happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)

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happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)

05 Aug 05 - 09:16 AM (#1535578)
Subject: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: Abby Sale

        It was on the fifth of August
          The weather fair and mild
          Unto Brigg Fair I did repair
          For a love I was inclined
  
          "Brigg Fair," Collected in Lincolnshire in 1905 by Percy Grainger & Sung by Ian Robb &
          'Finest Kind' on Heart's Delight and by Martin Carthy on Byker Hill and by many others.

05 Aug 05 - 09:52 AM (#1535600)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: Le Scaramouche

It's also the name of a record of his gramaphone expeditions to Lincolnshire.

05 Aug 05 - 10:00 AM (#1535603)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: R. Padgett

Orignally sung by Joseph Taylor, recorded on Wax Cylinder collected by Percy Grainger the Australian collector and composer in Lincolnshire.

Recordings made between 1905 /1908

Vinyl record put out by Bill Leader entitled 'Unto Brigg Fair' circa 1975

Percy apparently cycled around Lincolnshire going from village to village!!

A lot said about our Percy elsewhere!!

05 Aug 05 - 10:10 AM (#1535610)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: Abby Sale

Yes, I'd forgotten. It's surprisingly good, to. I'm happy to have mp3s of the whole. It's on Leader, unfortunately. Has any reader any gossip of the Leader catalog being reissued. I've been seening rumors but none lately.

From the liner notes, FYI:

"Horkstow Grange"
Sung by George Gouldthorpe and recorded on a wax cylinder for Percy Grainger in 1908. (See text at #B5 below)

Note from the Unto Brigg Fair LP sleeve: In his manuscripts, Grainger notes that John Bowling was a foreman on a farm at Horkstow and John 'Steeleye' Span a waggoner under his control. Thus "him and his man" in line three should be understood as "... his foreman". In the first line, "miser' might be just a derogatory epithet though not necessarily so. No other versions of this song are known and it does not appear to have been issued on broadsides in the district or even in adjacent areas where printers were more active.

05 Aug 05 - 01:24 PM (#1535771)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: Big Al Whittle

to this very day you can buy a tea towel with the words of Brigg Fair on it, in some shops in Brigg.

some would say the tea towels are what keep Brigg, on the map in the way that it is.

05 Aug 05 - 01:43 PM (#1535781)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 5 (Brigg Fair)
From: R. Padgett

Strange coincidence this link

Back in probably the 1970s before the M180 was built I travelled by car to Cleethorpes FF, picking up Monologue John from Sheffield

We were going through Brigg and this car 100 yrds away started to smoke and caught fire!!

Today in Barnsley coming home a car on the road caught fire and I ended up directing traffic to turn round and not go past for fear of blowing up

So Brigg is synonymous (is that the word) with burning cars

Sorry to muck up the thread!

Lovely record Brigg Fair and I learned one or two including
Robin Hood and the Three Squires, not heard anyone alse do it

Ray