first published by Blackstaff Press.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: John Moulden
Date: 03 Nov 00 - 04:52 PM

Further to my posting on that other thread. The first publication was in an anthology called Brave Crack published only shortly after Calvert wrote it. Blackstaff published it with illustrations recently.

One thing has not been made clear: it was not originally a song. It may have been David Hammond who first put a tune to it but that's not clearly known.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Nov 00 - 10:22 PM

John, I thought I put it fairly clearly in the post before yours! (And also in the other thread) I don't have much evidence for "blaming" Hammond, except that his name seems to be credited on several recordings of the song version. The Clancys were among the first to record it as a song, and that again points the finger of blame towards Hammond.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: paddymac
Date: 04 Nov 00 - 02:59 PM

One thing seems certain - poor old Willy had a pretty poor outlook on life. Perhaps with good reason. The question the poem-song always leaves in my mind is whether it is anywhere near to expressing a wide-spread sense of bleakness in the lives of the working class folks living along the Shankill Rd. "back then"? I'm not hypothesizing here, just asking.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 12 Nov 00 - 07:25 PM

Well it looks like we were right to finger David Hammond. I've just found a little collection he published called "Songs of Belfast" published by Gilert Dalton (Dublin) in 1978. He has "Belfast" instead of "Irish" and also changes "steady drip" to "drip, drip, drip."

Calvert's idiosyncratic punctuation and dialectic spelling is tidied up, and in at least one instance replaced with Hammond's. (From which I assume that he didn't have a printed copy to work from.) He gives no copyright credit or acknowledgement but does give Calvert as the author.

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 13 Nov 00 - 10:43 AM

Great thread. I heard the song by the Clancy Brothers and I sing it on occassion. My former mother-in-law loathed the song and I can't saw my current mother in law is real fond of it (Both being catholic as I am) but hey, a good song is a good song. I did avoid singing it in my first mother-in-law's presence as she is a native of Belfast. But still, a good thread. I had assumned Hammond wrote the tune. Thanks for the correc info1 kindest reguards, Neil

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Branwen23
Date: 13 Nov 00 - 11:13 AM

So, there's nothing behind the statement that a shorter version of the poem was written by Whitman before Calvert got hold of it and made it an advertisement?

Subject: RE: Help: William Bloat - background
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 13 Nov 00 - 06:35 PM

Branwen, while I was in Belfast (I'm back in Sherwood Forest now) I meant to chase up some press cuttings from when a dear old chum of mine, Gregg Coulson (now dead), took the Oxford University Press to task over its mauling of the ballad. Just didn't get time. They'd be useful, because he and I think the Belfast Telegraph were in touch with Irene, who I think was/is? Calvert's widow. If and when I catch up with the cuttings I'll revive the thread.

I'm pretty dead certain Calvert had nothing to do with Bloat being an advert, and that he wrote it in the circumstances John described. Maybe John might know if there was a Whitman antecedent?

Subject: RE: Origin: William Bloat
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Oct 22 - 03:31 PM

https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterdenton/2390127073

The Ballad of William Bloat

In a mean abode on the Shankill Road
Lived a man called William Bloat.
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on,
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash,
Oh never was crime so quick,
But the steady drip on the pillow slip
Of her lifeblood made him sick,
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted cold and thick.

And yet he was glad that he’d done what he had,
When she lay there stiff and still,
But a sudden awe of the angry law
Struck his soul with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun,
He resolved himself to kill.

Then he took the sheet off his wife’s cold feet
And twisted it into a rope.
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginnin’.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she’s still alive and sinnin’,
For the razor blade was foreign made –
But the sheet was Irish linen.


Raymond Calvert, 1926
Book cover illustration by Hector McDonnell
Published by The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1982

Subject: RE: Origin: William Bloat
From: Felipa
Date: 31 Oct 22 - 07:02 PM

Joe, the sheet was BELFAST linen - and I think "the razor blade was GERMAN made" was also the original wording, though I can see that people may wish to update the song in modern times.

Subject: RE: Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Oct 22 - 07:28 PM

Traditional Ballad Index entry:

Ballad of William Bloat, The

DESCRIPTION: William Bloat's wife "got his goat" so he cuts her throat. "To finish the fun so well begun He resolved himself to kill." He hangs himself with a sheet. He dies but she survives: "for the razor blade was German made But the sheet was Belfast linen"
AUTHOR: Raymond Calvert (1830-1883) (source: Hammond-SongsOfBelfast)
EARLIEST DATE: 1978 (Hammond-SongsOfBelfast)
KEYWORDS: marriage homicide suicide humorous wife shrewishness
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Hammond-SongsOfBelfast, p. 59, "The Ballad of William Bloat" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, WMBLOAT*
NOTES [193 words]: When this song was first indexed, we followed the lead of Hammond in saying that the author, Raymond Calvert, lived 1830-1883. This led me to much speculation about why the song picked on Germans at a time when Germany was just becoming united and had not yet become an obvious threat. (Indeed, the Clancy Brothers made the [ineffective] razor English rather than German, and the [effective]).
His daughter-in-law Sue Calvert explained that our dates for Calvert were wrong: "He was my father-in-law, born Oct 1906 at Banchory House, died July 1959. Bloat was written in 1926." Thus the song indeed comes from a period after Germany's rise to power.
I was reminded a bit of this controversy in reading a story about George III, found on page 17 of James Dugan's The Great Mutiny (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1965): "Although he had never visited Germany, as the Elector of Hannover-Braunschweig George believed that everything German was superior to everything British, including discipline and underwear. He wore only German linen, unaware that one suit had been forged in Dublin as a secret joke on a monarch otherwise difficult to link to anything humorous." - RBW
Last updated in version 2.6
File: Hamm059

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THE BALLAD OF WILLIAM BLOAT (DT Lyrics)
(Raymond Calvert)

In a mean abode on the Skankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash
Oh never was crime so quick
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip '
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.

And yet he was glad he had done what he had
When she lay there stiff and still
But a sudden awe of the angry law
Struck his heart with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun
He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from the wife's coul' feet
And twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
'Twas an easy end, let's hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she's still alive and sinning.
For the razor blade was German made
But the sheet was Belfast linen.

From Songs of Belfast, Hammond
@Irish @murder @suicide
filename[ WMBLOAT
TUNE FILE: WMBLOAT
CLICK TO PLAY
RG

Popup Midi Player

The version in the Digital Tradition is an exact transcription from Songs of Belfast, edited by David Hammond (1978, 1986 by Mercier Press), page 59

Subject: RE: Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Nov 22 - 07:37 PM

In Belfast, the pope would be unpopular..... not so much in Ireland in general.
...The way I sing it tweaks the lyrics slightly to follow the tune better... and I never knew the 2nd verse "drip,drip, drip"

Subject: RE: Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Nov 22 - 12:19 PM

Joe - post transcript

Subject: RE: Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Nov 22 - 03:11 PM

Right... German/Belfast got bowdlerized to Foreign/Irish. I like German/Belfast better.

Subject: RE: Origin: The Ballad of William Bloat
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 10 Nov 22 - 04:34 PM

Information about The Ballad of William Bloat from Clydesburn.blogspot.com   http://clydesburn.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-ballad-of-william-bloat-by-raymond.html