If you’ve been here before you may know that I occasionally take part in John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop. One of John’s prompts this week is this

What is your current favourite type of music? How did you come across it? Share some examples.

Now if ever there was a prompt for me, I think that is it! So here goes, and thanks to John for providing the perfect excuse for me to play a few tunes.

I’m not sure about ‘current,’ as I rarely change the type of music I listen to, much of which has been my choice for more than sixty years. I started off like most kids do, following the pop charts – I was born in 1953 so was getting into music in the Sixties, and consider myself blessed to have been there. As I got older and went more towards albums, my tastes developed into rock music, some classical, some country, and a lot of what we now call Americana. But underlying everything was my love for folk music, particularly from England, my home country, but also from Ireland and Scotland, and even the occasional dip into North America.

The thing which has always attracted me about folk music is the way songs have been handed down through the centuries, and how this is a form of social history. The tradition continues to this day, with modern day songwriters writing in the same vein, and a particular favourite of mine is songs which tell a story. I’m playing four of these for you today, with some background on each – well, John did ask us to share some examples, didn’t he.

I’m starting with a song called Lady Franklin’s Lament (which is also known as Lord Franklin and The Sailor’s Dream). This is a traditional folk ballad which tells the story of a sailor who dreams about Lady Franklin speaking of the loss of her husband, Sir John Franklin, who disappeared in Baffin Bay during his 1845 expedition through the Arctic Ocean in search of the Northwest Passage sea route to the Pacific Ocean. Following his disappearance, Lady Franklin sponsored seven expeditions to find some trace of her husband. Through her sponsorship, influence, and offering of sizeable rewards, she supported numerous other searches, and her efforts brought great publicity to the expedition’s fate. In 1854, Scottish explorer Dr. John Rae discovered evidence through talking to Inuit hunters, among others, that the expedition had wintered in 1845–46 on Beechey Island. Its ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and never sailed again. According to a note later found on that island, Franklin died there on 11 June 1847. The exact location of his grave remains unknown. I’ve included Wikipedia’s links to the pages for Sir John and Lady Franklin if you’d like to know more about them.

The song first appeared as a Broadside ballad around 1850 and has since been recorded many times. I first knew it from a version on an album by the English folk singer John Renbourn, who then became a member of Pentangle and re-recorded it with the band. It was on their superb album Cruel Sister, which I recommend highly if you don’t know it. It tells the story well:

My second tune for today also has a nautical theme. Before the Panama Canal was opened in 1914 the only sea route to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans was to go round Cape Horn, which is at the southernmost tip of Chile. That Wikipedia page tells us that Cape Horn was first rounded in 1616 by two Dutchmen, Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who named it Kaap Hoorn after the city of Hoorn in the Netherlands. For decades, Cape Horn was a major milestone on the clipper route, by which sailing ships carried trade around the world. The waters around Cape Horn are particularly hazardous, owing to strong winds, large waves, strong currents and icebergs. This has lent it a good deal of mystique, and the wonderful Ralph McTell wrote a song about an imagined trip around the Cape. His own version is good, but his good friends Fairport Convention have also recorded it, and I thought I’d play their version for you. This is Around the Wild Cape Horn:

I can never listen to that without feeling sympathy for that poor turkey!

This next one is very much a part of English social history. Blackleg Miner is a 19th-century song from Northumbria, which is one of the most controversial English folk songs owing to its depiction of violence against strikebreakers – i.e. the ‘blacklegs.’ The song is believed to originate from the miners’ lockout of 1844: although this was a national lock-out, the language of the song suggests that it refers to the dispute in the north-east coalfield, which lasted roughly 20 weeks. The lockout largely collapsed as a result of “blackleg” labour.

The coal-mining sector in the UK was always heavily unionised, and mining strikes such as in 1926, 1974 and 1984-5 have had big impacts on British society. The strikes caused bitterness both within and between pit communities, but also gave rise to expressions of solidarity such as sympathy strikes, material assistance such as food, and a feeling of belonging to a proud and powerful community of workers.

The song’s lyrics mention tactics common for attacking strikebreakers in the 19th century:

Across the way they stretch a line/ To catch the throat and break the spine/ Of the dirty blackleg miner

describes how a rope was often stretched across the entrance to a colliery to catch strikebreakers by the throat and flick them backwards, often causing them to injure themselves through falling. Strikebreakers were often stripped of their clothes and working tools once caught. The song is quite divisive, particularly in areas of England where the strikes of 1974 and 1984-5 divided loyalties. I first knew it from Hark The Village Wait, the debut album by Steeleye Span, and it piqued my interest such that I related to it during the 1974 strike in particular. I was born and brought up close to the small Kent coalfields and there were some miners who lived in our village who were always good for a tale or two. Steeleye Span have revisited the song several times, including on their 50th anniversary tour in 2019, from which this performance is taken:

That still feels powerful to me today, especially so for anyone who was around here during the 1974 strike when Thatcher’s government went to war with Arthur Scargill and his union: those tv news reports of pitched battles between miners and police were both terrifying and memorable.

My final song for today is another recent one, which is a whimsical take on another part of our history. Hiring fairs, also called statute or mop fairs, were regular events in pre-modern Great Britain and Ireland where labourers were hired for fixed terms. They date from the time of Edward III, and his attempt to regulate the labour market by the Statute of Labourers in 1351, at a time of a serious national shortage of labour after the Black Death. Subsequent laws, in particular the Statute of Apprentices of 1563, legislated for a particular day when the high constables of the shire would proclaim the stipulated rates of pay and conditions of employment for the following year.

Because so many people gathered at a fair, it quickly turned into the major place for matching workers and employers. Hiring fairs continued well into the 20th century, up to the Second World War in some places, but modern day working and recruitment practices saw them gradually die out. The closest parallel I can think of is the influx of labourers who came down from East London each year to pick fruit in the Kent orchards, though a farm on which I briefly worked during a school holiday also had a regular pool of temporary workers, so I guess that was a kind of continuation of the practice.

The song I’m playing is another by Ralph McTell which has also been recorded by Fairport Convention. It is set around a hiring fair, though it is actually a gentle love story. This is The Hiring Fair:

That feels like a good place to bring this little musical history lesson to a close. I hope I’ve shown you why I love folk music so much, and why I’m a sucker for a song that tells a good story. I know these aren’t just confined to these shores (Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, anyone?) but I wanted to stay near home for this piece. I’m grateful to John for prompting this and who knows, if you liked it I may add it to my collection of occasional series: music and history is a very fertile field!

See you again for Song Lyric Sunday 👍