Waterson:Carthy

Musicians
Norma Waterson: vocal
Martin Carthy: vocal, guitar, mandolin
Eliza Carthy: vocal, fiddle
Nancy Kerr plays fiddle on Bold Doherty, The Light Dragoon, and Midnight on the Water
Jock Tyldesley plays fiddle on Midnight on the Water
Eliza plays a fiddle made by Timothy N. Philips on Ye Mariners All

Waterson:Carthy

1. Bold Doherty
2. The Light Dragoon
3. Ye Mariners All
4. Rags and Tatters / An Moinfeuir
5. With Kitty I'll Go
6. The Grey Cock
7. When First I Came to Caledonia
8. Orange in Bloom (The Sherbourne Waltz)
9. The Slave's Lament / Farewell to a Dark Haired Friend
10. John Hamilton
11. Sleep on Beloved
12. Midnight on the Water

Track Notes & extra details

The Light Dragoon
Eliza got The Light Dragoon from a record of her Uncle Mike (Waterson), asking him later if it was OK and he was happy enough to give some more songs. The song itself is one of a batch where the woman is the happy seducer, a fact which so bothered some early collectors that they refused to publish it as it was--saying it was 'far too coarse'--and only did so having edited it severely and made the dragoon the prime mover. It's from Suffolk.

Ye Mariners All
Ye Mariners All was written down by the Hammond brothers in the early 1900s from the wonderful Dorset singer Marina Russell, who knew lots of bits of songs - all of them with fine, fine tunes. The brothers first thought that she had sung 'mourners', and a song from inside the pub to a funeral cortege telling them to lighten up does have a certain something, but later decided that they had in fact heard her say 'mariners'.

Rags and Tatters / An Moinfeuir
Barney McKenna was the source of Rags and Tatters in the 1960s and since then almost every Irish musician I've asked about it has said - "Oh, you mean Rattigan's" - and started playing a related but distant tune of that name. it 's a good tune, but Rags and Tatters has a hooligan element in it that I love. Eliza learned An Moinfeuir from Stefan Hannigan and Nancy Kerr and I'm told it's a Galway melodeon tune.

With Kitty I'll Go
Norma first heard With Kitty I'll Go from the great Connemara singer Joe Heaney. He sang it in its usual from which alternates verses in Irish and English - and if the Irish words are as good as the English then they must be fabulous. She got this particular version (also sung in both languages) from Dermott Barry of Armagh City who was recorded by Jean Ritchie.

The Grey Cock
Having decided to sing The Grey Cock again after quite a long time, I accidentally practised it in Eliza's hearing. She promptly announced that the song was, in fact, hers and, after another hearing-and-a-bit, she knew the whole thing. So that was that. Ho hum. The song comes from a recording made in the 1960s of Mrs Cecilia Costello, an Irish woman domiciling in Birmingham, who was featured on her own fine album produced by Bill Leader in the early 1970s. That the song turned up when and where it did was exciting given that it's a pretty rare piece. Maybe it's an indication that it's a trifle early to be counting this music out.

When First I Came to Caledonia
Norma learned When First I Came To Caledonia from the estimable collection called Songs of Deep Cove. Caledonia is the name of a pit, number three seam. Scataree is an island abandoned by people whose fishing has dried up and is still uninhabited today. Boulardrie is the name of that part of the community where all the rich people live and whence comes the woman with whom the character in the song falls blazingly in love at first sight. All he needed.

Orange in Bloom (The Sherbourne Waltz)
I believe that Rod Stradling is responsible for converting the Morris tune Orange in Bloom from its 6/8 time to this beguiling waltz. It's one of those tunes that can be played for hours (and often is).

The Slave's Lament / Farewell to a Dark Haired Friend
I must say that when I heard The Slave's Lament for the first time and was told that it was Robert Burns song I did think, "Oh yeah?" and was quite convinced that it was one of his "improvements". However, Hamish Henderson of the School of Scottish Studies is adamant that it is, in fact, all Burns's work, and he knows, so there it is. I did hear an America singer called Mary Eagle sing a traditional American song which had fairly solid echoes of it, but all that tells you is how close Burns remained to the music and poetry he grew up with. It's an astonishing song, I think, the kind that can imprint itself on the brain on one hearing, which was what happened to me when I heard Jean Redpath sing it on record a few years ago. I sang it to Eliza who immediately got our collected Burns out, learned it and did this arrangement. Nice to know that people in the late 18th / early 19th centuries found slavery loathsome, and not to have to deal with those 'they were men of their time' thoughts for once. Eliza wrote Farewell to a Dark Haired Friend.

John Hamilton
John Hamilton comes from the collection of songs by Gavin Grieg and the Rev. James Duncan which was published in the last few years by Aberdeen University. It's a fabulous piece of work and full of little squibs like this sweet old-fashioned piece of naughtiness dressed up as having a good time at everyone else's expense. Nowadays he'd probably be charged with assaulting the enquiring policeman's knee with his nose and given a jail sentence. Innocent days.

Sleep on Beloved
In the 1960s, the Incredible String Band renamed a song called I Bid You Goodnight which they learned from Jody Stecher's recordings of the great Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence and his family, the Pindar family, and the song became, for some folkies, one of those great standards. A year or two ago John Howson visited Staithes to record the Fisherman's choir, and was accompanied by Maggie Hunt who, at the same time, was interviewing the individuals involved. During conversations, a Mr Willie Wright sang a snatch of the Sankey hymn Sleep On Beloved which he described as a lowering down song at funerals, and which was clearly the same song as I Bid You Goodnight but in an earlier form, and when Norma heard it, she went to see Willie, who kindly proved her with the other verses. When we sang the song to Jody Stecher, he was enormously pleased, not least because its function as a funeral song in the Bahamian fishing community was identical to that in its North Yorkshire counterpart.

Midnight on the Water
I don't suppose for one minute that Ron Kavana was the first to write [to think of writing?] a song around the Texas waltz Midnight on the Water, but he was the first to actually do it, and lovely it is too. We did it fairly suddenly at the Bude Folk Festival with Nancy Kerr and Jock Tyldesley of the Flatville Aces, and we did it again in the studio and here it is.