Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 02:17 PM

Another thing that struck me today is the parallel between 'St James Infirmary' and 'Didn't He Ramble' (mentioned more than once above).

Both are old songs, reworked to reflect a contemporary world of bar-rooms, gambling and bad living. I've no grand conclusion to draw, it's just an interesting co-incidence.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 02:07 PM

"I have never knowingly argued that all version with the words St James in derive from the jazz standard. I cannot be bothered to try to work out where you go that idea from. What I have said is that versions of what became known as the jazz standard were widespread prior to the release and copyrighting by Irving Mills of that version
"

Sorry if I misunderstood, but you did say:

"anything post the Armstrong may well have been influenced by it. It may be like the story of the folklorists who went to Africa and found a chap playing blues and said This proves the blues came from Africa but it turned out the chap was a big John Lee Hooker fan and had been learning his stuff."

It still seems to me there is considerable evidence for a 'St James' strain predating Armstrong and continuing in oral tradition well into the 20th century, and that is what really interests me about this discussion. If you can accept that then we have no argument.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 11:22 AM

Without access to Holden, it *looks like* his "Unfortunate Rake" tune is quite a bit different from Crosby's (which is the common jig tune of that name).

http://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Unfortunate_Rake_(2)_(The)

Click on the "Back to" link to see the tune, also known as "Apples in Winter."

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 10:20 AM

From a site whose reliability I cannot vouch for, but referring to the Holden version of The Unfortunate Rake, which appears to have also been known as Basket of Turf!

BASKET OF TURF (An Cliaban/Cliabh M?na). "Bundle and Go (1)," "Creel of Turf (The)," "Disconsolate Buck (The)," "Lass from Collegeland (The)," "Unfortunate Rake (1) (The)," "Wandering Harper (The)," "Wee Wee Man (The)," "Winter Garden Quadrille." Irish, Double Jig. E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (most versions): AABB'CC'DD'EE' (Breathnach/CR? V). A turf basket was used to haul home peat for fuel. Some versions are set in the dorian mode, and it is sometimes played with the parts reversed from the order given in Breathnach's CR? II (1976). In CR? V, Breathnach prints a five-part version, while fiddlers P.J. and Martin Hayes have a three part version they have recorded as "Castle (2) (The)" (corresponding roughly to Breathnach's parts 1, 2 & 5). The song "The Wandering Harper" is set to this air. Holden (Collection of the most esteemed old Irish Melodies, Dublin, 1807) gives it as "Unfortunate Rake (The)."

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 10:12 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjugQ8QBbYk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnrT2U_pA0k

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 17 Nov 17 - 10:09 AM

Steve Gardham

Thanks for this contribution, which is the sort of information I am looking for, even though once again we have drawn a blank on direct evidence for an ancestor called the Unfortunate Rake. I too have seen the version with the gap in. Carrots also has Lock Hospital and is called The Unfortunate Lad, as I am sure you know. (National Library of Scotland web site, version, they think, printed in Durham).


That makes two of us unable to find any broadsheet versions with 'The Unfortunate Rake' in the title. This is one reason why I believe that A L Lloyd was singing a composite song on the famous Folkways LP; one of the things he 'composited' was the title, which his articles show he was aware of, but provide no reference to. On the contrary his second article cites the Such version, which was 'Lad' and 'lock'. But by this time he was convinced that St James Infirmary was a descendent, via the Dewey version collected by Sharp, as his articles show. He also believed that that there had been a version called 'the Unfortunate Rake'. Where did he get this idea?

I think you have hit the nail on the head, as I too followed references back. The article called Songs from the Kidson Collection I think you are referring to? Checking back I think the authors were Kidson and Lucy Broadwood, to be precise? This is the article where I found the reference to Crosby which I gave above.

I printed off the 'air' called The Unfortunate Rake, and have studied it briefly. I have compared it with the tune of My Jewel My Joy and with the tune of Streets of Loredo. Not like either at all in my view. Unlike most other candidates for an ancestor of St James, it is the A B form. For people not familiar with this usage, it means that the melody has two distinct parts. When playing such a tune for a dance, sometimes you have to play one A then 2 Bs, or some such formula. Even without part repeats, the tune is twice as long as My Jewel My Joy. Both parts of Rake are in 6/8 and in E minor. Crosby has printed words under the tune, as follows, in case people are interested. Alert, there may be the odd typo

OH! many a mountain I wearily measure, and
far have I wander'd on Erin's green shore, This
harp is my o-ly companion and treasure, When
welcomes at sweet hos-pi-ta--li-ty's door.
Then list, gentle youth, while I sing you a
dit-ty I learnt in dear Connaught, the
soil of my birth: Ye maidens attend, whilst the
tear drop of pi-ty shall fall like a crystalline
gem to the earth.

May I make a general point about the ballad form. Ballads usually followed a general 'genre' which had some variations in numbers of stressed syllables per line. This song has four stresses per line (they sing crystalline quickly, slightly irregular here perhaps) and four lines per part. In 6\8 like Rake, you get two bars per line: in 3\4 you might get four bars per line (making 16 bars overall, a classic ballad musical form) in Streets of Loredo; four stresses per line, four lines per verse. Yes, one can often sing one set of words to different tunes; this is because the ballads came in a set genre, and in my view, not necessarily evidence that the song probably was sing to any tune that had that musical form.

I guess he (the harpist) is fed up because he's got the clap? Or maybe not :) But these words do fit the tune as written closely. I hope this answers the person above who found it difficult to believe that the 1808 version of The Unfortunate Rake did not 'carry' the words of the Unfortunate Lad, though as I am not sure what 'carry' means I cannot be sure.

No title is given for the words, as opposed to the 'air', but the whole is entitled 'The Unfortunate Rake'. And this is the 1808 one mentioned in the literature.

I haven't looked up the other reference from the Kidson/Broadwood article yet. It is Holden's Irish airs.


On Riplington Gardens, I have seen this article. It maybe that the 'gardens' bit goes back to an earlier version from London, set in Covent Garden. There is a Riplingham in Yorkshire; and a place called Riplington somewhere else. So your guess on this is as good as any!

Broadside ballad sheets were printed in Ireland. Now one web site I looked at recently (cannot recall which one) claimed that the Unfortunate Rake was an Irish broadside, in which case somebody must have evidence somewhere to support this assertion (though no link or reference was provided on that web site. I can find a few examples on line but not yet an index searchable for one about the unfortunate rake. I cannot find an Unfortunate Rake here, for example: http://itmacatalogues.ie/Default/en-GB/Search/AdvancedSearch

Brian Peters

I have never knowingly argued that all version with the words St James in derive from the jazz standard. I cannot be bothered to try to work out where you go that idea from. What I have said is that versions of what became known as the jazz standard were widespread i
prior to the release and copyrighting by Irving Mills of that version, and in saying that I was relying on the research of Harwood. Thank you and goodbye.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 05:55 PM

of course theres WH Auden's parody Miss Gee, about how a maiden lady due to sexual repression and frustrated creativity contracts cancer.
At the time Auden was fascinated by the doctrines of an American psychologist called Homer Lane who thought that repression turned inward and caused people to 'grow' cancer.

Auden did the same with Frankie and Johnny, he write a parody about a young man called Victor - about a young man, so messed up by his parents domination and unworldly moral code that he ends up murdering his randy young wife.

Actually there was another Auden St James's Infirmary parody - a sort of Freudian lament called As I went out one evening.

hope you don't mind me mentioning this.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 05:20 PM

Lyrics for Sharp's Appalachian version, collected from Victoria Donald, June 8, 1916:

I went down by St James hospital one morning
So early one, morning, it was early one day
I found my son, my own son
Wrapped up in white linen, as cold as the clay

Dear father, dear father, come sit you down by me
Sit you down by me and pity my case
My head is aching, my heart is breaking
Without relief I surely must die

I'll send for a doctor to heal up your wounds
And three gay soldiers to bear up your body
And three gay young ladies with a bunch of red roses
In each hand to perfume you to march you on

O beat your drum loudly and play your fife merry
To march a dead body along to the grave yard
And plant the green sods over me
If I am a young man I knew I done wrong

Apart from the first line I don't see any similarity to the jazz / blues version. On the other hand, from English tradition we have:

Wrapped in a blanket far colder than clay (Cox)

Oh mother, oh mother, come sit you down by me
Come sit you down by me and pity my case (Adams)

His poor heart was breaking, his poor head was aching (Cox)

And into my coffin throw handfuls of roses
So as they may smell me as I go along (Sebbage)

Beat the drums.... , or similar is common to most of the English ones, though not the jazz song.

Mrs Donald's song is garbled, but almost all the elements are [resent in English tradition / broadside.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 04:23 PM

I don't know if any of this helps but I did a study of all of the versions fairly recently and I can't find the title 'The Unfortunate Rake' attached to any of them.
The Buck's Elegy c1790 (no imprint) has simply 'Covent Garden' as the setting. To me the suggestion that a more fitting setting would be a hospital seems fairly logical for the slightly later versions.

Pearson of Manchester had 'down by the ----------- Hospital' a device where the intention is that the singer fills in his own nearest hospital name. Ross of Newcastle, Williamson of Newcastle, Such of London, all had 'Lock'. These would all be c1850 but the later 'Sailor Cut Down in his Prime' printed by Forth of Hull has 'down by the Royal Albion'

Earlier oral versions from the 1900s of Unfortunate Lass just have 'As I was out walking one midsummer morning' or 'down in false garden'down by the seaside'.

This is only an opinion but the wording of the 1918 Sharp version is more akin to that of the blues song than English oral versions.

I WENT down by St James's Hospital.

It looks like Kidson was the source of the link to the Irish tune
'The Unfortunate rake' in JFSS 5 p254 (1909). Unfortunately the first line of Mrs Thompson's fragment from Knaresborough, Yorkshire runs 'As I was a walking in Rippleton Gardens' probably linking back to 'Covent Garden'. Other Gardens occur in other versions.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 01:29 PM

"It has been interesting, lots ideas shared. Cheers."

This I can agree with, thank you Karen.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 12:53 PM

"So that I now have 2 good reasons for not treating the Leniham version as an independent line:)

1 Odd that after over nearly 70 years of folkloric writing claiming Irish origins a song representing a whole line should suddenly appear

2 The singer said his version came from America."

So, let's get this straight:

In Point 1, you're suggesting that Tom Lenihan's song is a fake, presumably engineered by the "folk movement" to validate the sleeve notes of a 1960s Folkways LP. Even in our age of conspiracy theories, this is fantasy on an epic scale.

Point 2 has already been addressed by Jim Carroll. Athough I don't share Jim's scorn for deskbound research (there's plenty of good info to be accessed from a computer, as this discussion demonstrates), I'd have expected a serious researcher to place more credence in the testimony of a field worker who was actually there, and knew the singer for 20 years.

I can accept that Lloyd collated his own version of the song, and that the sleeve notes in question are flawed. But in trying to extend your argument to claim that all the instances of 'St James' in versions of what I'd better call Roud 2 derive from the jazz standard, you are ignoring the facts. These are that:

(a) An oral version mentioning St James but clearly of the Unfortunate Lad / Rake / Sailor Cut Down family was collected 10 years before 'St James Infirmary Blues' was recorded.

(b) Several other independent oral versions mention St James but otherwise are completely dissimilar to the jazz version. If the latter had influenced the former you would expect more common text, but they don't even use the word 'infirmary'.

I don't know whether it's a good idea to go into The Dying Cowboy / Tom Sherman's Bar-room strain of the song here (there's already been a Mudcat discussion of that one), but that goes back to at least 1916, so it seems that the jazz standard took the bar-room location from there - if not much else.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 09:25 AM

The derivation of this "lock" is not 100% clear.

OED:

"The... Lock Hospital in Southwark ... was probably so called on account of being specially isolated or quarantined, and some early sources discuss the security of the hospital and the need for inmates to be kept out of the city. An alternative suggestion that the name is derived from Middle French 'loque' rag ( < Dutch locke lock n.1), with reference to the rags with which the sores of lepers were dressed, seems less likely and cannot be substantiated."

"Seems less likely" doesn't mean "wrong," but "cannot be substantiated" means there's no contemporaneous evidence for it and so no reason to prefer it.

Conceivably (which means no more than "just a suggestion"), the application of "lock" owes something to the similarity of the French (or even Dutch)and English words, but precisely which "came first" would currently be unknowable - and could not have been generally known at the time.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 06:03 AM

Hello Jim

"Tom says he learned this from his sister living in America."

As for contradicting facts to ride a hobby horse: descending into insults ...

Spare us the missionaries; not that I know anything about your local traditions of course... :)

I have encountered the Lock Hospitals comes from loques idea before.
I used to believe it but not one of the people who repeats this idea has cited any evidence in support of it. By evidence I mean an example of this usage from the times.

Thank you for reading.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 03:47 AM

Incidentally
"The name Lock Hospital dates back to earlier leprosy hospitals, which were known as ?lock? hospitals derived from the French loques, the rags that were used to cover the leper?s lesions. ?Lock Hospitals? were developed specifically for the treatment of syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection."
http://rcpilibrary.blogspot.ie/2013/11/westmoreland-lock-hospital.html
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Nov 17 - 03:26 AM

"The singer said his version came from America."
The singer said he learned the song from his sister, who moved to America
She went there with an established local repertoire
This becomes a little tiresome Karen, it seems you are contradicting facts in order to ride a personal hobby horse - not rare in this area where we are regularly told what we don?t know about our local musical traditions
You've gone though the lot, from folk magazines to "learned from the radio"
Maybe it's time to send in the missionaries
We befriended Tom and for over twenty years got to know him and his songs quite well.
If there are two things I've learned about folk songs over the last half century of involvement it?s how little any of us know about the subject and how much we have missed.
We had exactly the same thing from academic desk-jockeys claiming the non-literate Traveller; John Reilly must have had access to literacy to know the ballads he knew - because his repertoire didn't fit the latest pet theory circulating around the academic ivory towers
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:11 PM

But the fact is that an air called "The Unfortunate Rake" existed in Ireland as early as 1808.

It's hard to imagine that an air with that name, which rather resembles Joyce's tune ("My Jewel, My Joy") said to have been learned in Ireland in the 1790s, did *not* carry the words of the song later called "The Unfortunate Rake."

Whether any associated lyrics then contained the line about "St. James Hospital" is unknown.

It seems to be pretty well established that "St. James' Infirmary Blues" did not exist before the 1920s. That British (or even American) singers would (or could) have arbitrarily lifted the "St. James" name from an otherwise unrecorded ancestor of the "Blues" and retrofitted it independently to older songs defies (my) credulity.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 08:27 PM

So that I now have 2 good reasons for not treating the Leniham version as an independent line:)

1 Odd that after over nearly 70 years of folkloric writing claiming Irish origins a song representing a whole line should suddenly appear

2 The singer said his version came from America.

Taking a break from this for a while!

It has been interesting, lots ideas shared. Cheers.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 08:06 PM

It says on the Lenihan web site he learned it from his sister and ...can you guess where? We are back with the John Lee Hooker fan scenario in a manner of speaking, maybe?

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 07:49 PM

I try to stay away from red herrings, but folkies must be aware of lock and key double entendres/metaphors in folksong?

If you google for a document about the Bath Lock Hospital and Penetentiary 1816, you'll find a document of the type that convinced me that the term was not slangy or vulgar at that date. Hope this is useful.:)

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 07:35 PM

Hello Brian

I do have a theory, of sorts, but it is a theory about how a story about its origins has been built up to the extent that it is widely regarded as fact.

The story is that the song is a descendant of an English, or in some versions of the tale, Irish, or Anglo Irish, song called precisely 'The Unfortunate Rake.' Mostly, the story claims that this was a 19th century broadsheet. The main source of this story appears to be liner notes to a Folkways LP compiled by Kenneth Goldstein, which I find cited as an authority time and time again.

At the risk of repeating myself, shall we say, even more often, I have been looking for 'evidence' to support this story. But not finding any so far.

You would imagine, well I can't speak for others, but I imagined that by following back the references cited on those notes, one would arrive at the eviden?e. Perhaps you could try it and see if you get any more success. What I found was where some mistaken information on those liner notes came from.

In particular, it would be interesting to know if anybody has found an early, by which I mean actually dating from the nineteenth century version of the song - not a tune - a song which at that time had the actual title 'The Unfortunate Rake'.


Thank you for reading :)

PS I foresee a discussion about what constitutes 'evidence', having often wondered while reading 'folklore' magazines what they taught about this at Harvard, where Philips and Mackenzie learned it.
:)

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 06:04 PM

"The earliest example I have of the use of St James found is 1918. We are not yet one hundred years from that date."

Sharp collected it from Victoria Donald on June 8, 1918, which makes it 99 years and 5 months. Mrs Donald was quite elderly, and it seems likely that she had not learned the song during the previous 7 months. Even if she had, whoever she had learned it from had had it in their own repertoire already.

"various versions close to the jazz one have been circulating the US. I have no problem in thinking that it got to Novia Scotia"

Except that the Nova Scotia version you kindly linked is nothing like the jazz version except in respect of the 'St James' line.

You've provided plenty of ideas and interesting information on this thread, but you seem to have developed a theory regarding 'St James' which you are now trying to bend the evidence around. Are you prepared to accept that the jazz song is a reworking of a pre-existing traditional song mentioning 'St James'?

If not, how did 'St James' get into an earlier Appalachian variant?

If so, why can you not accept that the Lenihan version might represent an independent example of the same strain of the song?

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 04:09 PM

> Streets of Laredo shares a tune with Spanish Ladies

Never rely on Wackypedia.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 04:07 PM

A "slang term" would be something like "the clap shack."

Examples of usage in OED (which doesn't call it "slang" or even "informal") are entirely serious.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 03:52 PM

The other thing I wanted to say about Philips Barry is that he claims in his article that Joyce traces the Unfortunate Rake back to Ireland. Joyce did not do this. I looked up Joyce and checked it all the way through. Barry has missed out a step in his argument.

I note that the link called 'the usual text' posted above leads to a site which unhelpfully calls Goldstein's liner notes about a Folkways LP essential reading. They are not accurate and not to be relied on. I have been through all this. And the text to which they lead you is one sung by A L Lloyd, falsely asserting that this is a 19th century broadside version.   It isn't. See my posts on this above. Goldstein provides no evidence that either the title The Unfortunate Rake or the words St James appeared in the British Isles prior to 1900. He references an article by A L Lloyd explicitly stating that they appear in the Appalachians in 1918. Circles, going round in .......

At least in the Lloyd quote, Lloyd gets Cork right, whereas Goldstein, copying a mistake from another of his references incorrectly states Dublin. This is a reference back to Philips Barry, who, as I have explained, falsely asserts that Joyce traced the Unfortunate Rake back to Ireland.

Enjoy.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 03:37 PM

Hello Brian

Thank you for discussing. You say:

The other examples I've mentioned show pretty clearly that 'St James' was present in a strain of the song as sung in the field going back at least 100 years.

The earliest example I have of the use of St James found is 1918. We are not yet one hundred years from that date.

Hello Bob the Postman

Helen Crighton has found the same song found in Nova Scotia by Mackenzie, some time before 1928.

Here is a link to an online version of Mackenzie (you will see I have been collecting these old editions, as I have been fascinated to see how the story has built up over the years)

http://novastory.ca/cdm/ref/collection/picbooks/id/9222

Mackenzie says:

HE BAD GIRL'S LAMENT
The relationship between this song and "The Dying Cowboy" is obvious.
Both of them are derived from the English broadside song of "The Unfortunate Rake" or "The Unfortunate Lad." See Journal, xxiv, 341; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, iv, 325; v, 193; Cox, p. 242. A version of "The Bad Girl's Lament," from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, was contributed by Barry to Journal, xxv, 277. In the Sharp MS. of Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Harvard College Library), p. 807, there is a fragment entitled "St. James's Hospital,"
in which the bad girl is replaced by "my son":

As I have said, the song collected by Sharp was not published until after Sharp's death, but if you read his diary you find out he copied his field notes and left a set at Harvard, and it is these to which Mackenzie refers. The journal of the folk song society he refers to, well, I'll let you look that up for yourself.

I also looked up Cox, who sets up another wild goose chase relating to highwayman hanging songs, which also feature death requests.

Cox refers you back to Philips Barry (whom I have also a copy of). He is the one who started the idea that The Cowboy's lament was an Americanisation of My Jewel My Joy.

Philips Barry is quite interesting: he says the existence of the Irish cadence in Scotland tends to prove its Irish origin. Given the degree of intermixing of peoples, I have a feeling this is another one that could be discussed interminably.

Barry says basically that very few Irish songs get Americanised, but he gives The Coyboy's Lament as one example.

Barry confuses matters by quoting from the Such broadside, which is called 'The Unfortunate Lad' but asserting - and as usual - with *no reference or source* to back him up that the song is called 'The Unfortunate Rake'. I think this must just how Harvard people were taught to write articles at that time?????


Amusingly and oddly (to me) he appears to find 'the plainsman's ... weakness' for poker and whisky' less offensive than the 'coarse vices of the dissolute soldier', but you'll have to read it in context. You can find this on JSTOR and read it for nothing if you register, which is cost free..


For me, Mackenzie is collecting songs at a time when if we accept what emerges from Harwood, various versions close to the jazz one have been circulating the US. I have no problem in thinking that it got to Novia Scotia, which looks much closer on my map to the USA than the USA is to Ireland. I am happy to believe that this wording was doing the rounds in the USA, but not happy to 'infer' ie guess that it came from the British Isles.

Thank you for reading: this discussion is interesting.

One can find quite formal Victorian papers in which the phrase 'Lock hospital' was used: it was not necessarily slang.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 03:04 PM

Jack, are you sure that the Banks of Devon is the same tune as Streets of Laredo? I just listened to a Youtube of Karine Polwart singing the Banks of the Devon, and it didn't sound the same at all.

Wikipedia says that Streets of Laredo shares a tune with Spanish Ladies, which I would have thought would be even better known in the early 19th century. But I listened to a few versions of that on Youtube, and that didn't sound the same either.

The Bard of Armagh does seem to be the same tune.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 02:42 PM

"was not at all a slang term"
"The Westmoreland Lock Hospital for Incurables" or, to give it its official name, the Hospital of St Margaret of Cortona"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 02:12 PM

Thanks for the lyric, Postman Bob. The Appalachian version starts similarly, except that it's the narrator's son, not daughter.

How about the rest? Does it look like the usual text?

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 01:56 PM

> No it isn't.

Perhaps we're talking about different tunes.

Lomax's 1910 "standard" "Streets of Laredo" and the usual tune (can't say how old it is) accompanying "The Bard of Armagh" are major and virtually identical.

"The Banks of the Devon" clearly is not.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 01:51 PM

> lock was a slang term not a name

The OED (online revision) shows that "the lock" was not at all a slang term, though it may have seemed so by the time James Joyce used it.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 01:12 PM

The first verse of ?The Bad Girl?s Lament? collected from Edward Hartley and published by Helen Creighton in ?Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia? (1932):

As I walked out of St. James? Hospital,
St. James? Hospital one early morn,
I espied my only fairest daughter
Wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 01:01 PM

"There is close to zero verifiable fact in that Wikipedia page"
There was "The Lock Hospital" and The Lock Penitentiary" Jack
Jim Caaarroll
KEEPING DUBLIN.S DIRTY SECRETS
"The Westmoreland Lock Hospital for Incurables" or, to give it its official name, the Hospital of St Margaret of Cortona ? was situated on Townsend Street. The Lock was founded in 1792 and was one of the few establishments catering for venereal disease. Initially, the hospital treated three hundred patients of both sexes. Later, its capacity was reduced to a hundred and fifty beds, and only women were admitted. Catholics and Protestants were segregated, while married women who had been infected by their husbands were kept away from common prostitutes. In 1794, the Lock Penitentiary opened for business. The penitentiary catered for women who had been discharged from the hospital. The women were, as Samuel Lewis put it in his Topographical Dictionary in 1837, ?employed in needle- work and other female occupations?"

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 12:48 PM

There is close to zero verifiable fact in that Wikipedia page. The most substantial-looking link gives a 404.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 12:20 PM

"Lock hospitals had nothing to do with disease of any kind. "
Hm?
They actually did both Jack - cure and imprison
WESTMORLAND LOCK HOSPITAL
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 11:27 AM

Lock hospitals had nothing to do with disease of any kind. They were institutions for sexually deviant women (categorized as "prostitutes" though the management wasn't in the business of examining how they came to be so labelled). Women were locked up in them for moral reasons, not medical ones. They survived until very recent times in Ireland as the "Magdalene" institutions, though the "lock hospital" label fell out of use in the middle of the 19th century. They don't have anything to do with this family of songs as far as I can see.

The American "Streets of Laredo" tune is clearly that of the Irish "Bard of Armagh"

No it isn't. Both of them are "The Banks of the Devon", which by the early 19th century was by far the best known name for the tune everywhere in the Anglophone world.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 11:06 AM

"Was there a hospital of that name in County Clare? "
No, but it may be of significance that the earliest use for St James's Hospital in Dublin, some time in the 1700s, was for 'foundlings' - abandoned children
These were, or course, well known used as dumping grounds by prostitutes to rid themselves of unwanted "accidents"
"Not St James Palace, then"
lock was a slang term not a name
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:55 AM

"I have found Crosby's tune, or 'air' 'The Unfortunate Rake'

Its in 6/8 and a minor key, with root E. Not easy to sing the words of 'The Unfortunate Lad' to it."

Interesting - thanks for the link.

There's no great problem fitting the words to it - at least one English collected version is barred in 6:8, though 3:4 is more general. However, although I can see superficial resemblances with the collected tunes, they don't seem very strong to me.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:44 AM

MacDonald's 18th century "Dairy-Maid" is "about half-way between" the "Rake" and Thomas Moore's "Avenging and Bright."

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:42 AM

"whence did the name come which found its way into the head of this farmer/butcher, who plainly had good links with the broader "folk" movement as they appear to have been watching him for a long time!"

Are you now suggesting that Tom L. learned it from "the broader 'folk' movement"? Any comment, Jim?

There's no mystery: 'St James' was already part of the song when Tom Lenihan learned it. The other examples I've mentioned show pretty clearly that 'St James' was present in a strain of the song as sung in the field going back at least 100 years. The fact that it was found in Appalachia in 1918, and Nova Scotia in 1928, suggests an earlier common origin in the British Isles (unless you can demonstrate a plausible transmission route between the two places). Unfortunately I don't have access to Creighton so can't compare the NS versions with the others.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:39 AM

Great work finding the 1808 "Unfortunate Rake."

The important thing is that it was apparently an established song air rather than a dance tune. So the song must have had to do with an unfortunate rake.

Of course, there may have been an unrelated (or vaguely ancestral) song by that name, but is there any evidence of it?

If not, the most likely explanation is that the song we're discussing was the one attached to it. It would be perfectly natural for the word "lad" to be replaced at some point by the more specific "rake."

Factoid: The American "Streets of Laredo" tune is clearly that of the Irish "Bard of Armagh" - another harper.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:28 AM

Those ??? were meant to be """.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:26 AM

Thanks for comments. Not sure what to conclude. It occurs to me to ask (perhaps a *little* mischievously): Was there a hospital of that name in County Clare? Because if not, then whence did the name come which found its way into the head of this farmer/butcher, who plainly had good links with the broader "folk" movement as they appear to have been watching him for a long time!


Jim

My own OED is the two volume set: maybe you have a different edition? But what you have found confirms the view that the term 'lock hospital' meant venereal disease hospital, and is 18th century as a generic term/phrase. Southwark? Not St James Palace, then.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/london/vol1/p542 (I think this is a reputable source, not a mention of 'lock' anything in it.)

This is supposed to have closed in 1760?


I have found Crosby's tune, or 'air' 'The Unfortunate Rake'

If anybody happens to be interested it is here on page 158.

https://archive.org/stream/crosbysirishmusi00lond#page/158/mode/1up

Its in 6/8 and a minor key, with root E. Not easy to sing the words of 'The Unfortunate Lad' to it.

To re-capitulate: Offering the link because in the 'literature' on the origins of St James Infirmary/The Unfortunate Lad, this appears to be where people first of all got the idea that there was a link between 'The Unfortunate Lad' and 'The Unfortunate Rake'. I am, as you may guess, not convinced. I am still waiting for evidence of a 19th century song actually called at that time 'The Unfortunate Rake' which could be argued to be an ancestor of St James Infirmary. As I have said, I can only find songs called 'The Buck's Elegy' and 'The Unfortunate Lad'.

Thanks again for the discussion. I am learning new stuff all the time. Very grateful to have people to bounce ideas off.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:23 AM

The jig "The Unfortunate Rake" appeared in 1883 in "William Bradbury Ryan's Mammoth Collection of more than 1050 Reels and Jigs, Hornpipes, Clogs [etc.]" Many know the 1940 reprint, titled "One Thousand Fiddle Tunes."

Ryan drew heavily on "[Elias] Howe's 1,000 Jigs and Reels [etc.], dated by WorldCat to "ca1860." I haven't seen this book, but it was reprinted in the 1990s. Can anyone check for the "Unfortunate Rake"?

Burns set his song, ?The Banks of the Devon,? to a slow modal version of this tune, identified as ?A? Bhanarach dhonn a? cruidh? (?The Bonnie Brown Dairy-Maid,? words by Alisdair Macdonald [ca1700-?]). The Battlefield Band and Bonnie Rideout recorded the version collected from Pertrhshire tradition by Patrick MacDonald ("Collection of Highland Vocal Airs," 1794, p. 16).

So the "Unfortunate Rake" tune, or an ancestor, may well be Scottish.

Over to you, Jack.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 10:15 AM

"I stand by my view that A L Lloyd's song was the first *actually titled* 'The Unfortunate Rake' which included the words 'St James', and though the link to Co Clare is interesting, it does not as far as I can see challenge that view."

I'm not arguing with that, particularly - the title is of less interest to me than the links - if any - between British tradition and jazz standard.

"I cannot find precisely where I gave the impression that I thought a farmer in Co Clare actually heard a Louis Armstrong version: of course there were hundreds of version, the song was a worldwide hit. This is my point, a general one."

It was your direct comparison with the African singer who'd learnt his repertoire from John Lee Hooker that gave that impression. So is your theory now that the 'St James' reference had passed somehow from the "worldwide hit" into local tradition in Co. Clare, and that Tom Lenihan heard it down the pub? Even if this were true, you haven't answered why TL's version is nothing at all like the jazz hit, or why - alternatively - he might have inserted a different location into a song he already knew.

"I am afraid that I do not really believe that County Clare was cut off from the rest of the world in some sort of rural isolation and independence whereby a pure oral tradition was maintained."

I'll let Jim deal with that one. He knows the area (and the singer) much better than I do.

"As it happens, the record industry folk-arm had international sales, so the fact that Goldstein was American is not so important as it might appear."

I don't understand where this is going. Creighton and MacKenzie collected 'St James' versions in Nova Scotia in the late 1920s, decades before the Goldstein LP. And Sharp found one (which you referenced above) in Virginia in 1918, before either Goldstein or Armstrong. Where did the text of that version spring from? Just for interest, Sharp's Appalachian 'St James' is melodically and textually quite similar to variants collected in England in the 1900s.

If you'd only stuck to exposing another dodgy Bert song you'd have had no argument from me!

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:39 AM

Can just add that over half our work over the thirty-odd years we were collecting songs involved interviewing the singers at length
We were gathering information, not head-hunting song
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:37 AM

"I am afraid that I do not really believe that County Clare was cut off from the rest of the world"
As far as farmer singers like Tom were concerned, it might well have been
You appear to be dismissing Tom's approach to his singing to make a tenuous point
I suggest you listen to Tom at length on The County Clare website and see how likely it is that he would sing American versions of songs.
Plenty of them available
Tom died in 1990 aged 83 - with one exception all his songs were learned as a young man - he filled out a fragment of 'Constant Farmer's Son' from a neighbour's version some time in the 1940s
I can't think of one of the singers we recorded who would have learned songs from 'folk magazines' or the radio
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:31 AM

Hi, Karen. From the OED:

Lock, n. ...15. Originally: a hospital at Southwark in London, used for the isolation and treatment first of persons with leprosy and later of those with sexually transmitted diseases, esp. syphilis. In later use also: any hospital used for the treatment of persons with sexually transmitted diseases. In later use frequently attrib., esp. in lock hospital. Also with capital initial. Now hist.

OED gives quotes for "lock" only from as early as 1359.

The more explanatory "lock hospital" is found from 1766, but is presumably somewhat older.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: GUEST,Karen
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:24 AM

Hello Brian

I think we are talking at cross purposes. I am sorry about this.

It has certainly been claimed (albeit perhaps not be anybody on these threads) that the song has an Irish origin. The specific claim was first made as far as I am aware by Phillips Barry, in the US, in about 1911 on the basis that My Jewel My Joy, a fragment collected in Cork, was a version of The Unfortunate Lad. His supposition was later referred back to more or less as if facts in a whole thread of writing stretching through the 20th century.

I apologise if I gave the impression I felt you were arguing that the song had an Irish origin.

For all I know, it might indeed have been Irish or 'Anglo Irish' as AL Loyd once (controversially, perhaps) put it, in origin. I don't claim to know the origin.   

You wrote that there are "several independent versions of 'Unfortunate Rake' mentioning St James' Hospital from oral tradition in various countries.."

This is exactly the sort of statement that I am attempting to unpick. As it happens, the record industry folk-arm had international sales, so the fact that Goldstein was American is not so important as it might appear.


I am afraid that I do not really believe that County Clare was cut off from the rest of the world in some sort of rural isolation and independence whereby a pure oral tradition was maintained. The links of that part of the world with the USA via emigration as well as via the general cultural are plain. I believe that they had radios and record players and folk magazines in County Clare just as early as they had them in England.

I cannot find precisely where I gave the impression that I thought a farmer in Co Clare actually heard a Louis Armstrong version: of course there were hundreds of version, the song was a worldwide hit. This is my point, a general one.

But thank you for the reference.

I stand by my view that A L Lloyd's song was the first *actually titled* 'The Unfortunate Rake' which included the words 'St James', and though the link to Co Clare is interesting, it does not as far as I can see challenge that view.

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:11 AM

"The Rakes of Mallow "
The Rakes of Mallow were a notorious bunch of well-to-do thugs of the Creagh Family in the first half of the 18th century
They came from outside Mallow, in County Cork
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Origin: Saint James Infirmary Blues
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 09:01 AM

"maybe Jim can tell us how likely that is"
Not a chance
Tom got virtually all his songs from local singers or family members with the exception of those he learned from very early garlands or songbooks
He had not sung most of his songs for thirty odd years before Tom Munnelly began to record him, shortly before we did in 1973
The idea that he learned it from a blues singer is a bit of a joke really - can't wait to discuss it with the locals here
I think a comparison between Tom's beautiful interpretation and Satchmo's should be enough to scotch that one.
As far as 'Lock' is concerned - the term is a vernacular one popular in Dublin and my native Liverpool - obviously brought in by Irish immigrants
The Oxford Dictonary of Slang gives one definition of the term as 'the female pudend', (mid 18th-20 century) and 'lock of all locks' - ie 'the key' the male counterpart (1772)
I can't find my original note to the St James's Palace reference, but it points out that charity hospitals run by nuns were often somewhat coy when it came to describing diseases and 'leprosy' quite often covered a multitude of sins - literally!
Jim Carroll