|
13 Sep 14 - 07:00 AM (#3659852) Subject: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: MGM·Lion Folksongs notoriously deal very often quite explicitly with sexual themes. Examples are far too numerous to need any particulars here. But it seems to me that this 'disobliging' aspect [in Bert Lloyd's customary parlance] is frequently tempered, within the tradition, by a sort of sensitivity or delicacy lacking in many of the more explicitly gross and earthy sub-genres like those which could be subsumed under the heads of "Barrack-Room" or "Rugby" songs. As an instance of what I mean, take the (rather charming IMO) song, "The Besom Maker" (Roud #910, I believe). If you don't know it, you may find it on my YouTube channel. The eponymous first-person narrator follows the respectable trade of the title, but appears nevertheless to accept money from the young men to whom she is promiscuously wont to grant her favours upon meeting them in the course of her work ("I eased him of his chink" or "I eased him of his jingalo"); combining her legitimate trade with part-time opportunistic prostitution, in fact. Yet, when the inevitable consequences catch up with her -- (rather less readily than in so many such folksong encounters, in which pregnancy seems to result from any encounter, the obligingness of most folk maidens being matched only by their astounding fertility!) -- and "a lovely sweet young baby soon on me did smile", she unhesitatingly gives up her old lifestyle and employment and cheerfully and responsibly embraces her new situation — "I'll bundle up my besoms Take them to the fair Sell them off by wholesale For nursing's now my care" -- understatedly exemplary conduct indeed — of the sort of unexpected and somewhat oxymoronic "innocence", which it is my purpose here to suggest is so often typical of the Folk's attitude to amatory matters. No sniggering. No obscenity. Just a healthy and matter-of-fact acceptance of the realities of existence. I love it. ≈Michael≈ |
|
13 Sep 14 - 11:31 AM (#3659881) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "I love it". Me to - it's a celebration of sex rather than a lewd display of it. The Foggy Dew always does it for me "And once in a while she'll wink and smile, And I'll think on the foggy dew, dew, dew" Tony McCarthy made a few nice points on the subject in his introduction to 'Bawdy British Folk Songs in 1972 Jim Carroll |
|
13 Sep 14 - 11:33 AM (#3659884) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll Sorry - forgot the scan INTRODUCTION BAWDY SONG is an integral part of the British tradition. To some of the collectors who went out to find what they imagined to be the dying music of the peasantry, at the end of the last century, this was a matter of some horror. They were impressed by the beauty of the melodies but felt obliged to edit or suppress many of the words. Since their published editions of traditional material became standard fare for schoolrooms and drawing-rooms, many of us have memories of 'folk song' as a tinkling thing, full of pretty phrases but with little relation to anything happening in the adult and workaday world. However, folk music would not have survived as it did, nor have become a very powerful influence on young people's music-making today, if this was all it amounted to. Far from being thus limited it is, on the contrary, strongly imbued with the deepest emotions and desires of every one of us - and that involves the sexual impulse. So a very large body of traditional song is based on sexual themes; these are treated in many different ways, and related to many forms of experience. In a rural community, the sexuality of beast, crop and man - the common interest in fertility - was very strong. So there is perhaps lacking in much of the material that prurience and evasion which characterises some attitudes to sex in the modern world. Then, in the very clearest sense, sexuality was an everyday fact of life. The bulk of these songs is a clear celebration of the joys and occasional troubles of sex as one of the main sources of pleasure -and sometimes amusement - that is given to us. Traditional song derives from many sources, and serves many occasions; it can treat its subject with great delicacy or a degree of coarseness. Certainly some of the songs would not have been allowed into the parlour, though enjoying great popularity at the inn. Yet there is a clear distinction, if not an exact line, between traditional bawdry and the more conscious attitudes of composed songs variously characterised by the wits of the eighteenth century, the music hall of the nineteenth and the Rugby club songsters of today. These have, of course, certain merits, and many songs, in varia¬tion, have moved into and out of these fields from the tradition. Generally the folk songs are more concerned with relationships, and these others with mechanics and grotesquerie. Traditional song was not only, in itself, an important element in the life of rural society, but also a source of conventional wisdom. Better than a dozen covert talks on the birds and the bees is the tale of Lovely Joan. O Dear O is a moving statement on a subject few would openly discuss, but many may secretly worry about. Rocking the Cradle is perhaps the other side of the coin. There is a strong commonsense morality in many of the themes, at the very least a sense of 'fair do's' in The Butcher and the Chambermaid and Blow Away the Morning Dew. Folk music represents a shared experience; some songs are newly made, or redesigned to fit new circumstances; others fall away. The greatest seem to go on forever. In the past, most songs were passed simply from one singer to another, in what is known as the 'oral tradition'. The work of itinerant ballad sellers who sold scraps of paper with a mixture of songs old and new printed on them is be¬coming increasingly recognised as an important factor in the spread of the songs, while the labours of the great collectors like Cecil Sharp again placed much material into new hands. But it remains true that the most important part in the 'folk process' is that of the individual singer, refining stories to his own taste, forgetting words, decorating the melody, adding material if it suits him. The continuing life of so many old songs shows how little the essentials of relations between man and woman have changed. Apart from a couple of modern compositions, few of the songs in this book can be less than a hundred years old and many, in one form or another, can be traced back much further. As collected here, the traditional songs happen to be the versions that I sing; to the reader and - I trust - singer, they are yours to do with as you like, to suit your own style or mood. Tony McCarthy Bawdy British Folk Songs 1972 Jim Carroll |
|
13 Sep 14 - 11:43 AM (#3659890) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Musket Bring it down to my level and you will realise most songs are about celebrating sex. Perhaps thats the difference between traditional and contemporary folk songs? Contemporary = unrequited love Traditional = sporting and playing These days, many songs are written about frustration whereas that didn't seem to be a problem two hundred years ago. "Promiscuously wont to grant her favours." Very poetic. Here in the twenty first century, she "drops 'em." |
|
13 Sep 14 - 11:48 AM (#3659892) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "Contemporary = unrequited love" What - you must be joking? A huge slice of the traditional repertoire is about unrequited love. The basic difference between the treatment of love in pop and trad iis that in Trad they are all about real people with proper jobs, besom makers, factory girls - cowherds... while pop has them somewhere in a non-existent no-mans-land with no purpose other than to love each other. Jim Carroll |
|
13 Sep 14 - 11:58 AM (#3659895) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Phil Edwards One of my very favourite songs is One Night As I Lay On My Bed. You know exactly what's going on at the start of the song and what's going to happen at the end of the song, but none of it needs to be spelt out. And the lack of specifics gives more powerful expression to the passion of the last verse, I think. |
|
13 Sep 14 - 12:04 PM (#3659896) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Lighter > The basic difference ... One reason why the modern songs are so dull. |
|
13 Sep 14 - 12:18 PM (#3659902) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "One reason why the modern songs are so dull" Not sure I entirely agree Lighter. My problem with pop songs is that the narrative content, where there is one, is sacrificed to the music, where there is any. I'm not enamoured by the musical sound and, nowadays, I can't understand the words. Jim Carroll |
|
13 Sep 14 - 01:38 PM (#3659913) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Musket You know Jim.. Sometimes a book can be filed under more than one section. Both genres have all sorts of songs, but it doesn't escape my notice that just about every contemporary writer slips in a lover's ballsache song or two. Anyway, don't talk bollocks. I got my Rocks off writing punk songs about real people, and not a "folk" song amongst them. Punk rock was if anything about young people hearing their lives reflected in song. What you call folk actually, but with royalties. For someone pontificating about what you call pop, you haven't a clue. Listen to the words of what you call pop. You might just find the folk definition for more recent times... Oh, and I wrote many songs about shagging.. In folk circles, I am just another bloke with a guitar mind. I make no distinction between knocking out a Harvey Andrews song or singing a traditional Irish ballad. |
|
13 Sep 14 - 01:54 PM (#3659917) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "Punk rock was if anything about young people hearing their lives reflected in song." I'll take your word for it Muskie - to be honest, I've never neen able to hear enough of the words over the noise for punk to ever have captured my interest. I may not know what it is but I know what effect it has on me - it should come with a health warning - if my memory serves me right, it actually does doesn't it - something about affecting young peoples' hearing? Incidentally - most Irish ballads - real ones - don't take a guitar - too ornate and lyrical. Jim Carroll |
|
13 Sep 14 - 03:32 PM (#3659939) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Musket Try starting with an Irish ballad relating a true story. I don't like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. A perfect folk song. You even get Bob Geldof for provenance... |
|
13 Sep 14 - 03:56 PM (#3659943) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: MGM·Lion "a celebration of sex rather than a lewd display of it" Thank you, Jim. Exactly. A beautifully phrased summary of my OP point indeed. ≈M≈ |
|
13 Sep 14 - 05:06 PM (#3659957) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Lighter But you forget that these were the very songs that so embarrassed the collectors, not just because they celebrate sex (which might have been bad enough), but because it's almost always illicit sex. Or as it once was called, "fornication." It seems to me that such songs, like so many others(e.g., "The Wild Colonial Boy," are more fantasy wish-fulfillment than anything else. No Pill, no penicillin, condoms difficult to obtain, highly valued virginity, family retribution: life could rarely have resembled the songs. |
|
14 Sep 14 - 03:29 AM (#3660046) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "But you forget that these were the very songs that so embarrassed the collectors," I often wonder how much we've lost because the early collectors couldn't handle the material they were being given. One of the early Folk Song Journals mentions a song called, 'The Girl from Lowestoft, or The Hole in the Wall' - the note reads, "I have noted the tune only, the words do not bear repeating" - bang, there goes another one forever! One of the most beautiful descriptions of pregnancy is to be found in the ballad, Gil Morrice. The plot briefly: A lord finds out that his wife has been meeting a young man in the woods. He goes off and challenges him to a fight, kills him and rides back home with the lover's(sic) head on a spear. His wife, distraught, explains that in fact, the boy was not hr lover but her illegitimate son, hiding out to keep her from being shamed. She says, "I once was full of Gil Morrice as the hip is of the stone" (try sticking your thumbnail into a rose hip and feel the thin layer of flesh surrounding the stone which makes up the largest part of the fruit). That, for me, is high poetry, and it is the stuff many of our ballads and folk songs are made of. They don't make them like that anymore. I have always found a wonderful sense of celebration of life in all its aspects in Sam Larner's singing. He once told Ewan and Peggy (much to the embarrassment of his wife, Dorcas) "When I was a young man I used to do it all the time wherever I could and now I can't do it, I don't want to live anymore". More than anybody else, Sam always gave me the impression of someone who continued to "do it" through his songs, even the 'clean' ones! Jim Carroll |
|
14 Sep 14 - 04:33 AM (#3660056) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: GUEST,Marianne S. It is essential to bear in mind the distinction between what collectors wrote down and what they were able to publish. Many traditional songs would have fallen foul of the Obscene Publications Act. As for their attitudes - imagine you find an old singer with a repertoire of unknown songs - and many of them are so breathtakingly racist you can't even bring yourself to say their titles. What would you do? (The N word occurs in some shanties - would you sing it or censor it?) |
|
14 Sep 14 - 07:52 AM (#3660084) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll It should be remembered tha the older singers often self-censored their own songs when singing them to outsiders. We had a great deal of trouble getting one singer to sing a fairly innocuous-sounding song - 'The Bicycle'because he thought that some of the verses might be sexual references. The 'racist' thing is a tricky one - I've always been pleasantly surprised at the lack of racism in the folk song repertoire. I don't think this is due to the collectors censoring songs particularly, Cecil Sharp was happy to refer to the banjo as a 'N' instrument while working in the Appalachians, yet there are remarkably few songs in his or any of the collection using the word. Songs like 'The Flying Cloud' express great sympathy for the black slaves being shipped to Cuba. As far as singing the songs today, no singer is committed to singing the words as they were first heard. Personally, if the term was an essential part of the song and couldn't be removed, I'd avoid it or any others that made me feel uncomfortable. Jim Carroll The Bicycle (Roud 5233) Tom Lenihan Knockbrack, Miltown Malbay, Recorded 1977 Carroll Mackenzie Collection You talk about having a bicycle hump, I got a bicycle pip. I bought a beautiful safety one; And on my very first trip. I ran right in to an old, old woman Sure I nearly mangled a kid. The crowd all gathered around me, And what do you think they did? Chorus: They first took hold of the handlebars, They twisted the diamond frame. They pulled out the end of the patent valve And it never will look the same. They burst the bearing, they bent the fork, Somebody smashed the chain. They took all the wind from the inner tube, And I never will ride again. They bored a hold through my Dunlop tyre, They smashed my detachable brake. They stuck a spanner between the spokes, And the squeaker they tried to take. They spoiled the shape of the rust-less wrench; The cox couldn't stand the strain. They burst a cog and I lost my gear, And I never will ride again. Chorus They told me my saddle was puncture-proof, They pulled out the wick of the lamp. They started in trying to ring the bell And the gear-wheel got a cramp. I started in trying to stop the bell, The pump went into a drain. It took all the oil from the oilcan And I'm damned if I'll ride again. Chorus Conversation at end of song between Tom Lenihan and Jim Carroll: Jim: Where did you hear that song? Tom: Well to tell you the gospel truth Jim, I don't know where I got that; it's a hundred years old if 'tis a minute and I never sung it in any place because you wouldn't know the devil what it's about at-all or what, what sort of a song it is! Tom got this from his sister Mary in America. He told us he could never make much sense of it and was reluctant to sing it. He said the same to Tom Munnelly when he gave it to him later and who suggested that Tom saw a double-entendre in some of the lines, hence his hesitation in singing it in mixed company. |
|
14 Sep 14 - 08:18 AM (#3660092) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: MGM·Lion I remember Sandy Paton, a bit of an idealist, saying he did not believe that the word Marianne inastances occurred in any real folksongs -- till I sang him the first verse of Johnny Go Down To Hilo, and Redd Sullivan, who was with us, and was of course himself a merchant seaman, said, "Right, And that's the way seamen sing it too." Are you one, Jim, purely for information, who thinks that new editions of eg Uncle Tom's Cabin or Huckleberry Finn, two of the greatest of novels in which the word occurs, on almost every page in some passages, should be edited to omit it? Or that George MacDonald Fraser was at fault for making his narrator Harry Flashman use it -- as any Victorian soldier would have done? And other sorts of phraseology. I remember -- and I expect so can you -- when the very thought of homosexuality gave rise to the sort of horror that homophobia does today -- there's a 180° turnaround as ever was!; and over not very many years either. When was the Woolfenden Report? Just 57 years ago; when I was 25. There are dangers, surely, in rewriting history to fit in with our own current preconceptions. ≈M≈ |
|
14 Sep 14 - 08:43 AM (#3660099) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll Not at all Mike - if fully accept that literature and song reflect the times they depict - that is as it should be. - I've never managed George MacDonald Frazer, but I totally agree with you about Stowe and Twain being the classics they are and would no more re-write them than I would dress piano legs in trousers - I also accept the usage in modern novels as part of their authenticity. I think that public performances of songs which I feel should reflect the emotional take of the singer performing it as much as it did the original maker - the point being made here is one that gives a great deal of offence in its use - if I couldn't remove it, I'd avoid the song - personal decision - no more. I was incensed when we lost chunks of our repertoire because of the objections raised by feminists. Some of the best evenings we had at The Singers Club were the themed 'Battle of the Sexes' ones, where men and women 'flyted' with one another, putting both sides of the picture. I can't see this happening with the racist content of songs, if there is any - as far as I can see, this is somewhat hypothetical - I really don't believe the argument applies to folk songs to any significant extent. Come to think of it, I can't recall homophobia being of any significance either. I think The Music Hall is a different kettle of dingbats Jim Carroll |
|
14 Sep 14 - 02:30 PM (#3660195) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: GUEST,Rahere As far as the original collectors are concerned, it may well not have been the Famous Names as the recording engineers. Sabine Baring Gould, for all that he was a Rev with at least one famous hymn to his name, was also a collector of dirty limericks in the heyday of the style, so I don't think one of the prissier possibilities was quite as uptight as might be supposed. |
|
14 Sep 14 - 02:49 PM (#3660202) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "was also a collector of dirty limericks in the heyday of the style" Don't think he was Sabine Baring Gould collected folk songs - William Baring Gould anthologised the Limericks. Made the same mistake myself for years. Not sure of my facts on this, bu I did hear that Sabine B. G. wrote down the songs as he was given them, but didn't publish them. One of the great revelations was Bishop Percy's 'Loose and Humorous Songs' published long after his death. Jim Carroll |
|
14 Sep 14 - 02:51 PM (#3660203) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Lighter > Bishop Percy's 'Loose and Humorous Songs' Mostly yawn-inducing by today's pop cultural (not to mention rugby) standards. |
|
14 Sep 14 - 03:28 PM (#3660209) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "Bishop Percy's 'Loose and Humorous Songs'" True enough, but quite interesting in context. Don't know how familiar people are with Burns's Merry Muses - I treasure our copy of MacColl's album. Interesting to remember that when it wa issued, it went oout on the 'Dionysus' label, especially created by Ken Goldstein - "only to be sold to serious scholars". Two items from it have long been my favorite pieces of bawdry 'Wad Ye Dae That' ("He fucks me five time ilks nicht, wad ye dae that?) In particular, 'John Anderson my Jo', a beautifully sensitive song about a woman coping with the fact that her husband can no longer manage it. Another one that don't make like that any more. Cmpare these with the crudeness of Ed McCurdy's 'Songs of Love Lust and Loose Living'' and @When Dalliance Was in Flower, from D'urfey (earlier than Burns) - can be good fun, but not in the same street. Jim Carroll |
|
15 Sep 14 - 07:57 AM (#3660369) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: GUEST,Rahere William and Sabine were brothers, Jim. I think we may have shared the same reference, a published history of the limerick, but Sabine was most definitely involved. |
|
15 Sep 14 - 08:12 AM (#3660377) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Jim Carroll "William and Sabine were brothers, Jim." Didn't know that - I wonder if they spoke to each other? Jim Carroll |
|
15 Sep 14 - 09:16 AM (#3660409) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Lighter Unlikely, Jim. Sherlock Holmes authority W. S. Baring-Gould (1913-1967), editor of "The Limerick," is a poor candidate to be brother of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924). I've heard of May-December romances, but that seems a bit much. |
|
15 Sep 14 - 09:20 AM (#3660410) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Lighter The precise title is "The Lure of the Limerick." |
|
15 Sep 14 - 03:42 PM (#3660580) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: GUEST,Rahere WS B-G the Sherlock scholar was Sabine's grandson, so he could very well have learned from his grandpa. I can't find the book at the moment, but I don't think it's that one. |
|
15 Sep 14 - 04:19 PM (#3660592) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Musket The naughty imagery and innuendo of many traditional songs is one thing, but I assume an ancestor of Chubby Brown wrote the original version of The Bonny Black Hare. |
|
15 Sep 14 - 05:35 PM (#3660614) Subject: RE: 'Innocence' in amatory folksong From: Bill D There's such a wide variety of amatory songs... from gentle flirting to ribald explictness to just an excuse to bellow dirty words (rugby). I'd be hard put (so's to speak) to make enough categories. I have sung,, on different occasions "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" The Hive of Bees (mercy! I wonder what they meant?) and a version (a bit different than this) of Charlotte_the_Harlot I have helped a few times to sing Rugby type songs, but the lyrics were seldom 'clever'... just raucous. I prefer well-written songs, no matter what their level of amatory insinuation. I do choose, as best I can, to match the audience.... |