Category: Publications

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.”

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:

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.

Lyrics

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:

Lyrics

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:

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

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.

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:”

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.

Introduced by Margaret Nelson

Back in the early 60’s, my oldest sister, Patricia Nelson, was a student at Hanover College in Indiana. She was taken on a class field trip to Berea College, and came back with an LP of the Berea College Choir that included a solo a capella rendition of a Kentucky version of “Earl o’ Bran” (Child #7), the first traditional ballad I’d ever heard. I’d sung in church choirs, junior and senior. I’d also spent a lot of time as a youngster reading all the folk tales and fairy tales I could get my hands on, a pretty wide selection since the Racine Library never bought into the notion that fantasy was bad for kids. When I found out there were rich old stories that had TUNES to them, I was permanently hooked.

According to Child, Earl o’ Bran has many versions and antecedents all over Scandinavia, including Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland; and in Germany as well. In some of them, the hero steals the lady without waking her family, but some person of ill-will sees them, accepts a bribe to say nothing, and then hurries straight to the girl’s family. As I understand this shaved-down Kentucky version, the guy and the girl could have been a long way down the road before anyone noticed she was gone, but our hero is so proud of himself as a fighting man that he blows his hunting horn, his “bugle horn,” deliberately waking up and challenging her father and all seven of her brothers. (The first six notes of the tune are definitely a horn call.)

The bit that makes the folklorists salivate is in many of the versions, including this one. Lord William doesn’t get hurt until Lady Margaret calls his name out loud, breaking (so they say) his battle magic. I think it more likely that her cry breaks his berserker’s concentration, and one of her severely wounded brothers manages to cut him.

Listen to a soloist from the Berea College Choir sing Earl o’ Bran:

Lyrics (as Margaret sings the song):

Wake ye up, wake ye up, ye seven sleepers
And do take warning of me
Take care, take care of your elder sister dear
For the younger is going with me

He put her on a milk-white steed
He rode a dapple grey
With the bugle horn around his neck
So lightly they rode away

As they rode out three miles from town
Lord William, he turned all around
He spied her father and seven brothers all
Come a-galloping over the ground

Keep still, keep still, Lady Margaret he cried
And hold my steed in your hand
While I do fight with your seven brothers all
In yon green meadow they stand

Fair Margaret spoke not any word
Nor made she any sound
Until she saw her own father’s head
Come a-tumbling down to the ground

Oh, hold your hand, Lord William, she cried
For that stroke it was wondrous sore
True lovers I could get me many a one
But a father can never get more

Take your choice, take your choice, Lady Margaret he cried
Stay here, or go and be my bride
I’ll go, I’ll go, Lord William, she said
For you’ve left me no other guide

He’s put her on the milk white steed
He rode the dapple grey
With the bugle horn around his neck
And so they went bleeding away

They rode till they came to his own mother’s gate
He’s tingled all on the ring
It’s O, dear Mother, asleep or awake
Arise and let me come in

It’s O, dear Mother, bind my head
For me you will bind no more
It’s O, dear Sister, make my bed
For I am wounded sore.

Lord William he died all about midnight
Fair Margaret, long before day
Now all sweet lovers that love each other true
May God send them more luck than they

Margaret Nelson learned her first traditional ballad in the early 1960’s. In 1982, she joined musical forces with guitarist and singer Phil Cooper. As a duo, as a trio with singer Kate Early, and as members of two successive Christmas bands, Cooper & Nelson toured, performed, and spent a lot of time recording mostly traditional songs and tunes. They released 24 recordings in 28 years, including cassettes, an LP, and CDs. (Many of the CDs are still available for sale.) In November and December, Margaret still tours with Kate Early, Phil Cooper and Susan Urban as the Bittersweet Christmas Band. In the summer, she is a regular performer at the Evanston Farmers Market, playing bouncy traditional music on her Autoharp so kids and adults can shake and bang along on home made rhythm instruments. She also performs at Memorial Day and Veterans Day gatherings sponsored by Veterans for Peace, and recently has been asked to lead songs at larger Chicago-area rallies for peace, social justice, and environmental sanity. Margaret describes her current condition as “Still vertical, still musical, and INCREASINGLY POLITICAL.” Visit margaretjnelson.com for videos of Margaret in performance.

Margaret served as Board President of the Folk Alliance-Region Midwest (FARM) from 1999-2002. She was booker, host and sound babe for the Sunday Evening Folk concert series, Evanston, Illinois, 2003-2005. She is the recipient of the Folk Alliance Region Midwest Lifetime Service Award, 2006.