The Young Tradition   •   So Cheerfully Round

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  • So Cheerfully Round
    • 1967 - Transatlantic TRA 155 LP (UK)
  • Side One
    1. Daddy Fox
    2. The Season Round
    3. The Bold Dragoon
    4. Watercress-O (Roger Watson)
    5. The Old Miser
    6. The Foxhunt
  • Side Two
    1. Knight William
    2. The Single Man's Warning
    3. The Pretty Ploughboy
    4. The Hungry Child (Judith Piepe)
    5. The Whitsuntide Carol

  • Credits
    • Recorded at Livingston Recording Studios Barnet, 1967
    • Recording Supervision: Bill Leader
    • Cover Photo & Design: Brian Shuel
    • All Titles Trad. Arr. Bellamy, Wood & Wood, unless otherwise noted.
    • Transatlantic Records Ltd., 120 Marylebone Lane London W1
    • Printed in England by Robert Stace

Sleeve Notes

The Bold Dragoon was collected by Bob Copper from Enos White of Axford, Hants. It has connections with 'Earl Brand' (Child 7) but this version is far nearer to popular taste than the morbid saga which the longer ballad relates, in which the Earl, after killing off the father and seven men (brothers in some versions) dies, and is followed rapidly to the grave by his beloved. Standard ballad ending about red roses and briars. Enos White started work on the farm when he was seven; he drove a two-horse plough at the age of eight. For most of his life he was a carter. When this song was collected in 1955 he was working as a gardener.

The Whitsuntide Carol which we sing was collected from Thomas Coningsby of Whaddon in Cambridgeshire. He tells how the men of the village used to go into the woods on Whit Sunday morning, cut oak branches and lay them on the doorsteps of all the houses. Then they would go round in a group singing this carol. It seems strange that the high moral tone of the early verses should be linked with what is obviously a pagan custom.

I discovered when prowling round Cecil Sharp House that they have all the Sharp Manuscripts on microfilm. It's a tiring process — his writing is somewhat illegible and the cracks on the film become confused with the lines on which the music is writ — but it can be rewarding. The Single Man's Warning is from this source. It was collected in 1903 from Tom Sprachlan of Hambridge, Somerset. I think Tom must have had matrimonial problems; several of his songs are on this theme. This was a song I had thought to use as a solo, but it was not to be. One of the trials of being in a group, I suppose.

We have a friend called Judith Piepe. She once came into collision with a Folk Drag-who knew All About The English Tradition, and could tell a traditional song any day. So Judith wrote him a couple, which he averred were rural gems from the seventeen hundreds. When she told him the truth he went away and hasn't been heard from since. Splendid. So, we thought, was one of the songs. Judith calls it The Procrastination Song'; we prefer to call it The Hungry Child.

Heather


The Old Miser is a ballad which has not to my knowledge been previously collected from Harry Cox, although other versions of this particular song are not uncommon and the story line is encountered time and time again under various titles and employing only slightly different details. The present text has a more bloodthirsty ending than most, with multiple deaths equalled only by The Banks of the Sweet Dundee' and The Boston Strangler'. I learned the song from hearing Harry sing it at the Windmill, Sutton in Norfolk on the 21 st September last year. (I do not have the total-recall memory attributed to traditional singers, not even the ability to know so short a ballad on only one hearing. There were several tape-recorders present.)

I almost learned Daddy Fox in the approved traditional manner, not at my mother's knee, but at the knee of my Great-Aunt Henrietta who used to sing it to me when I was very small. The only problem is that the version which I remember her singing was an American one. Perhaps she learned it from a Burl Ives record on Housewives' Choice. The version we sing here comes from Dartmoor, and comes to us indirectly and somewhat changed from the singing of Cyril Tawney.

We all three love ballads, but up to the present we have sung them only as solos. Knight William And The Shepherd's Daughter is our first attempt to apply group singing techniques to one of the 'big songs', and to do so we have had to employ various combinations of voices from verse to verse. Since learning this and working it out we have come across even longer versions of the same story, but this fifteen-verse account did not seem to us in need of further expansion. Perhaps because the first eighteen years of my life were spent on a farm, the simple agricultural almanac that is The Season Round is particularly dear to me. Of course the song dates from older times when the pace, even on the farm, was slower and more peaceful. The last verse — a protest song if ever I heard one — was probably added by Jim or John Copper, the fathers of Bob and Ron Copper from whom we learned the song. Perhaps still more verses should be added in the same vein — the menace of the tractor to the old ways seems trifling now, compared to that of the advent of the artificial sprays, the fertilisers and the insecticides. It is sad to think that perhaps it will not be long before the whole song is as much a piece of quaint but obsolete history as The Jolly Waggoner'.

Peter


I learned The Pretty Ploughboy from an archive recording of that superb old stylist, Harry Cox. This kind of ballad is a challenge to a singer; it dares you to experiment, to decorate, but gives you plenty of scope, to accept its challenge. In this sort of ballad, you are a narrator and singer; and to tell the story convincingly is as important as to be able to sing. For a busy suburban revivalist singer, material such as this, from singers of Harry Cox's quality, is a vital part of learning one's trade.

The Foxhunt represents some kind of new direction for the style of the group. We may well go this way for a while, exploring the rhythmic niceties of the songs we learn. This song was begging for staggered rhythms and natty takeovers, so in a tentative way we complied with the requirements, but I have the feeling that even now we have only partly finished the job. We learned The Foxhunt from Peter's brother-in-law; it was originally sung by Mr. Stephen Pole, a Norfolk singer, who gave it to Dr. Vaughan-Williams.

Roger Watson wrote Watercress-O. Roger is a friend of ours; we could almost claim to have discovered him. Early in our friendship he gave me this song. He has written much since then and many good singers have relayed his material around the clubs, but still I think that this is one of his best three songs. It is anecdotal, being taken from his grandmother's memory at a time in her childhood, when, as a miner's daughter, she experienced the privation brought on by the meagreness of strike pay. Most of Roger's songs are taken from real life; his feeling for both stories and melodies is surer than most writers of today; his only worry with songs of the quality of Watercress-O is that the singers should do them justice.

Royston