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Origins: Willie O Winsbury (Child #100)

28 Mar 02 - 10:30 AM (#678123)
Subject: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU

ANyone have the words to Willie O Winsbury as sung by the great Anne Briggs? Cheers Larry


28 Mar 02 - 10:39 AM (#678138)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Watson

It's in the database!
...well, that's one of many versions.


28 Mar 02 - 01:40 PM (#678320)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Watson

...sorry, I just noticed you wanted Anne Briggs' version>
If nobody gets it before next time I'm on line, I'll look for it.


28 Mar 02 - 01:45 PM (#678325)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU

That's the one, Watson! Cheers Larry


28 Mar 02 - 02:32 PM (#678369)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: dick greenhaus

A tip on searching. If you enter Winsbury in the DigiTrad Search box, you get a hit. Near the bottom of that page is the Child number: #100.

If you then enter #100 in the search box, you'll get a bunch of variants.


28 Mar 02 - 04:48 PM (#678452)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: InOBU

The one Winston linked to is the one recorded by Anne Briggs, great version, I think her tune is a wee bit diff. but it is the words for which I was looking, and many many thanks to our brother winston, as to you dick. Cheers Larry


29 Mar 02 - 12:05 PM (#678862)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Mrrzy

One of my fondest recent memories is of Thomas the Rhymer singing this at the Pacific Northwest gettogether... thanks for the reminder!


29 Mar 02 - 12:49 PM (#678899)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy

was just listening to Sweeney's Men lp last night and reading sleeve notes, talked about how Andy Irvine found it in Child's but set it to the wrong tune, I remembered, I thought, Sandy Denny doing that same version, but couldn't find it. Might it have been Dolores Keane? or somebody else? and is Andy's melody that different from other versions sung? sorry to say I haven't heard Anne Briggs' version as yet.


03 Apr 02 - 10:51 AM (#682063)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Wolfgang

Andy's melody is totally different. It is used at least by Sweeney's men, Anne Briggs and Anne Byrne on the 'Come by the hills' LP.

If you want to hear a traditional tune for that song you can listen to R. Cinnamond on 'Songs of the People', CD No. 17, titled 'It fell on a day, a bonny summer day'. The Cinnamond track has the title 'There was a lady lived in the west'.

Dick Gaughan on his eponymous LP sings a tune to this song I can't place. He says on the notes that he doesn't 'remember where I got this tune'.

Some discussion about the tunes is already in the thread Arbutus

Wolfgang


03 Apr 02 - 11:17 AM (#682072)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas

Dick Gaughan used the Fause Foodrage tune that Andy Irvine set to Willy of Winsbury, though he maybe changed it just a little.


03 Apr 02 - 11:26 PM (#682501)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: DonMeixner

The onliest tune I have every heard to this song is by Anne Byrne. In fact she is the only person I've ever heard sing it.

Don


04 Apr 02 - 01:42 AM (#682535)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST

I think Sandy Denny sang a different song to the same tune, on the album Liege & Lief. It starts 'Farewell, farewell, you lonely travellers all'


20 Aug 04 - 07:27 PM (#1252545)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,First Post-bob

There is only one version of this song which is worth listening to - Dick Gaughan on the album handful of earth beautiful guitar and voice


03 Jan 05 - 05:14 AM (#1369879)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Alex

The best version I have heard is by John Renbourn on his album Faro Annie. Great guitar work.


03 Jan 05 - 11:40 AM (#1370061)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books

Andy Irvine sang it to the tune of the 'Fause Foodrage' entirely by accident. He had gotten the tune no. and the page no. mixed up.


03 Jan 05 - 12:22 PM (#1370099)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: eleanor c

Where is Winsbury? I always imagine it to be the unromantic and ex-industrial Wednesbury somewhere up near the Black Country. Which is still full of strapping young men. I guess if you go far enough back it was rustick.


03 Jan 05 - 01:25 PM (#1370167)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas

As for the mis-applied tune, it's likely simpler than "Weasel" suggests. I've speculated in other discussions here that the page probably just flipped over while Irvine wasn't looking.

This old thread probably contains less useful information than the various others here on the same subject (see list of links above), but I expect that was why Bob and Alex revived it.

There are several candidates for Winsbury; Wednesbury would be as likely as any (and more than some), I should think. Child didn't discuss that aspect in this case, but see ESPB I, 399, footnote:

' "A William Wynnesbury, who was yeoman of the Guard at the time of Henry VIII, used generally to act as Lord of Misrule in the years 1508-19, and he was Friar Tuck at Greenwich in May, 1515 (see Collier's Annals of the Stage, and J. S. Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII), and this, no doubt, made the name popular with the ballad-makers." -Ward, Catalogue of Romances, etc., I, 532.   Undeniably the Lord Winsbury of our ballad might be said to have acted as a lord of misrule, but it was hardly an English (or Scots) ballad-maker of the sixteenth century that made this ballad; and Mr. Ward, probably, did not intend so to be understood.'


03 Jan 05 - 04:53 PM (#1370336)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books

I have wondered if this wasn't a garbled story about King Francis (the ???) of France, who had been prisoner in Spain.
Probably isn't though.


03 Jan 05 - 05:56 PM (#1370388)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas

Kinloch (Ancient Scottish Ballads, 89) printed a text in which the king (not imprisoned) is the king of France on a long hunting-trip. He speculated that "Willie" was James V of Scotland, who went in disguise to "inspect" the Duke of Vendôme's daughter as a marriage prospect. He decided against her, but then met the French princess at a hunting party. She was keen, but was too ill to travel and died six months after her marriage. (see Child, II, 399). Unlikely, really; and we don't know whether the song started out in Scotland or England anyway.

On the whole, looking for real events behind classic ballads (especially when the ballads are probably much more recent than their supposed historical inspirations) is a bit of a lost cause. Once in a while you can get somewhere, of course, but an awful lot of effort has gone into inconclusive speculation (sometimes frankly bizarre) over the years.


04 Jan 05 - 02:58 AM (#1370664)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: allanwill

First version I heard was on one of Barbara Dickson's early folk-y albums before she became more interseted in smoothier, jazzier type arrangements and then acting.

The other best version I've heard was by Stan Rogers.

Allan


04 Jan 05 - 05:54 AM (#1370726)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: allanwill

Then again, Witch of the Westmoreland is a good song too! Oh well, too many W's.

Sorry.

Allan


05 Jan 05 - 04:08 AM (#1371794)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,death metal morris dancer

The tune is used in Paul Giovanni's superb score for the film "The Wickerman"

And he didn't get paid for doing it!!


05 Jan 05 - 08:58 AM (#1371952)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.

Anyone ever figured out what chords to play to accompany this song? The Dick Gaughan chords don't seem to work very well.

yours,

Peter T.


05 Jan 05 - 09:07 AM (#1371958)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Borchester Echo

Here is Dick Gaughan's own transcription of what he plays. Sounds pretty damn good to me...


05 Jan 05 - 09:16 AM (#1371971)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.

Anyone have another version -- to repeat myself, these don't work very well.

yours,

Peter T.


05 Jan 05 - 09:39 AM (#1371993)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Borchester Echo

To repeat myself, they work fine for DG. Maybe it's the way you play it? Just a thought. But if you have around six months to spare you could have a go at deciphering how Nic Jones accompanies himself on William of Winesbury. Or the consort of fiddles, trombone, trumpet and clarinet on Laurel Swift's Willie of Winsbury...


05 Jan 05 - 09:54 AM (#1372006)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: belfast

The tune given at the Gaughan website is not the same as the the mudcat midi one. Yes, the mudcat midi one is actually the tune for "Fause Foodrage" and possibly the tune used by DG is the "correct" one. So, if you use the chords for the DG version against the "Fause Foodrage" tune ... well, they won't work.


05 Jan 05 - 10:22 AM (#1372030)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Davetnova

The Dick Gaughan version is played in DADGAD and can be played with one finger at the second fret ( if you leave out the fills).3rd string, 4rth string, 3rd string, 5th string - repeat twice for each verse.


05 Jan 05 - 10:39 AM (#1372045)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST,Jim

Many great versions of this song of course - but my all-time favourite is by John Leonard and John Squires. "Squigzies" fiddle interpretation is superb.


05 Jan 05 - 11:10 AM (#1372096)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas

On revisiting it, the tune Dick Gaughan uses is much further removed from Foodrage than I'd remembered. Gaughan himself (I think this was mentioned in one of the other threads on this song) didn't recall where he got the tune: it sounds to me rather as if he started out with the tune in Child and subsequently mixed it up with bits of Foodrage.

Child's example was from William MacMath, learned from his aunt, Jane Webster, September 13 1886; she had learned it some 50 years previously from a Samuel Galloway in Kirkcudbrightshire. That was the tune that Andy Irvine had intended to use, though of course it didn't belong with his text, which was mostly Child's example A, anglicised and with some alterations and borrowings from other versions. The hero's name in the MacMath MS was John Barborough; in most English and Irish forms of the song he is John or Tom Barber.


05 Jan 05 - 11:48 AM (#1372127)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Peter T.

Continuing thanks to all. It is hard work trying to figure out useable chords while triangulating between the three versions (all supposedly the same) I have -- Anne Briggs, Sweeney's Men, and Dick Gaughan!!

yours,

Peter T.


05 Jan 05 - 12:08 PM (#1372138)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Weasel Books

Are there any recordings of the Fause Foodrage itself?


05 Jan 05 - 06:29 PM (#1372496)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Malcolm Douglas

Very few. Brian Peters has one, on The Seeds Of Time (Harbourtown HARCD 021). Rather well executed, too.


03 Oct 09 - 01:08 AM (#2737112)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: GUEST

Don't know if anyone will read this, but... I heard and sang this amazing song some 30 years ago as a young teenager - and it always "took me out" even when I performed it. The song has haunted me all these years. Something about the pictures that it brings to mind, and the name, Willie of Winsbury, and singing down into those lower notes and forming that hushed name so softly... Perhaps there's a memory in my blood that takes me back. I am a Highlander of Scotland. Amusing to think on it...

Such a beautiful song, but it is more than a song - it is a memory of land and human relationship woven through melody and time. It lives when I listen, and it makes my heart "skip" ; I feel good tonight having made this connection across the miles of time and space.

Thanks for listening
Kristen Farquhar


03 Oct 09 - 06:29 AM (#2737174)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: The Sandman

From: Peter T. - PM
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 09:16 AM

Anyone have another version -- to repeat myself, these don't work very well.
chords, g major dmajor eg [dyad]c major;g major dmajor eminor;
gmajor dmajor e minor];g major d major c major,so it finishes on the sub dominant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0zAr1t6nTE&feature=channel_page


03 Oct 09 - 04:48 PM (#2737529)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Susanne (skw)

Thanks, Kristen, I read your thoughts with interest. The song is very special indeed.


03 Oct 09 - 05:53 PM (#2737580)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Willie O Winsbury
From: Willa

I too read your comments with interest.Do you still sing the song?

I'm busy learning it, having heard it sung by different singers recently - have not 'sung it out' yet.