Another song that Jon picked up from Martin Carthy and as he says, “You can either read this as a warning against blind superstition, or as an instructional model for how to deal with a faerie infestation.” It seems that the song possibly alludes to a superstition that the presence of a wrong doer on a ship will bring disaster, although what the poor unfortunate lady who is thrown overboard has done is debatable. Still, as always, there are plenty of thoughts at Mudcat. This seems to come from a particulary period of Martin Cathy’s recordings and is to be found on Shearwater again from 1972.
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The buy links should now work properly. We had some problems with a duplicate track and everything needed to be updated, but I’ve just tested them and they are now OK!
You can buy the digital album now from the following stores:
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beautiful.
This version of the tune is very like, if not the one, collected by Gardiner in Hampshire from David Clements of Basingstoke, 1906
Well, what can I say? Except we would say in Yorkshire, ‘She picked a wrong ‘un, there.’ More swine than swain. Yup, that’s miserable enough for me!
More about Banks of the Green Willow from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
There are 68 records of The Banks of Green Willow in the Library having been collected at various times by Sharp, Butterworth, Hammond and Gardiner
http://tinyurl.com/greenwillows1
When searched on Roud No. this rises to 90 with versions form Scotland, Bonnie Annie, and Northern Ireland
http://tinyurl.com/greenwillows2
If you wish to see more detail on each record, change the ‘output’ to ‘record’ and press ‘submit query’.
There are 7 records of the song in the Take 6 Archive collected by George Butterworth and Henry Hammond, the earliest one being collected from Mrs Gulliver in May 1905 in Combe Florey Somerset.
To find these go to http://library.efdss.org/archives/cgi-bin/search.cgi enter the name of the song into the first empty field, select ‘Title’ from the drop down menu ‘all fields’ and press ‘submit search.
We use the Roud index and the Take 6 online collections in the search for information on Jon’s selections.
For more information, or to carry out your own search for songs, please visit http://www.efdss.org/front/access-the-library-online/access-the-library-online/115
If you need any help accessing the library online or have any questions, please contact the VWML on 020 7485 2206 or library@efdss.org.
Hi, lovely song – and I’m glad to hear more of unaccompanied Jon too. Unsure what the ‘faerie infestation’ notion cited is about though? I should let you know that your link isn’t working, so I’m off to Mudcat now to find the thread discussing it
I’m surprised that there are so few comments here, especially second time round, as you don’t get much more traditional than this. Beautifully done.
A bit too depressing for me I am sorry to say.
Haunting. A very short comment, deserves better, beautifully sung.