Introduced by Sparky and Rhonda Rucker

“Shady Grove” is a traditional Southern Appalachian song. Like many mountain songs that blend Celtic and African influences, it is most often played in a modal tuning. Its origins are murky. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Volume III, credits it as a “Negro song.” In the Journal of American Folklore, the song was collected in both Kentucky and Tennessee. In one of her books, Jean Ritchie reminisced about hearing it as a fiddle tune when she was growing up in eastern Kentucky. We have recorded this song twice — once on our CD, Treasures & Tears, and again on Dear Jean, the Jean Richie tribute album.

See video from our live performance for a Jean Ritchie tribute at KY Music Weekend on July 25, 2015:

Rhonda says, “Doing the transcription was a challenge because Sparky tends to improvise so much, so each verse and chorus is a little different. Therefore, I went with the melody he used for the first verse and chorus.”

Shady Grove sheet music
Click here for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics:

(guitar is tuned to “D” Model [D A D G B D] capo at 2nd fret making it “E” Model)

Cheeks as red as the blooming rose
Eyes of the deepest brown
You are the darling of my heart
Stay ‘till the sun goes down

Refrain:
Shady Grove my little love
Shady Grove my darling
Shady Grove my little love
I’m going back to Harlan

When I was a little boy
I used to want a knife
Now I am a big strong man
All I want is a wife

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady Grove I know
Shady Grove, my true love
I’m bound for the Shady Grove

The last time I saw Shady Grove
She was standing in the door
Shoes and stockings in her hand
And her little bare feet on the floor

Wish I had a horse so fine
Corn to feed him on
Wish I had little Shady Grove
To feed him when I’m gone

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady grove I know
Shady Grove, my true love
I’m bound for the Shady Grove

Refrain:
Shady Grove my little love
Shady Grove my darling
Shady Grove my little love
I’m going back to Harlan

Wish I had little Shady Grove
I’d put her on the shelf
And every time she smiled at me
I’d climb up there myself

Eleven miles of mountain road
Fifteen miles of sand
If ever you see me back again
Gonna be a married man

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady Grove my darling
Shady Grove, my true love
I’m going back to Harlan

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady grove I know
Shady Grove, my true love
I’m bound for the Shady Grove

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady Grove I say
Gonna marry you someday

Refrain:
Shady Grove, my true love
Shady Grove I say
Shady Grove, my true love
Hey, don’t you wait ‘till the Judgment Day!

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker‘s music includes old-time blues, Appalachian music, slave songs, and spirituals as well as originals, and they accompany themselves with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, old-time banjo, blues harmonica, piano, spoons, and bones. Over fifty years of performing, Sparky and Rhonda have entertained at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as appeared on NPR’s On Point, Prairie Home Companion, and Mountain Stage. Their recording, Treasures & Tears, was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their music is also included on the Grammy-nominated anthology, Singing Through the Hard Times. The duo’s most recent recording is Down by the Riverside.

Introduced by Keith Kendrick

This wonderful version of “Bedlam” was collected by Cecil Sharp from Jack Barnard in Bridgewater 1906. I found it in Book 2 of The Crystal Spring: English Folk Songs, and I’ve been singing it since the 1970s.

Having seemingly been cruelly cheated out of her loved one (who, incidentally must have been either a thoroughly nasty piece of work or simply a complete and utter prat!) by jealous or unthinking friends, this poor girl, suffering probably only from a bout of melancholy, finds herself inappropriately dumped in a mental institution mistakenly diagnosed as slightly loopy, an all too common occurrence in days gone by – and not totally unheard of in more recent times either!

Listen to Keith and Sylvia Needham sing the tune:

Sheet music for Bedlam
Click here for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics:

Abroad as I was walking one morning in the spring
I met a maid in Bedlam so sweetly did a-sing.
Her chain she rattled with her hands and thus did smile and say:
“I love my love because I know he first loved me.”

“My love he was sent from me by friends who were unkind,
They sent him far beyond the sea and that torments my mind.
And though I suffer for his sake contented will I be
For I love my love because I know he first loved me.”

“My love will not come near me to hear the moan I make
And neither would he pity me if my poor heart should break
And though I suffer for his sake contented will I be
For I love my love because I know he first loved me.”

“Oh Johnny, lovely Johnny, are you my love or no?”
“Ah Nancy, dearest Nancy, I’ve proved your overthrow.”
“And though I suffered for his sake contented will I be
For I love my love because I know he first loved me.
For I love my love because I know he first loved me.”

Vocal and instrumental music, social and ceremonial dance have all played a role in Keith Kendrick’s career, which has spanned over five decades. Together with Sylvia Needham, he performs extensively all over the UK, Europe and beyond. They sing a capella or accompany themselves and play lively dance tunes on three different systems of concertina.

Introduced by Joel Mabus

For the CDSS Song of the Month, I offer “The Bonny Bunch of Roses,” as performed on Irish television in 1965 by a young Colm Walsh of County Clare. Here is the video of his performance.

I have transcribed his melody and also the lyric he uses, which is not what is posted beneath the video. I have never heard this exact version anywhere else — there are many, many variants. The song is in the “Bonaparte Canon,” as it were. In this ballad, the young out-of-favor Napoleon II is speaking with his mother, Archduchess Marie Louise, after daddy is dead and buried at St. Helena. He tells he will do what his father failed to do — give her the “bonny bunch of roses” — being England, Ireland and Scotland. And she says, “Don’t try it, kid!”

A version of this tune is sometimes called “Bonaparte’s Retreat” (one of the several) and exists as an Appalachian fiddle & banjo tune called “The Bunch of Roses.”

The Bonny Bunch of Roses
Click here for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics:

By the borders of the ocean,
One pleasant morning in the month of June,
To hear those warlike songsters
Their cheerful notes did sweetly tune,
I o’erheard a female talkin’
Who seemed to be in grief and woe,
Conversing with Napoleon
Concerning the bonny Bunch of Roses, O.

Up stepped brave young Bonaparte,
And took his mother by the hand,
Sayin’ “Mother dear have patience,
Until I am able to command;
When I’ll raise a mighty army,
And through tremendous dangers I will go,
And in spite of all the universe,
I’ll win for you the bonny Bunch of Roses, O.”

Oh, son, don’t speak so venturesome;
For England is the heart of oak;
And Ireland, England and Scotland, ,
Their unity was never broke.
O think upon thy father,
In the Isle Saint Helena his body lies low,
And you must follow after
So beware of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O.

He took three hundred thousand men
And kings likewise to bear his train;
He was so well provided for
That he could sweep this old world for gain.
Until he came to Moscow,
He was overpower’d by the sleet and the snow;
And Moscow being a-blazing
Twas there he lost the bonny Bunch of Roses, O.

Joel Mabus is a songwriter, folksinger, instrumentalist and music teacher living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. By genealogical records he is the scion of William Brewster of Scrooby, England & Plymouth, Massachusetts. He is also the scion of thousands of anonymous potato farmers and barrel makers from the Germanic lowlands. Joel has recorded 27 albums since 1978; his latest is titled Time & Truth.

Introduced by Geoff Kaufman

There are a number of versions of this lovely song most commonly called “Home, Dearie, Home.” I first heard this one from Ed Trickett in a house concert in NYC just as I was getting serious about performing and I often give it credit for steering me toward a career built around maritime music. I love its poignant vignette of the sailor far from home and the whimsical twist of the wife neglecting to tell him if their baby is a boy or girl.

Hear the song performed by Geoff Kaufman:

Ambletown
Click here for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics

Well now, Amble is a fine town with ships about the bay
It’s fain and very fain to be there, myself, today
I’m wishing in my heart I was far away from here
Sittin’ in my parlor a-talkin’ with my dear
And it’s home, dearie, home

And it’s home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted and I am bound to sea.
The oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree
Are all growin’ green in the north country
And it’s home, dearie, home.

Well, a letter came today, but somehow I cannot speak
The proud and happy tears are rollin’ down my cheek
“There’s someone here,” she said, “you’ve been waiting for to see
With your merry hazel eyes looking up from off my knee.”
And it’s home, dearie, home.

And it’s home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted and I am bound to sea.
The oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree
Are all growin’ green in the north country
And it’s home, dearie, home.

But that letter did not say if we had a boy or girl
It’s got me so confused, my heart is in a whirl
I’m going back to port where I’ll quickly turn around
And take the fastest ship that to Ambletown is bound
And it’s home, dearie, home.

And it’s home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted and I am bound to sea.
The oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree
Are all growin’ green in the north country
And it’s home, dearie, home.

Well now, if it be a girl, she shall wear a golden ring
If it be a boy, he’ll live to serve the king
With his buckles and his boots and his little jacket blue
He’ll walk the quarterdeck like his daddy used to do
And it’s home, dearie, home.

And it’s home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted and I am bound to sea.
The oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree
Are all growin’ green in the north country
And it’s home, dearie, home.

And it’s home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted and I am bound to sea.
The oak and the ash and the bonnie birchen tree
Are all growin’ green in the north country
And it’s home, dearie, home.

Geoff Kaufman‘s early interest in the folk music of the mid 60s rumbled along as an avocation from high school through college to graduate school. Then he took a left turn when he began performing with some fellows in Queens, NY, becoming the quartet STOUT, which sang at OpSail ’76 in NYC and at the first Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport Museum in CT in 1980. That led to a thirty-five year career singing and running music programs at Mystic from 1984 – present. During his NYC years, he also met the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and became a Sloop Singer which has shaped another significant part of his repertoire – songs of the earth, heart and spirit.

Introduced by Lynn Nichols

At CDSS, we are stewards of traditional music, dance, and song, but while the songs may be traditional, the traditions are living ones. Which brings me to “Throw Open Your Shutters.” Connecticut composer Amy Fell Bernon wrote this high energy, festive choral work in the Renaissance madrigal style in 2000 as a tribute to her high school choral director in Jamesville-DeWitt, NY. The piece features a wonderful interplay between voice parts, particularly in the “Hey Ding-a-dong” section. Bernon has set it in SATB, SSA, and TBB versions, and it is performed either with piano accompaniment or a cappella.

Amy Fell Bernon is one of Connecticut’s leading composers of choral music. She’s also a talented singer, pianist, conductor. Amy’s music is accessible and unpretentious, and she has received countless commissions from choral festivals and ensembles of all levels. Her works for treble voices are especially popular among women’s choirs and youth choirs.

In fact, it is the accessibility of “Throw Open Your Shutters” that has made it a such a choral favorite over the years. Of the many renditions of the tune that are available on YouTube, I have selected three:

The first is by the Stoughton High School Madrigal Singers (Stoughton, WI) and is also embedded here.

The second is from a children’s production of “A Christmas Carol” (location unknown).

The third is from the Ocean Springs High School Madrigal Choir (Ocean Springs, MS).

The music for “Throw Open Your Shutters” is distributed by JW Pepper, so I am including a sample jpg here. You can buy the music at the JW Pepper website.

"Throw Open Your Shutters" sheet musicLyrics

Throw open your shutters ye maids and lads
Sound out, ye trumpets, be glad, sound and be glad.
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltry play!
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltry play!

Gather ye neighbors, with candles bright
Sing out your choruses, sing, sing of delight
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltry play!
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltry play!

Hey ding a ding-a, ding, ding-a, ding-a, hey a-ding dong!
Hey ding a ding-a, ding, ding-a, ding-a, hey a-ding dong!
Hey ding a ding-a, ding, ding-a, ding-a, hey a-ding dong!
Hey ding a ding-a, ding, ding-a, ding-a, hey a-ding dong!
Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! Hey! Ding! Dong! Hey! Ding! Dong!

Climb to the rooftops and shout your noise
Join us in dancing, rejoice! Dance and rejoice!
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltery play!
Celebrate this festive day! Hey!
Ring your bells and let the psaltry play!

Sing! Ring! Dance!

Lynn Nichols worked for the Country Dance and Song Society from 2012-2019, first as Webmaster and then as Marketing and Design Manager. She is an avid choral singer, musician (mountain dulcimer), and English dancer.

Introduced by Brian Peters

The Wild Rover is one of the best-known traditional songs, but it’s not the Irish drinking anthem many people assume. It began life in the 1670s as an English broadside ballad about a hard-drinking ‘Bad Husband’ who saw the error of his ways, but was edited down over the centuries, rebranded as ‘The Wild Rover,’ and a chorus added. It was popular in England, Scotland and Australia, and the version made famous by the Dubliners contains elements from all of those places. Brian’s version was collected in Hampshire, England, in 1906, and retains the older chorus and temperance message – a similar version was written down in the same area as early as 1820.

Watch/listen to Brian perform The Wild Rover:

The Wild Rover sheet musicLyrics

I’ve been a wild rover for many’s the long year
Spent all my money on fine girls and strong beer
But for my part I will lay down my money in store
And it’s never will I play the wild rover no more

Wild rover, wild rover, wild rover no more
And it’s never will I play the wild rover no more

I went in to an alehouse where I’d used to resort
The liquor was good, but my money ran short
I asked them to trust me, they answered me “Nay”
Such a customer as you we can get any day

So from out of my pocket I drew handfuls of gold
The landlady’s eyes opened wide to behold
“You’re welcome, kind sir, to our liquor of the best
What we told you before, it was only in jest”

“Oh no,” I replied, “that never can be
For I’ll see you all hang e’er you get one penny
For a man who’s got money, you’ve a welcome in store
But a man who’s got none will be turned from your door.”

Brian Peters is a singer from England who specializes in the traditional songs and music of his native land, and is also a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist. He’s developed projects on the Child Ballads and Cecil Sharp’s Appalachian collection, and is a regular visitor to the USA.

Introduced by Suzanne Mrozak

This beautiful version of “She’s Like the Swallow” comes from The Folk Songs of Canada, by Edith Fulton Fowke (Literary Editor) and Richard Johnston (Music Editor), first published in 1954. My own copy of the book is the 1955 second printing and I learned it a few years after that. Fowke identifies this as a song from Newfoundland but does not name her source. Dr. Neil Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus, Department of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, who has published a wonderfully detailed scholarly article about the song, says that Fowke collected it from Albert Simms from McCallum Harbour, Hermitage Bay. The text that Dr. Rosenberg cites is different from the one Fowke published, however, so the actual source is a bit of a mystery.

Listen to Alan Mills sing the tune from the CD: Songs, Fiddle Tunes and a Folk Tale from Canada, by Alan and Jean Carignan:

Score for She's Like The Swallow
Click on the image for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics

She’s like the swallow that flies so high,
She’s like the river that never runs dry,
She’s like the sunshine on the lee shore,
I love my love and love is no more.

‘Twas out in the garden this fair maid did go,
A-picking the beautiful prim-e-rose;
The more she plucked the more she pulled
Until she got her a-per-on full

It’s out of those roses she made a bed,
A stony pillow for her head.
She laid her down, no word she spoke,
Until this fair maid’s heart was broke.

She’s like the swallow that flies so high,
She’s like the river that never runs dry,
She’s like the sunshine on the lee shore,
I love my love and love is no more.

Suzanne Mrozak fell in love with traditional music when she was introduced to it as part of her elementary school education in Clarkson, Ontario, and it continues to be one of the great joys of her life. After attending McGill University in Montreal – where she hung out in coffeehouses listening to The Stormy Clovers do Leonard Cohen covers – she moved to Chicago where, in addition to more coffeehouses, she discovered the Old Town School of Folk Music and the University of Chicago Folk Festival. When Suzanne arrived in Boston in 1979, she was thrilled to find that in addition to even more coffeehouses, there was a folk song society (The Folk Song Society of Greater Boston) with regular informal musical gatherings. Plus they sang many of the same songs she had been singing for years! Now, many years later, Suzanne considers herself very lucky to have landed in Boston and been welcomed into the remarkable folk community that exists there.

Introduced by Martha Burns

The night guard is truly the most romantic figure of cowboy lore. Imagine starry skies and a lone cowboy singing to his herd and the night guard invariably comes to mind. “Singing to quiet the cattle is important,” the writer Owen Wister reflected in his western journals near the end of the old trail days. “The more restless they are, the louder or more inarticulate is the singing, no words being used at all, but only a strange wailing. But as the cattle grow quiet, the music gathers form, and while the herd lies quietly at rest on the plain, the night herders are apt to sing long definite songs as they ride round and round the edges.”

This song captures that feeling better than any other I know. It comes from Jack Webb, who recorded it for Victor in 1930, one of only two sides he ever recorded. Born in 1902, Webb lived most of his life in Oklahoma, becoming one of the earliest and most celebrated rodeo stars in the country’s history. He could rope six horses abreast at a gallop and shoot articles from his head by pulling a string attached to a rifle trigger. Occasionally billed as the “Crooning Cowboy,” he also composed and sang cowboy songs. “The Night Guard” is apparently one of Webb’s own.

Listen to Martha singing “The Night Guard:”

Lyrics

The Night Guard Score
Click on the image for a downloadable PDF

Oh, the cowboys were gathered ’round the campfire
All tired from a long, hard day.
As they rolled their smokes, they told some jokes
To pass the time away.

The big trail herd was hard to hold,
The night guard sang a song,
To bed the cattle and keep them still,
Throughout the whole night long.

Well, the night guard was a handsome lad,
His face was tanned from the sun.
And his heart was lawfully wedded home,
Back to the only one.

She was a girl you’d surely love
If her you could but see.
Her eyes shown like the stars at night,
And a thousand charms had she.

As the dawn rose in the eastern sky,
The cattle began to stir.
The love light gleamed in the night guard’s eye,
For he’s on his way to her.

A longhorn steer came ambling by,
The blood was in his eye.
He caught the night guard unawares,
And charged as he rode by.

The night guard’s horse, in mighty leap,
Threw his rider on his head.
The steer then got him as he rose,
And there we found him dead.

The little girl has changed a lot,
She seems to have grown old.
I guess it was the news we brought,
And the story that we told.

Martha Burns specializes in songs from American old-time music and traditional songs from the great Southwest. She has performed throughout the United States, and in Canada, England, and Ireland. She has served on staff at CDSS’s American Music and Dance Week at Pinewoods, Youth Traditional Song Weekend, Wheatlands Traditional Arts Weekend, and the Bluff Country Gathering. Her 2014 solo album, Old-Time Songs, was dubbed “absolutely charming” by the folksong magazine Living Tradition. Martha offers workshops on topics ranging from Carter Family singing to the early history of cowboy songs. For more about Martha, visit her website.

Introduced by Tim Radford

I have always had a deep interest in Penal Transportation Songs. I think of them as being that perfect combination of a rural song and a sea song, tinged often with aspects of politics and law and order.

Transportation as a punishment started in Great Britain in the 17th century and was originally to North America, but that ceased in 1776 with the US becoming independent. Transportation to Australia began in 1787, and although it officially ended with the passing of the Penal Servitude Act of 1857, the last convicts were transported as late as 1868.

Here’s Adieu to All Judges and Juries ticks all the boxes for me: a great tune, a poignant story with that touch of hope at the end. The version I list here was collected in 1908 by Dr. George Gardiner in Hampshire from the singing of George Blake, who spent most of his life living and working in and around Lyndhurst & Emery Down in The New Forest.

Listen to Tim Radford sing Here’s Adieu to All Judges and Juries.

heres adieu to all judges and juries
Click here for a downloadable PDF

Lyrics

(As collected from George Blake on May 30, 1906)

Here’s adieu to all judges & juries
Here’s adieu to you bailiffs also
Seven years you’ve parted me from my true love
Seven years I’m transported you know.

Oh Polly I’m going for to leave you
For seven long years or more
But the time it will seem but one moment
When I think on the girl I adore.

Going to some strange country don’t grieve me
Nor leaving old England behind
But it’s all for the sake of my Polly
And my comrades I’m leaving behind.

And if ever I return for the ocean
Store of riches I’ll bring my dear
It’s all for the sake of my Polly
I’ll cross the salt sea without fear.

How hard is my place of confinement,
That keeps me from my hearts delight
Cold chains & cold irons around me
And a plank for my pillow at night.

Oft times I have wished that some eagle
Would lend me her wings for to fly
I would fly to the arms of my Polly
And on her sweet bosom I’ll lie.

Repeat verse 1

Tim Radford is an English singer, living since 1996 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA, but born in Hampshire, England on the edge of The New Forest; he moved from there in 1972. When living in North Oxfordshire for 25 years, he became deeply involved with morris dancing. He has been singing all his life, but in recent years has been doing more singing since having to give up dancing.

He has two Hampshire recorded CDs – one on the entire repertoire of the above source singer – George Blake and an another of Maritime songs collected in Hampshire.

introduced by Judy Cook

“Sailing” was a favorite song of Americans in the early years of the twentieth century. It was one of the songs selected from those sent in by 20,000 people in response to a request from the National magazine. Four hundred of those songs were selected by Joe Mitchell Chapple and published as Heart Songs Dear to the American People first published in 1909, and revised many times since then. The song also appears in the 1938 book 357 Songs We Love to Sing. “Sailing” was written in 1880 by Godfrey Marks, a pseudonym of British organist and composer James Frederick Swift (1847–1931). Many people know and enjoy singing the chorus, but many fewer realize there are three fine verses to go with it.


Listen to Judy Cook sing “Sailing:”

Sailing sheet music
Download a PDF of the sheet music for “Sailing.”

Lyrics

Heave ho! my lads, the wind blows free,
A pleasant gale is on our lee,
And soon across the ocean clear
Our gallant barque shall bravely steer;
But ere we part from England’s shore tonight,
A song we’ll sing for home and beauty bright.
Then here’s to the sailor, and here’s to the heart’s so true,
Who will think of him upon the waters blue.

Chorus:
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow, ere Jack comes home again
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow ere Jack comes home again.

The sailor’s life is bold and free,
His home is on the rolling sea;
And never heart more true or brave,
Than his who launches on the wave;
Afar he speeds in distant climes to roam,
With merry song he rides the sparkling foam.
Then here’s to the sailor, and here’s to the heart’s so true,
Who will think of him upon the waters blue.

Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow, ere Jack comes home again
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow ere Jack comes home again.

The tide is flowing with the gale,
Heave ho, my lads! set ev’ry sail;
The harbor bar we soon shall clear;
Farewell once more to home so dear;
For when the tempest rages loud and long,
That home shall be our guiding star alone.
Then here’s to the sailor, and here’s to the heart’s so true,
Who will think of him upon the waters blue.

Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow, ere Jack comes home again
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main;
For many a stormy wind shall blow ere Jack comes home again.

Judy Cook performs each year throughout the United States and Britain with concerts of folk song and multi-media historically themed programs. Judy has one book and eight CDs of traditional Anglo-American, 19th Century, and occasionally contemporary songs. The two most recent, Light and Shade and Well Met: Songs of the Sea were released in 2018. Her first book, A Quiet Corner of the War, presents the Civil War letters of her great-great grandparents with extensive notes and research; it is published by the University of Wisconsin Press (Fall 2013). Three of her eight multi-media programs feature letters from that book. She coproduces a weekly broadcast folk radio program, “Glad4Trad,” of which you can hear the most recent sample on her website. Learn more about Judy at her website.