Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Foureyes wrote:Lili Marlene and In a Persian Market - not simultaneously, I hope?

The imagination boggeleth! Coincidentally Ketelbey's name came to my attention just a few weeks ago. I always have music playing when using the laptop so by coincidence I loaded this entry to "In a Persian Market"! (It followed Orbison, Jenkins and then The Carpenters)

One thing leads to another. I accessed Morris dancing on You Tube and happened on a splendid troupe called the Beltane Border Morris who perform with an impressive instrumental line-up and who danced to a number called 'Tolmen Stone', the tune of which seemed to equate with 'The Raggle Taggle Gipsies, Oh!' which I definitely remember singing at CH. They don't write 'em like that these days!

Dorking and the surrounding area seem to have several thriving Morris Dancing groups these days, The Rampant Roosters probably being the best known.

rockfreak wrote:... A whole wedge of our culture lost, lost for ever!

Not really. They're in many published song books, in all kinds of arrangements. Some of them did indeed have a previous life as folk songs, but before we got to sing them they had been tidied up for "community singing" as approved by the establishment and encouraged for the maintenance of public morale and good order.

On the other hand, I recall coach trips from my primary school days (Bolingbroke Junior Mixed, Battersea) when we spontaneously sang songs which I now suspect had been handed down in London tradition rather than fed to us by teachers. I can still sing "whenever you see a hearse go by" if anybody cares to hear it, which you almost certainly don't. And we had a version of the Lord Randall song where the hero was called "Edward, my son" - he is sick, poisoned by his lover, but denying it to his mother until his last gasp.

Well here's a bit of folk history. The Lord Randall song (and I can't remember its title) was taught by Martin Carthy to Bob Dylan on one of Dylan's early forays to the UK when he was hanging around the folk clubs but before he was well known, and the tune and structure were used by Dylan to compose 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall'.

Morris On was to be heard in Mid B in my time. I think it might have belonged to Andrew Wood, who introduced me to Fairport although my memory might be defective.