Night visiting songs England vs Scotland

Subject: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: GUEST,Santa
Date: 17 Mar 03 - 08:43 AM

Listening to Brass Monkey perform The Crockery Ware, I was reminded of the comment that in the English night visiting songs everyone has a good time, whereas the Scottish ones all end in misery, incest, poisoning, mass drownings and eternal feuds - sometimes all at once.

Is this really a national difference? Or more generally an Anglo-Saxon/Celtic difference? Oh, I'm sure there will be a few exceptions on each side, but overall is the comment fair?

Is it just because the Scots have to find more to do during their longer nights?

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 17 Mar 03 - 09:02 AM

If there really is a significant difference, then I certainly wouldn't put it down to some kind of racial predisposition, as most of us are far too mixed for that to be of any real significance. I'd be more inclined to blame the rather severe religious sects that have had so much influence in Scotland over the centuries for any notion that pleasure must inevitably be followed by retribution. On the whole, England has had more relaxed religious attitudes than has Scotland, where I don't expect the weather helps.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: GUEST,Eliza Carthy
Date: 17 Mar 03 - 09:31 AM

The Grey Cock is a good depressing English one. Not only is he already dead when he comes to see her, but the cockerel they try to bribe not to crow at all crows three hours early, tears and "we will meet again when the rocks all melt in the heat of the sun" kind of ending. People always try to differentiate English music from Celtic music by saying that it is jolly, which is ultimately an odd thought. Everyone's songs are about the same stuff. The human condition isn't all neatly spread accross the world according to which race experiences which part of it. I do think some cultures do have seperate definitions or musical genres to express certain emotions though: like Fado or the Blues, or songs like "Congratulations" (uurrr...!).
x ec

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: sian, west wales
Date: 17 Mar 03 - 11:49 AM

The Welsh ones (not that you asked, but...) are generally pretty jolly ... either that, or just mildly plaintive. One or two in the 'open the bleedin window - I'm freezin out here' vein. Much throwing of pebbles, hiding in cupboards and children with key-hole birthmarks. Usual stuff, I guess. Can't think that any meet a bitter end.

sian

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Morticia
Date: 17 Mar 03 - 12:32 PM

I refer you to my daughters definition of folk music which is:
" And they all died".

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 07:49 AM

Refresh. Too good to go this soon. The cock has not yet crowed crew woken everbody up and the rocks have not yet melted.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 02:18 PM

I love to sing this, unaccompanied, to a song I learned from the singing of A.L. Lloyd, (or maybe it was Ewan McColl), on a monumental LP set they issued in the early 50s--eight hours of unaccompanied ballad singing! Long, long out of print, of course. As my grandmother used to say, "I'd give a pretty" to have that set!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Santa
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 06:04 PM

OK, but does anyone have any idea whether the entire corpus of such songs actually backs the idea or not?

I'm not trying to start wars between England and Scotland, being a Geordie with a family from the Borders and a Scottish surname. I'm of the opinion that Northern English and Lowland Scots have more in common with each other than either have with the other denizens of their supposed countries. Come back Northumbria, in its original glory.

However, all these centuries of separation have to mean differences in the culture, and the culture is reflected in the songs. I can't imagine anyone on this board disagreeing with that.

And if the original comment was perhaps slightly barbed, a little gentle joshing across the border - in both directions - is not necessarily a bad thing in itself.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: curmudgeon
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 06:12 PM

Certainly, Lloyd's version of the Grey Cock is one of the finest. I have it on the eight volume Riverside/Washington set that Dave mentioned. He also sang it on the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs recording, a copy of which recently sold for $160.00 on eBay.

Also hear Norman Kennedy's "Night Visiting Song" on his Folk Legacy album, a truly exquisite version of a night visit.

I sing "I'm A Rover and Seldom Sober" which has a less tragic ending. The ploughman is not dead and can come back for more. I am especially fond of the level of good manners in that the lovers politely shake hands before they get down to business -- Tom

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 06:43 PM

The Grey Cock is a bit untypical in some respects. As a rule, there's no supernatural element to the song at all; the lover has to leave at cock-crow, not because he's dead, but because he is quite the opposite, and has to go to work:

The cocks are crowing, love, I must be going,
For we are servants and we must obey.

He tends to be cold and wet and not terribly pleased, but he's alive alright, and has had a rather nice time even if it didn't last as long as he'd hoped:

The wind it did blow and the cocks they did crow
As I tripped over the plain, so very plain, so very plain,
So I wished myself back in my true love's arms
And she in her bed again.

The discovery in 1951 of Cecilia Costello and her set of The Grey Cock, ghost and all, led a lot of people to think the song to be in all its forms a revenant ballad, from which in most cases the supernatural element had disappeared; however, as Hugh Shields pointed out in his study, The Grey Cock: Dawn Song or Revenant Ballad? (Ballad Studies, ed. Emily B. Lyle, 1976), the supernatural verses in this case are all borrowed from a completely different song, the 19th century Irish broadside Willy-O. Indeed, in the fairly rare cases when Grey Cock variants do have ghostly presences, they can generally be traced to another, separate source; often Sweet William's Ghost (of which Willy-O, mentioned earlier, seems to be a broadside re-write).

A rather extreme example is Willy's Fatal Visit (Scottish, of course!) where a normal night-visit ends with the hero's dismemberment -on his way home- by the vengeful shade of his ex-girlfriend. Here, we actually have bits of several quite distinct songs bolted together (perhaps by Peter Buchan, who first published it): tradition has cut it back to the essentials again, and Jeannie Robertson sang only the concluding part.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Susan of DT
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 06:56 PM

A search for @nightvisit in the digital tradition yields 20 hits.

---

(click here to search).

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Noreen
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 07:54 PM

...all these centuries of separation have to mean differences in the culture...
But there wasn't any physical separation, but a great deal of mixing across the borders, as Malcolm said in the first reply to your post. So no, I don't think there is a 'national diffrence' here.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 07:55 PM

Not wishing to change the intended subject. But does anyone have an explanation of the song sung by Nic Jones that tells of Flondyke shores.

The first verse starts:-

"I went to my loves chamber window where I oft had been before..."

At this point he leaves a letter?

and goes on

"I went to my loves chanber door where I never had been before...."
"I saw a light springing from her clothes...springing from her clothes. Just like the morning sun when first she rose"

and ends with a strange line after meeting her father on the "Flondyke" shore and finding that she had died of a broken heart

"....so I hove a bullet on to fair Englands shore. On to fair Englands shore. Just where I thought that my own true love did lay (lie).

Is this a beautiful way of saying he shot himself?

I don't know where flondyke shore is but it doesn't sound like he could reach England with a bullet unless he meant that he put a bullet in his own heart knowing that this was England and where his true love lay.

It sounds very night visiting and strange and any explanation would be appreciated.

Either way it's a strangely Ghost like song and one I really like singing.

Spot

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: GUEST,Santa
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 04:06 AM

Cultural separation rather than a coast to coast wall, Noreen - though the latter has been tried.

And see my comment out Northern English and Lowland Scots - I don't think that there has been much mixing between the peoples of Wessex, Kent, Mercia on one side and the Highlands and Islands on the other. At least not before the Act of Union, which was of course A Bad Thing Forced Upon A Free Peaceful People By The Wicked English. Bah Humbug.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 06:02 AM

Spot,

as for the two opening verses of Flandyke Shore, my way of making sense of them to me was that he often had talked to his love at night (window) but never had come closer than that (door). In my interpretation, he is describing platonic love.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 10:44 AM

Flandyke Shore has been discussed here in the past, and pretty much everything said that can be without referring to the set found in tradition in Scotland (The Flanders Shore) by Andrew Crawfurd, and to the chapbook/broadside from which the song is apparently descended, The Ploughman's Love to the Farmer's Daughter. The fragment found by Sharp suggests that it's one of those stories where a cruel father locks his daughter up in order to put an end to an unsuitable relationship; disappointed suitor goes abroad; daughter dies. Need to see Emily Lyle's Andrew Crawfurd's Collection of Ballads and Songs, which has the Scottish set and the chapbook text, though.

Subject: RE: Night visiting songs England vs Scotland
From: Abby Sale
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 09:57 PM

And yet I know for a fact that night visiting is not a vilified practice in Scotland. It was often no more than a date in a countryside where there were no bars, (much less movies or pizza parlo(u)rs.) And often cold. The only way a young couple could hang out was in her bedroom. Same as "bundling" in frontier America. I've read a very little about it but have considerable detail from Dolina MacLennan, raised in Isle of Lewis. A note that a young couple had to nv in the early stages of their relationship. They could meet privately and get to know each other slowly, casually - if they were seen publicly together, it was generally assumed they were going steady or even engaged. Just the opposit of what you'd expect.

That's Outer Hebrides but jibes with the little I've read. Dolly explained that nv was common and normal. The parents always knew what was going on in the small houses.   Often the boy would would get into bed for warmth but remain fully dressed and polite. They would be quiet but only out of respect for the elders who had to rise early and work the croft (small holding.)

She told an hysterical story of returning home from Edinburgh at about age 20. Naturally, all her friends wanted to say hello. Girls could come over during the day but nv was the only proper way for the boys to visit. (Other than church.) Dolly was popular and had many friends.

Soon after dark when the house settled down and the lights went out a young man knocked at her window and she duly rose to let him in. She went back to bed and he sat on the foot of the bed and they chatted & got the news up to date. Because they both knew the drill, it was a relatively brief visit. He left by the window and a few minutes later another came. This went on for several hours - all obeying custom and all the boys outside waiting their turn and pretty much hiding from each other to preserve tradition.

Back to songs, I've always felt that it was England with the more severe religious attitude (not necessarily to sex but) to unwanted pregnancy and bastardy. In Scotland in soooo many songs the girl is just silly, not evil. The child is just a kid and welcomed into the, then, low-population clan. Sometimes she'd still have sufficient dowry "tae buy a man wi'" or her family would marry her off to someone - even if only a "tinkler lad." No, it's England where the butcher boy or Willy (Pretty Polly) murders her.

I'm thinkin' that in Scotland the only problem is to make a good story out of it. Something interesting has to happen but happy endings are certainly permitted. Well, sometimes. How about:

       She's op'ed the door, she's let him in
       He's cast aside his dreeping plaidie
       Ye can blow ye worst, ye winds and rain
       Since Maggie noo I'm in aside thee