Singers at the Youth Traditional Song conference. Photo by Lorelei Erisis. — Photo by Lorelei Erisis

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Song of the Month

Join us each month in song!

Since 2016—our designated Year of Song—CDSS has featured a traditional song each month. Lorraine Hammond spearheaded this effort, and it was such a popular feature that Judy Cook volunteered to continue the tradition in 2017 and beyond.

Note: Many of these old songs should be looked at as “fairy tales for adults” in that they often address very strong, and sometimes scary, subject matter. They allow us to deal with difficult situations and emotions with the distance afforded by putting it in a song. They are cautionary tales, and had their use as such.

This month’s song:

January 2025: The Unquiet Grave
Submitted by Jeff Gillett

“The Unquiet Grave” is no. 78 in F.J. Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The set of words I sing is largely Version A in Child, as collected by Charlotte Latham “from a girl in Sussex” and published in 1868. (I see that I have changed them in several places without materially altering the meaning: whether by accident or design, I do not now remember!)

The tune I use was collected by Cecil Sharp from James Harding, Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire, March 28th, 1907 and is the 32nd tune for the ballad in Bronson’s The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads.

In most versions, the dead lover is male and there is a suggestion of violent death as he “lies slain.” This version, however—the earliest recorded by Child—has a female lover who is simply dead and buried. Some of the best-known tunes for the ballad are quite robust and almost exuberant! This tune is, I think, quite plaintive.

I wanted to create a mysterious, spooky atmosphere. To do this, we added a higher harmony vocal for the times when the ghost speaks. At this point, I also stripped the accompaniment back for most of the ghost’s words to a repeated, chiming discord: a ninth.

Listen to Discovery singing “The Unquiet Grave:”

Download the sheet music for “The Unquiet Grave.”

Lyrics

Cold blows the wind over my true love 
And a few small drops of rain. 
I never had but one true love 
And in cold grave she is lain.

I’ll do as much for my true love 
As any young man may 
I’ll sit and mourn all on her grave 
For a twelvemonth and a day.

The twelve months and a day being done, 
The dead began to speak: 
“O who sits weeping on my grave 
And will not let me sleep?”

“’Tis I, ’tis I, your own true love 
Who sit weeping on your grave. 
I want one kiss from your clay-cold lips 
And that is all I crave.”

“You crave one kiss from my clay-cold lips, 
But my breath is earthy strong. 
If you had one kiss from my clay-cold lips 
Your time would not be long.

“’Tis down in yonder garden green, love,
Where you and I did walk: 
The fairest flower that e’er was seen 
Is withered to a stalk.

“The stalk is withered and dry, my love 
So shall our hearts decay 
Then make yourself content, my love 
Till God calls you away.”

Jeff Gillett writes: My interest in folk music dates back to my childhood, when my parents introduced me to the music of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. I later discovered Martin Carthy and began to explore folk music from the UK. I have a great deal of sympathy for those who regard folksong as an essentially unaccompanied form, and have devoted my own efforts as singer and accompanist to finding an approach that supports the song without swamping it.

I perform solo and with Elaine Gillett as Discovery. I also accompany fiddle player Becky Dellow, with whom I have worked intermittently for nearly forty years. My other longstanding musical relationship was with singer Ron Taylor, with whom I worked for many years and recorded four albums. I have appeared on albums by Jim Causley, Martin and Shan Graebe, Craig Morgan Robson and Marianne McAleer, and was also in a duo with Sarah Morgan.

I play guitar, mandolin, mandola, English concertina, and Appalachian Mountain dulcimer.

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