Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Things I’ve learned from British folk ballads

[nielsenhayden.com]

Don’t ignore warnings. If someone tells you to beware of Long Lankin, friggin’ beware of him. If someone tells you not to go by Carterhaugh, stay away. Same goes for your mother asking you not to go out hunting on a particular day. Portents about weather, particularly when delivered by an old sailor who is not currently chatting up a country maid, are always worth heeding.

If someone says that he’s planning to kill you, believe him.

If someone says he’s going to die, believe him.

Avoid navigable waterways. Don’t let yourself be talked into going down by the wild rippling water, the wan water, the salt sea shore, the strand, the lowlands low, the Burning Thames, and any area where the grass grows green on the banks of some pool. Cliffs overlooking navigable waterways aren’t safe either.

Broom, as in the plant, should be given a wide berth.

Stay away from the greenwood side, too.

Avoid situations where the obvious rhyme-word is “maidenhead.”

If you look at the calendar and discover it’s May, stay home.

…and it continues on the site; I have had to explain previously to American colleagues that it’s not a real folksong unless it involves at least two of the four pillars of “booze, sex, war and death” , but still they seem to think that Home on the Range. Shenandoah, Yankee Doodle and anything else can qualify if is vaguely nostaglic…

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Comments

3 responses to “Things I’ve learned from British folk ballads”

  1. Teresa Nielsen Hayden
    re: Things I’ve learned from British folk ballads

    Some versions of Yankee Doodle would meet your specs. Home on the Range isn’t a folksong. And if your system thinks Shenandoah isn’t a folksong, your system is wrong.

    Can I offer an amendment? If you’re looking at American folksongs, you absolutely no doubt about it have to add “rivers” to your list of elements. Rivers are magic — sometimes scary, sometimes numinous, always there. Rivers plus religion have even more mojo. You could fill an entire boxed set with American folksongs about rivers.

    Shenandoah. It’s a river. It’s a folksong.

    Reply
  2. A Nonny Moose
    re: Things I’ve learned from British folk ballads

    The final verse of “You Never Even Called Me by my Name” performed by David Allen Coe, Charlie Pride and Merle Haggard (Steve Goodman) qualifies it as the “perfect country and western song.” Here’s the story:

    At the end of the song as originally written, David Allen Coe says, “Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song, and he told me it was the perfect country and western song…. I told him it was NOT the perfect country and western song, ‘cause he hadn’t said anything at all about mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting’ drunk. Well, he sat down and wrote another verse…. After reading it I realized my friend had written the perfect country and western song. … the last verse goes like this here.”

    “Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison, And I went to pick her up in the rain, But before I could get to the station in my pick-up truck, She got run over by a damned old train.

    And I’ll hang around as long as you will let me, And I never minding standin’ in the rain, You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’ You never even called me by my name.”

    Reply
  3. 69.72.17.195
    re: Things I’ve learned from British folk ballads

    Nonny Moose who/wherever you are, you took the words right out of my mouth. And anyway, since so much of what I would call “real” American folk music came from British folk ballads via the mountain folk of the Appalachians, I suspect that many of the same concepts apply. Wouldn’t hurt to follow the advice anyway.

    Reply

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