Comments on: Bill Brown

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:16:41 +0000

Re note to The Life of a Man on Broadside notes John Kirkpatrick sang this on God Speed the Plough and SteeleyeSpan have also sung it .

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:30:35 +0000

Just recieved Broadside a day later, to whom it may concern THANK YOU for putting the words in black on a cream background its so much easier to read.
@Muzza, sorry to hear your not going to get to Fay’s concert maybe as a little consolation I think Mike Harding has a couple of the Bellowhead crew on for a chat tomorrow and there’s a Kate Rusby concert on Radio 2 on Thursday.
Liked todays song .

By: Jane Ramsden

Jane Ramsden — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:38:48 +0000

@ Muzzy: Poor thee! I feel positively guilty going to see Fay at Otley Courthouse on Thursday!

By: Diana

Diana — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:15:14 +0000

I see I was on here last year and my opinion is still the same. I did pursue song and it is still residing on my iPod.

@Muzza – poor you losing out on the 22nd – do hope you are fine healthwise but understand why you are not your usual chirpy self.

By: Muzza(NW Surrey-UK)

Muzza(NW Surrey-UK) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 06:46:20 +0000

Just watched, again, Reinhard’s site with Peter Bellamy VHS. He certainly bowls along.
Just look at the glower he gives to the camera when he sings the line ‘I saw the man that shot bill Brown’.
If I had to pick…I’d go for Jon’s version…more remorse and melancholy as befits the story….and I’m not a happy bunny at the moment as I have had to give away my ticket to see Fay & The Hurricanes’ on 22nd at the Farnham Maltings..aaarrrgghhhh.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 06:30:07 +0000

Here's my version, recorded in the second week of 52 Folk Songs & hence not quite so sophistamacated as some of my later recordings: Bill Brown Tracing this song to its origins (see Simon's second link) is interesting; it originally seems to have had a jolly major-key tune and a fal-a-dal chorus, as if the deaths of Bill Brown and Tom Green were a particularly good joke. I imagine it was Bert Lloyd who re-fitted it with the tune we know.

By: Diana

Diana — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 07:34:05 +0000

What an interesting song and such a good interpretation by Jon’s voice. I must pursue this via I tunes.

By: hypoglycemia diabetes

hypoglycemia diabetes — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:04:37 +0000

What are your own views and predictions about the fast food culture and its place in popular culture?

By: John Francis

John Francis — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:45:40 +0000

On his CD ‘Yorkie’ Chris Bartram recorded a bone-chilling version in which the gamekeeper is not only known to the narrator but is actually his brother!

By: Jane Ramsden

Jane Ramsden — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 14:55:51 +0000

Or should that be ‘Sheperd of the Downs’?

And apparently there is even an academic paper by a man called David Atkinson called ‘I’ve shot the man that shot Bill Brown’: some observations on ballads and revenge’ ~ précis-ed thus!

“There is considerable moral ambivalence in the representation of revenge in anglophone ballads (compared, perhaps, with folktales). A ballad like ‘Lamkin’ internalises the notion of personal injury as crime. In contrast, the poaching ballad ‘The Death of Poor Bill Brown’ depicts revenge without legal consequences, giving a sense of moral clarity which is nonetheless deceptive when set against its social background. ‘The Gallant Poacher’, on the other hand, employs a kind of popular theology to replace the impulse to revenge. Ballads like these do not teach morality, but rather invite the exploration and negotiation of ethical ideas like revenge and justice.”

http://www.akademiai.com/content/r1857q7472p71405/

My view is that the song popularly redresses the most likely outcome of any court case where a gamekeeper kills a poacher, who would likely be considered fair game himself for his crime by other than his peers. Regardless of whether a poor man feeding his family or a profiteer, I think the odds would be stacked against him, so here we have rough justice.