FOLK SESSION – Howard Arms, Brampton

We sang, played and recited around the theme of ‘Wildlife’, when we met on 17^th June. We had a good turnout, and were delighted to welcome Carys from Carmarthen, who got us singing along in Welsh. What exactly constitutes ‘Wildlife’ led to some entertaining discussions, which we referred back to Gary who proposed the topic! (Essentially, if the singer reckoned it was wild, then it was).

Gerda started us off with the magnificent cycle of life, I Was an Oak Tree; Adrian grieved for his dead love buried by The Ash Grove and John sang the sad tale of the Babes in the Wood. Kath found a ‘hawthorn bush’ in the otherwise domesticated setting of Little Bridget Flynn; Carys celebrated ‘red roses, white lilies’ in Ar Lan Y Môr and Katy praised the broom and heather of the Gallowa’ Hills. Charles fed his cattle - sorry, his ‘little dogies’ - on Texan jimsonweed, sandbur, prickly pear and cholla (Whoopee Ti-Yi-Yo).

Alan, with Sweet Baby James, and Jane, with After the Gold Rush, both looked at the bigger picture: ‘wildlife’ as ‘the great outdoors’ or ‘Mother Nature’. Carys followed the same line of thought as she looked out at sea and wind from Ty Bach Twt. In similar vein, Phil took us hillwalking to Yarrow on a Cloudberry Day, and Kath rejoiced to live Where Ravens Feed.

Birds fluttered through many a song: Geoff’s Twa Corbies; Gerda’s The Blackbird’s Song; the wild geese heading south under Grey October Clouds (Steve); the blackbirds, thrushes and larks that make a midsummer morning Pleasant and Delightful (Geoff and Kath) and the raven that deceives Crazy Man Michael (John). A jenny wren popped up discreetly in Les’s parody Ukulele Hallelujah while Jane found a reference to a cuckoo in Soil and Soul and to the starling, heron and raven in The Spell Song’s Blessing.

 

Animals ranged from the sort you expect in folk song to some very exotic ones indeed. We saw the whale-hunt from the perspective of the Greenland Whale Fisheries (Sally) and from that of The Last Leviathan (Steve). Daddy Fox (John) raided a farmer’s yard; Ein Jäger aus Kurphalz (Adrian) pursued deer and hare and Les sang his own song about Hare Magic. Some less-than-completely wild animals crept into Alan’s account of his Oklahoma Home, Geoff’s lament for the hardships of a modern cow’s life, A Load of Old Bull (tsk!) and Carys’s summons to improbably-coloured goats, Oes Gafr Eto? Ranging further afield, Gary found buzzards and buffaloes (Indian Sunset); Steve praised the Wild and Wonderful snow leopard; Phil’s uncle went Waltzing with Bears; and Jennifer’s Rabbit (Sally) socialised with a turtle, kangaroo and monkeys. We even had invertebrates: Gerda’s Moth; Phil’s terpsichorean daddy-long-legs (The Reel in the Flickering Light), and Adrian’s Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.

And finally, there were the mythical animals. Some were old acquaintances – a unicorn in Sally’s Unicorn Song, or a dragon in Les’s Crystal Dragon of Eryri. Charles, on the other hand, introduced us to some very obscure fauna, in the shape of the Tickletoeteaser and Rugabug bat as discovered by the crew of the Walloping Window Blind!

We next meet on 15^th July at 8pm in The Howard Arms, Brampton.  The theme will be ‘family relationships’.  ALL WELCOME!