The island of Mauritius is piece of land the size of Surrey which sticks out of the water in the Indian Ocean. Despite its small size the island has the dubious honour of being the historic home of one of Earth’s most famous dead things: the dodo. It is often said that Mauritius was largely un-inhabited before the Dutch arrived in 1598, but I think it important to point out that the island was in fact very inhabited, by Dodos for one. A few humans had visited the island before this but it was the VOC (the Dutch version of the East India Company) which turned the island into a shipping hub, ruined the island’s ecology by building plantations and introducing non-native species, which all contributed to the sad demise of the Dodo.

In 1710 the Dutch decided that the island was no longer useful and abandoned it. Five years later the French came along and took over, building far more infrastructure, using it as a Naval base, plantation and useful stop-off for French privateers. They also renamed it the Isle of France.

This lasted nearly a century until - during the Napoleonic wars - the British came along and took control. It wasn’t a smooth takeover; the British lost the Battle of Grand Port - the only naval battle they ever lost to the Napoleonic forces - a battle that is commemorated in an engraving on the Arc de Triomphe. Despite the minor setback, the British took over and officially reinstated its name of Mauritius, although the name Isle of France lived on in the memories and the songs of British sailors, as we shall see.

Transportation, Shipwrecks and the Queen

The song tells us of an Irishman. We don’t know a lot about him other than he was involved in some unruly behaviour that got him sentenced to seven years transportation. After six years he is returning home, still in chains, so it is likely that he would be finishing his sentence back in Britain. Unfortunately for him, the ship he was sailing on shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, and as the only survivor he floated towards the island of Mauritius where a Coast Guard spotted him. The Coast Guard launched his little boat and saved the injured convict. Upon hearing the accent of the man he had just pulled from the water, he was bought to tears, presumably because he was Irish himself.

The Coast Guard looked after the convict, giving him brandy and tending to his wounds. He also wrote a letter to the Queen, telling her of the shipwreck and, of course, of its only survivor. The letter came soon, which gave the convict his freedom, and the convict praises the Coast Guard for saving him, wishing him success in the Isle of France.

Truths and almost Truths

We tend not to expect folk songs to be historically accurate, it’s not their purpose. This song is no different, although it is surprisingly plausible. Seven years transportation was a common sentence in the Victorian era, and something likely to be given out for unruly behaviour. The unruly behaviour most likely being that he was involved in union protests, riots or political agitation. The earliest version of this song was written down in the 1840s, during a time of much unrest in the union movements of Britain. Irish immigrants were heavily involved in the unions and up to 30% of convicts sentenced to transportation to Australia in the Victorian era were Irish.

Mauritius is not directly on the route from Britain to Australia, but it is not far out enough not to be a useful and likely stopping place for ships making the return journey, and weather in that area of the world can be extreme, so shipwrecks were not uncommon.

There was no Coast Guard as such in Mauritius. There would have been a Harbour Master, Harbour Pilots, various Royal Navy officials, a Governor and more. The Coast Guard formed in 1822 and concentrated its efforts on smuggling around the coast of Britain; it did not extend as far as the Indian Ocean. This in itself is an interesting view into the role of the songwriter. Our Irish convict was saved, looked after and recommended for pardon, it is likely that there was a longest of officials involved. The Harbour Pilot making the rescue and taking him back to the Harbour Master where he is looked after. The Governor hears of the incident and sends a letter back to officials in Britain advocating for clemency towards the unfortunate man. It would be difficult to fit all of that into a single line or two of a song, so what we have is the Coast Guard, representing the entire system. Essentially, the Coast Guard is being used to mean officials, persons in power who you may not normally expect to be so compassionate towards a convict on his way back from serving a sentence, and this is what gives us the point of this song.

No Place Like Home

This isn’t a song about Mauritius, or about transportation, or even about convicts and Coast Guards. This is a song about home, and about how important that is to us. Let’s imagine this from the Coast Guards point of view, an Irish born man who has immigrated to Britain and joined the Royal Navy. Rising through the ranks slowly, he gets to where he is offered the post of Harbour Pilot on an island on the other side of the world. His sense of adventure tells him to go and before he knows it, he is on a piece of land in the Indian Ocean looking after ships coming in and out of port. Of course he misses his home, but he rarely thinks about it, this is his new life and there is no sense in mourning something that is so far out of reach. Then, one day, he sees a young man struggling in the water, he pulls him to safety and it is apparent that the man is an injured convict. He pulls the man aboard and tends to his wounds, but when the man speaks he hears home, that familiar accent that he had not heard in such a long time. I think the point of this song is that the pull of home is as strong for a young poor convict in trouble as it is for an older man with stable employment in the Royal Navy.

This really focuses us on a broader point about folk song. These songs aren’t telling stories of a particular time, or of a specific moment that needs to be recorded. Folk songs, mostly, tell stories that are as old as being human. They talk about love, lust, belonging, grief and anger. The real story is that of human experience, and that is true of music from a far more broad library than just folk.

Download the Folk Orc Session Sheet for The Isle of France here

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I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

This year’s festival will be running from Thursday 20^th to Sunday 23^rd August. We shall be running the festival band workshops on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, from 10.30am - 12.30pm. For those of you who already know you’ll be coming and will be bringing your instruments with you, I’m going to introduce the six songs we shall be playing over the weekend early. If you have been to any of our sessions or workshops before, then most will be familiar.

Drink Old England Dry

This has been a favourite in workshops for a long time. Its most pleasing attribute? It uses just two chords. G and D. So if you only play just one of those chords throughout then you will have got 50% of it right without even trying.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

Over the Hills and Far Away

Any Sean Bean fans in? That’s right, the theme tune to everybody’s favourite Napoleonic war based ITV drama: Over the Hills and Far Away. You’ll need three chords for this one, D, G and A.

You read about the surprising history of this song in a previous article here.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

Unquiet Grave

Using the same chords again, this is one of the top 10 most disturbing folk songs in history, according to the BBC. Whether it is a grim tale of a young man’s obsession leading him to commit heinous acts with a corpse or a poignant meditation on the entanglement of love and grief, it’s always a great song to play.

More about the song and a play-along track can be found here.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

British Man O’ War

A song about courtship and honour set during the opium wars of the nineteenth century. A classic in the Folk Orc repertoire and a song to which we say one thing. HUZZAH! We introduce two more chords here, you’ll need G, C, D and Em. That’s four chords in one song, which is basically Jazz.

There is write-up about this song and the perspectives of its protagonists here.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

Haul Away Joe

A shanty that can’t stay still, there are so many versions of this song it is hard to know where to begin. Back to D, G and A chords here. What this song does, though, is get everyone singing. No need to haul any ropes during our workshops, just hollering and noise making.

Look out for an article about this song coming soon to the Folk Orc Substack.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

Paddy Lay Back

Call and response anyone? Yes please. Well here it is, Paddy Lay Back. After spending a bit too much time at the bar, a young sailor took a trip to Valparaiso. Who hasn’t done that? G, C, D and your best Kenneth Williams impressions needed for this one.

Download the Session Sheet Here.

That’s it, the six songs that will make up the set-list for this year’s Purbeck Valley Folk Festival Band. Whether you’ve been playing for decades or only picked up an instrument last week, we’d love to have you along. If you’re coming to Purbeck and bringing an instrument, download the sheets beforehand and you’ll have a head start. If not, don’t worry—we’ll teach everything over the weekend. That’s what the workshops are for.

Share The Folk Orc

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Meet the Ancestors, again.

In my previous post, I discussed the role of music in emotional regulation. In the example I used, it was how some music acts as a confidence booster in times of social anxiety. But I don’t think I quite finished the thought. By now, if you have read some of my previous posts, I like to compare our modern lives with that of our ancestors, the Palaeolithic humans that came before us.

The reason for this comparison is two-fold. For one, I am always intrigued by the ingenuity of our predecessors. It’s quite clever making a slightly better computer than the person before, but it’s astoundingly brilliant to have invented a bow and arrow, hand axes, cooking, ecological house building techniques, and woven cloth from nothing. The older I get, the more I realise that we haven’t actually changed as much as some people seem to believe.Yes, we have cars, and phones, and central heating apps, but as humans, what has actually changed? We still have the same drives, the same emotions, the same needs. There is no reason to believe that our ancient ancestors didn’t experience love, or grief, or fear exactly as we do. In fact, I would tentatively argue that they may have been better at dealing with these emotions than us.

The Music within us

I have a theory, an idea that has come about from thinking, reading, playing music, teaching music, and general observation of the world. I think it is quite likely that early humans used music as a form of emotional regulation. There is, of course - as far as I’m aware - no archaeological record for the emotions of Palaeolithic humans. We know that they felt love and suffered grief from the way they honoured their dead. We can assume they experienced fear and anger from the state that some of their dead have been found in. What we don’t know, is how they dealt with these emotions. It’s possible that exercise was a mechanism that they could have used, in the same way that many people today will go to the gym or for a run to centre themselves and deal with the stresses of life. I could easily believe that a tribe of humans who are suffering the grief of losing a beloved leader might use the thrill and excitement of hunting, killing and feasting on a mammoth as a way of dealing with their emotions.

But what about the music? The language available to our Palaeolithic friends was primitive, not the complicated combination of syllables and syntax that we use today. Music can convey emotion far more simply than language. It doesn’t need to be detailed; it’s an overall feeling. When you also consider that we are talking about involvement in music, not just simply listening to it, then there is a greater feeling of how music can be used as an emotion balancer. Did they have specific chants for particular events? A sombre, slow beat with a low chant over it for times of grief. A chaotic rhythm interlaced with whoops and hollering on the comedown after a successful hunt. Possibly, that marching pace with a repetitive tune throughout, the getting battle-ready mode before a hunt or a fight with a rival tribe.

Of course, this stuff is tough to prove in any substantial way, but it doesn’t seem implausible, does it?

Emotional regulation in the modern world.

Nowadays, numerous methods to manage our emotions bombard our lives, and most of them require payment. There is therapy, of course, and exercise, as I have previously stated. You can take up yoga or meditation. There is an increasingly popular notion that links healthy eating to mood regulation and overall well-being. What seems to me to be missing in the wider world surrounding this is talk of music being a way of processing our emotions. The problem is that music has become a commodity, like much of the wellness movement. You can listen to it, as many people do, and that does obviously form some kind of support for the stresses of life. If you choose what music you listen to on the way to work (i.e. you listen to specific albums rather than just put the radio on), do your choices reflect what is happening in your life? If you are angry about something your boss has done, do you listen to fast-paced heavy rock? If you feel rundown and exhausted, do you listen to slower, more emotive music?

A big part of this conversation has to include Rave music and culture. It’s not something I have ever been into or done, but, if we are looking for ways that people lose themselves to the music, and use it as a form of emotional regulation, then I think ravers and clubbers might just be the place to look. Now there is a caveat to this, which is that I don’t think it counts if you have to take recreational drugs to get into the music. I’m not judging here; whilst not being into the scene myself, I have known a few people who have been there, and for some the drug taking is an important part of the culture. But, I also see that it is, to most at least, still secondary to the music. I have also known a couple of people who are in the rave scene who do not engage in the drug side of the culture, and they are the people who make me wonder whether we are seeing something much older than modern club culture. They have found a way to completely lose themselves in music, letting it take over their bodies and finding a sense of release from the world.

I Don’t Dance

My focus is people who play music, and particularly people who play music in groups. The Rave/Club/Dance scene is mostly electronic music which people dance to, so you could argue that this is not people being involved in the making of music. But, what that opens up is an entirely separate discussion on the involvement of movement and dance to music. There is much to be said on the topic, but all I will say here is that I don’t imagine that tribe of Palaeolithic warriors getting ready for a hunt were standing still as they prepared themselves for the trials ahead. I will also point out that a funk bass player who doesn’t move whilst they are playing is unheard of. Movement is a part of music.

It is right that we want people to be involved in all aspects of music making: the playing, the singing, and the dancing. It is all part of that balance between life’s stresses and the emotions we feel because of them. Involvement in music could be the thing we need to control our senses, bring perspective to our lives, and regulate our anger, love, grief, and fear.

The Tribe Within Us

Most of the things we use to improve our well-being are solitary pursuits. Whether it’s going to the gym, meditation, or attending therapy, we often do them as individuals. Even listening to music has become a largely private experience, delivered through headphones and personalised playlists. Making music, however, is different.

Whether it is a folk session, a choir, or a rave, playing music together asks us to do something remarkably unusual in the modern world. It asks us to synchronise. We match rhythm, breathing, movement, and attention with the surrounding people. For a few minutes or a few hours, a collection of individuals becomes a group. If we were trying to design a species that needed to cooperate in order to survive, I don’t think that there is a much better tool than music.

Maybe music developed because it helped us process grief, celebrate success, prepare for danger, and strengthen the social bonds that allowed small communities to survive.

I can’t prove that a group of Palaeolithic hunters stood around a fire chanting before heading out after a mammoth. No one can. But I find it far easier to imagine that they did than to imagine they faced life’s trials and celebrations in silence.

Maybe that is why making music still feels so important. Not because we are trying to become better musicians, but because, for a little while, we are doing something our species has probably been doing for hundreds of thousands of years.

Share The Folk Orc

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Music Seeks Even If You’re Not Hiding

Something happened to me recently that hasn’t happened for a while: a song appeared from nowhere and found me.

Music is pretty much everywhere in life, and occasionally something catches your ear which makes you think, ‘this sounds good.’ I often find new music on Instagram. Brief clips thrown up by bands trying to make their way in an overly complicated world litter my feed pleasingly. The vast majority I barely take notice of, which is not a judgment on the quality of the music or musicians involved; it’s more an expression of tired ears looking for something easy and familiar. Occasionally something will catch whichever brain cell is paying attention at the time and enthuse me enough to follow the musician’s page, feeding more of their music into my feed to enjoy. Then, once in while, a slice of music comes up that actually gets me excited; it makes me feel the same emotions that I did as a teenager discovering music.

This emotive interest has happened twice to my knowledge over recent years. The first time it was an American singer-songwriter called Jesse Welles, who writes fantastic political and observational songs, equal parts satirical and deeply moving. To my ears he is the closest thing we have to mid-60’s Dylan. There was really no surprise in me liking his music; I like politically charged protest songs, and acoustic guitars. If you had read me a summary of his music, I would likely have said that I would want to listen to it. I bought his album shortly after.

The second time that a song stood out from the crowd for me recently, which led to be buying it, downloading it and having it on fairly regular rotation in the car, was a different kettle of fish altogether. Had someone presented me with a written summary of the artist or the song, I likely would not have decided to listen to it. But for whatever reason, something clicked with me when I listened to it, and I got that charged feeling of discovery.

Dounana

The song which aroused my interest is called Dounana. It is by a Syrian rap and electronica artist who is based in Germany called Siba. Now, rap and hip-hop are not completely out of my line of vision, not a lot is. It is music that I am very selective of with my listening; Jurassic 5 and some 80’s nostalgia doses just about do it. It is a type of music I rarely choose to listen to, but I don’t necessarily turn it off when it comes on the radio. Electronica on the other hand is a fairly hard no from me. I’m not being snobby here or judgemental, there is plenty of music out there that uses electronic instruments that I like. It’s just that as a whole, I like acoustic instruments or planks of wood with strings attached where the electronic component is no more than a long wire heading towards a valve amp. So you can see that finding myself enamoured by an electronic artist that raps in a language I don’t understand was not an expected discovery, and in there lies an interesting thought.

I did not understand the lyrics of this song the first few times I heard it. The themes of displacement, colonialism and cultural identity which the song portrays are in no way linked to my initial interest in the song, although my subsequent understanding of the lyrics has only bolstered my enjoyment of the track. I wonder how my feelings towards it would have changed if I’d found out that it was a song about killing puppies or eating marmite; alas, we shall never know. The point I am alluding to is that the passion and aggression that emanates from the music is imparted through sounds, not words. This raises the question: what is it that makes us like the music that we do?

For me, it’s not the lyrics, although they can be important to the enjoyment of music later. The fact of the matter is that a bad version of a good song doesn’t work. Take for example, a lyrically good song like Bob Dylans ‘Desolation Row’ and now reimagine it as Disco track played on kazoo and Tamborine. It doesn’t matter how good the lyrics are, that ain’t being saved. Equally, there are plenty of examples of lyrically poor or average songs that are saved by the sound that supports the words; see Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Can’t Stop.’

So why did this song resonate with me in the way it did? The answer may lie in a part of my brain that holds onto nostalgia.

The Ani DiFranco Connection

When I was about 19, give or take a year, I travelled to Ireland with a music promoter friend of mine to attend the Willie Clancy festival in County Clare. There were several moments during this week long adventure that would come to influence me as a musician, but it was quite a minor event that comes to mind in this exploration of why we like the music we do.

In a CD shop in Galway, I bought two albums; one of them I can’t remember, the other album was Dilate by Ani DiFranco. I listened to it later that day, on headphones, sat on a broken fold-out bed in the upstairs room of the cottage we were staying at. Within the first few bars of music I knew I was listening to something that resonated. The rawness of it, the powerful acoustic guitar that sounded like the strings were too loose, the biscuit tin drums and Ani DiFrancos passionate voice all collided to create something that would stay with me and have an undeniable effect on my musical journey.

I felt like I had found something, a secret that nobody else knew about. I questioned why nobody else was talking about this album. Surely something this innately epic should be headline news.

Some time later, I was back at home and it was band practice time. The band had assembled. As usual, there was just as much talking about music as there was playing it. We often shared new music with each other so I played them the second track of the album - Outta Me, Onto You - because it is the hardest song on there. To my surprise, their reaction wasn’t that of awe and wonder as mine had been. In fact, they didn’t seem to like it. ‘The drummer is rubbish,” one of them said, “that guitar sound is horrible,” said another. I didn’t understand and was certainly crestfallen to not have had the reaction I expected. It made no sense. Sure it wasn’t clean, it’s not tight, to me, that is not what was important.

A Common Thread

There is a reason I have harkened back to that Ani DiFranco album here. There is a definite connection between it and Dounana. The trouble is defining it. There are some obvious similarities between the two. Women wrote and performed both. The overall feeling is aggressive and passionate. But it seems too simplistic to say that I just have a leaning towards justifiably angry women in music. No, there is something else, a warmth to the sound, the tone, an honesty to it all.

Listening back to the Ani DiFranco album, I notice a rising electric guitar in the track Done Wrong that reminds of another artist: John Butler. Sunrise Over Sea by the John Butler Trio is another album that blew my socks off when I first heard it, a few years after my discovery of Ani DiFranco. What strikes me about this connection is that although John Butler is certainly passionate, his music is not aggressive, not in the same way at least. It’s more hopeful, more optimistic, more love, less anger. There are several moods to the album, different emotions, often contained in one track. You can move from a sense of freedom, of flying across oceans to a heads-down and let’s groove on this feel within seconds, and that’s where the connection forms. Yes, there are some audio related similarities between the all three bits of music, but my suspicion is that it’s the emotional connection which is paramount to understanding this.

A Woollen Cloak and a Fire

Now, you may think I have lost the plot a bit here, but stay with me. I have spent a lot of my time outside (although not as much as I would like) camping, hiking and running. In these pursuits, I have tried a lot of different gear to keep the British weather at bay. High-tech fabrics are lightweight and breathable; they keep the rain out; some are quite windproof; others are warm. They don’t have soul though. There is a different emotional engagement between staying in a high-tech tent with high-tech waterproofs, usb powered hand warmers and ceramic thermals than there is to sleeping in a canvas tent, sitting around a roaring campfire and covering yourself in a thick woollen cloak. The difference is protection. The high-tech stuff stops wind and rain getting to your skin, but a woollen cloak is like donning armour. That feeling of being protected from the elements whilst being kept warm, like a protective hug when under attack. That is the emotional connection I have with Ani DiFranco and John Butler, those two albums make me feel like I am protected.

To put this into a little more context, it’s probably worth pointing out that I was an awkward teenager, socially. I am and always have been a member of the introverts’ society, and forced social interaction is my kryptonite. Not to turn this into a personal therapy session, but that awkward teenager/young adult was on the lookout for something that would protect him from social situations. Maybe the timing of finding that album in a CD shop in Galway is key. It was a great week filled with many experiences I am truly grateful for, but it was also a week of me being completely on edge. I was on holiday with two people, both considerably older than me, both considerably more confident than me, and both of whom expected me to throw myself into situations with the same assuredness that they had. Getting back to the cottage, going upstairs and listening to Ani Difranco on headphones was the breather I needed that week to give me the courage to jump into the next day.

Moving On

I’m 43 now and that awkward young man of twenty something years ago is mostly a distant memory. Although I am still a proud introvert and would certainly choose a good book in front of the wood burner over any kind of party, but I have learnt to cope with social situations over the years and my anxieties are minimal. So I don’t need that feeling of protection that I once did. However, the cloak over the head, fire burning whilst the rain beats down, is still a feeling I look out for, and I think that is why the song Dounana found me. It’s not that I need the emotional regulation as much as I did but I have a nostalgic feeling for things that made a difficult part of my life easier, and if something out there reminds me of that feeling then I am going to latch onto it.

There is still a bit of chicken and egg scenario here that needs addressing. Is it that there is something inherent in the music that made me feel protected, or is it purely the situation and the context of my experience with the music that made me feel that way? I’m not sure I can answer that, I suspect it is probably a little of both though. There is certainly a rhythm, a pulse that is common in the music I have mentioned. The music doesn’t walk or saunter, neither does it run at speed, there is pace in between where it marches. In any good movie battle scene, there is a moment when the good guys approach the enemy at a brisk walking pace before breaking out into a run and burying Anduril into the skull of an Uruk-hai (apologies to non-LOTR fans). It is that pace that this music is set at, it is ‘battle ready.’ It’s not fight mode, not in the midst of the chaos, that’s more Rage Against the Machine or Led Zeppelin for me, this is pre-battle music.

Over to You

This is all a very personal perspective, I don’t expect many people will have the same emotional response to Dounana that I have had. But do you recognise the feeling? What music have you listened to in the past that has made you feel bolder? Or what music do you listen to during moments of anxiety or worry?

Share The Folk Orc

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Let’s talk about tune sets. In British and Irish folk music, it is common practice to play tunes in sets, which is where you play three tunes one after another, and each of them three times around themselves. There is no single historical reason why three became the convention, but it is a format that works musically and socially. Three times is long enough to get into the feel of it and not so long that it drags.

From a playing perspective, it makes sense to play each tune three times. The first time round is to get your ear in, which may involve recognising the tune as one you know or working out the basics of the tune to play along. The second time around is to settle in and get comfortable. Then, on the third time around, you can let rip; the energy builds, and you put some feeling into it.

As for why we play three tunes, I suspect that this is mainly from a dancing tradition. Many tunes sets comprise three tunes of the same rhythm. Three jigs or three hornpipes or three reels. So there would be cohesion throughout the set for the dancers to dance to. Why three tunes rather than just one? I think that is likely just because one tune nine times around isn’t as interesting to listen to or play.

Not all tune sets fit these traditions though. Some tune sets build energy or tell a story through the use of different styles of tune. The tune set we are looking at here is one of these.

The Arran Boat Set

The Arran boat set has been a favourite at the Folk Orc workshops and sessions for quite a few years. It consists of three very Scottish tunes: two slow jigs followed by a speedy reel.

The tunes tell a story of three defining aspects of Scotland. First, they represent the island people, for whom boats served not only as transport but also as a crucial part of their working lives. Second, the tunes describe a more sophisticated, even aristocratic, version of Scotland. Finally, they lead to the common element shared by all of Scotland: the beautiful countryside they inhabit (and the whisky they make in it).

The Arran Boat Song

The Isle of Arran is one of the most southern islands on the west coast of Scotland. With the Highlands to its north and the lowlands to its east, it sits in-between the two faces of Scotland. It also sits within the wider maritime world of the Firth of Clyde and the routes that connected western Scotland and Ireland. It is a place where boats and life on the water have been inherent for thousands of years. The earliest inhabitants of the island were living there 8000 years ago, and there is evidence of near continuous activity on the island since the Bronze Age.

The tune itself is a slow jig which expresses the feeling of rowing a boat.* The way it does this is by elongating the first note of each three. This first note becomes the pull of the oars through the water, which makes the second note shorter, the release as the oars come out of the water and return to their starting position. The third note is where the oars sit back in the water as the boatman braces for another pull.

In terms of counting, this takes a standard jig (1 2 3 2 2 3) and moves the 2 onto the + which follows it. Like this: 1 2+ 3 2 2+ 3.

*Obviously I have no way of proving that this is what the composer of this tune was thinking of at the time he wrote it, but to me, it makes sense.

Highland Pibroch

Everyone knows about bagpipes and how the Scottish military famously used them to strike fear into their enemies. I went to the Edinburgh Tattoo several years ago and have experienced the force of sound that is two hundred bagpipes playing in unison. It is a sound that moves your insides.

However, what is less known about this deafening and brash instrument is that it has a more sophisticated and cultured side to it. The pibroch is bagpipe music that is more formal. It involved longer, more complex compositions than traditional folk tunes. It was music enjoyed by highland chiefs and clan leaders, the upper echelons of highland society in the 17^th century. Pipers would have played these tunes at funerals, welcomes, worship, and in formal military settings. As things happen in folk music, it all comes back around, and at some point, one of these tunes got simplified, shortened and became the traditional tune that we have in the set.

I like to think that this tune may have been played with a slight tongue in cheek attitude behind it. Some fiddle players taking a sophisticated tune from the clan leader’s banquet and turning it into a jig to play around the campfire. Equally, it could have been reverence for that order which brought it into traditional use. Either way, it is another slow jig, again with skips that break it away from the norm. In particular, the B-section shortens the first note of each three, elongating the second. This gives a rhythm that would not feel out of place with John Bonham’s drums thundering away in the background, or at least, that’s what happens in my head when we play this tune.

Glenlivet

The area of Glenlivet is to the east of the Highlands in Scotland. Glenlivet is known for two things: its remoteness and its whisky. It is an area of Scotland I have never visited; I have, however, experienced the pleasure of its whisky. Whether the tune here is named for the beautiful countryside or with the warming amber liquid is up for debate, but considering that it is a rather fast flowing reel I’d like to suggest that it is the latter.

A nice, interesting nugget of a story is that the remoteness of the area and its whisky production are connected. It is the remoteness of the area that made it a popular place for illicit distilling. Stills were hidden in the glens, and it was a tricky place for excise officers to reach. The area was well known for the illegal venture from the 1700s until 1824. In that year, the British Government passed an act that lowered the cost of obtaining a distilling license. George Smith then established the first legal distillery in the area.

You can download the The Arran Boat Set notation and mandolin Tab here!

I’m not Scottish

There we have it, a set of three Scottish tunes that take us on a journey through Scotland’s history. I will take this moment to say: I’m not Scottish, I’m not even slightly Scottish. I’m English, through and through, which is why I tend to lean towards English tunes and songs in my writing and playing. I do love Scotland though, and it’s music. I would never claim to speak for Scottish culture, but I really enjoy exploring the stories carried by these tunes. I would love to hear from any of you Scots out there reading this if you have anything to add to these tellings of Scottish history, or indeed thoughts and feelings around these tunes.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

This week’s lesson is a slightly more developed version of My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground for mandolin.

The tune itself is the same, but this arrangement has more to it. Rather than simply playing the melody note-by-note, I’ve added chord tones, hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides to help bring the tune to life and make the tune a little more interesting.

You can read about and learn the session version of this tune by clicking here.

This is aimed at players who are comfortable with the basic version and want to start moving towards a more ornamented style of playing — I strongly advise you learn the basic version first before you tackle these add-ons. But don’t worry if every little detail doesn’t fall under the fingers straight away. The important thing is to keep the tune sounding musical. The ornaments are there to add character, not to turn it into an exercise!

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Why Music?

The question that stands before us this week is one of the utmost importance, or, depending on your point of view, of no importance at all. The infamous quote from George Mallory, who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, replied, ‘because it’s there,’ has a peculiar relevance here. For some, that answer will satisfy; for others, it is a red rag held up in front of a metaphorical bull. I am not dismissive of the view that some things just don’t need to be thought about as much as some people - myself included - like to do. There is also a contradiction in my stance here, as I will happily bleat on about how thinking too much about music, particularly when learning, can have disastrous effects on the music that is being made. So let me argue for both sides here.

Ignorance is Bliss

The phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ is used by smart-arses who want to point out the intellectual short-comings of people they see as below themselves. It is a misuse of the phrase. Just because a person doesn’t know something that you do isn’t a sign of stupidity, nor is their relevant happiness to carry on not knowing what you know a sign of their ignorance. The decision to learn or think is one that comes with baggage; it is a suitcase full of doors and possibilities which, once you start, you have to decide which ones you are going to venture through and which you will leave shut. On any subject, there is enough knowledge out there to fill a lifetime of learning.

Take food as an example. We all eat it and enjoy it; we know it is necessary to our lives. You don’t need to know much more than that. Should you choose to, then you can learn how to cook, discover different flavour combinations and experiment with ingredients that you have not eaten before. This will increase your enjoyment of food as a whole, an example of more knowledge leading to increased enjoyment of a subject.

However, there are traps laid here. As you venture through your culinary journey, you come to a place where you think about the quality of your ingredients, you notice that - in some cases - the more expensive spices do taste better, as do the fresher farm shop vegetables and the higher welfare meat. This has two effects on your enjoyment of food. If you are on any kind of budget, you realise that you can’t afford the nice food. The good quality stuff becomes a treat, to have occasionally, but this can make all the food you eat the rest of the time a little duller than it was before. The second effect it can have, or another door that appears willing to be opened, is that you look at where your food comes from. This becomes quite a dark arena. So now, on top of the food you once enjoyed becoming a more muted experience overall, you also carry guilt, because the cheap food you are eating has a less than salubrious back story. You also start to realise that vegans might actually be right about a few things.

This could all have been avoided if you had just stuck to enjoying the food that was put in front of you and accepting that it is a necessity of life. No-one should judge you for it. Knowing this stuff isn’t going to change the world, it’s not going to tackle deforestation or harmful farming practices, whereas not knowing this stuff may just let you enjoy doing something that you have to do anyway.*

*This hypothetical story is somewhat autobiographical.

But it’s music

Here is the argument for the defence, though. We are not talking about food, we are not in danger of coming across something that will diminish our enjoyment of music or layer ourselves with guilt. Not yet at least. Music is an individual experience. Even when creating music in a group, our individual experiences of that are unique to us. Communities are created through it, bonds are built, wounds are healed and oppression can be broken by it. Yet, the vast majority of the music we create today is a commodity. A thing to be sold, to be listened to and appreciated from a distance. If we don’t think about it, if we don’t put a certain amount of consideration into what music is to us as a species, then are we in danger of losing something fundamental to our being?

Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and musician, wrote in his book This Is Your Brain On Music: “Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech, communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.”

What this means, is that music came before speech. Evolutionarily, humans needed brains that could process and create music before being able to do much else. Music is part of our core, our structure and our humanity. It has to be helpful to think about this, to understand that our very existence as a species is riding on something that many nowadays see as an extra, a bonus to life. There is further evidence of this in the way children learn through song, how every culture in the world has their own form of music tradition, and how still today many people attend community groups to play music for a whole host of reasons.

The Oil in the Gears

Holding the weight of the entire human species up to examine can be a little daunting. It can be hard even to fathom, such is the enormity of the subject. What we can do though is bring it back to where we are now, why do we need music today? What is it in our experience of being humans now that leads us to wanting to play or listen to music?

Several governments in recent decades have done dreadful things to the arts. The conservative government between 2010 and 2024 underfunded arts education, which led to the closure of many centres of art and culture. Of course there are always official reasons why this needs to be done, but one can’t help but feel that it is often the case that the arts just aren’t as important as other subjects, like maths, English, IT, and business studies. Art is a privilege that you can enjoy should you have the money and the time at your disposal, but not an inherently important thing for the government to be concerned with.

Here is where I think they have got this wrong though. A society is basically a large machine. The government’s job - although they may need reminding of this - is to keep that machine working to the best of its ability. There are small cogs at the bottom of the machine, big cogs at the top and all the different sizes in-between. All the cogs need to be moving freely for the machine to work, if just one of those cogs stops then it is going to cause problems throughout the whole machine, and the only thing that is going to keep all of those cogs moving is the regular application of oil. Music is that oil. Without it the whole system is going to come to a halt, and it’s not good enough to just show the cogs some oil, they need to be in it, just as we need to be in the music.

Maybe this is an important distinction about how we view music. We tend to term it as making or creating music, but that involves skill and knowledge. Maybe we can think of it more as just being a part of music, being in the music.

There are several studies that have been done that show how active participation in music (as well as other artistic activities) led to improved health and well-being overall, which in turn leads to a happier and more productive workforce.

A Final thought

Early humans made music to communicate and build bonds. We still do this today, but our relationship to music has shifted from something that is part of our very being to an element that eases things along. Less and less oil is being placed in the machine and most of it is recycled. Food is an essential part of being an animal, music is an essential part of being human.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

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Legion

Red Dwarf - Series 6 - Episode 2 - Legion: the crew find themselves on what they thought was a deserted space station only to discover that they were in fact in the company of a mask wearing alien in green lycra, going under the name of Legion. After a failed escape attempt utilising a plot from Surfboarding Killer Bikini Vampire Girls, the four discover Legion’s true nature - he is a ‘gestalt’ entity, a being composed of multiple parts fused together. Then this dialogue happens:

Lister: “What? You’re us? All four of us? Our combined minds and personalities blended together?”

Legion: “Oh, but much more than that, exponentially more. The whole becomes far greater than the sum of its parts.”

The concept here may initially feel like 1+1+1+1 = 5, which is mathematically dubious but philosophically worth a shot. For us, talking about music, it is a premise for positive interaction.

The Commandments

According to the Bible, Moses received a stone which had ten rules carved into it by which humans should live their lives. For the most part - whether you are religious or not - these rules are pretty sound. Don’t kill each other is a pretty big one; then there is don’t gossip; respect your family; don’t steal; be faithful. All seemingly reasonable requests, which, admittedly, humanity has largely failed to adhere to.

In an act of ruthless theological efficiency, the rule ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ covers these commandments in one neat phrase. As long as you take neighbour to mean your fellow humans rather than specifically Dorothy at No.22. But it’s not the existential voyage of human relationships that brings me to mention it; it’s the idea of such a small phrase covering such a wide landscape of possibilities.

The One Commandment to Rule Them All

Music is a vast arena. There is so much that can be involved, from theory to genre, instrumentation, culture, religion. What you like against what you don’t like. Technical ability versus soul. What if it were possible to whittle this musical cosmos down to a few simple rules of engagement? The Ten Commandments of music. Then, what would be that one phrase which covers them all, one simple sentence we can wear like a talisman to remind us how we should ‘do music.’

This feels like a search for the holy grail, and I am not suggesting that I found an elusive phrase that contains everything you need to know about music in it. But, having sat down with the idea in my head for a while now, and having jotted down quite a few possible musical commandments, I have a suggestion:

Add To The Sound

It’s not as catchy as ‘Love Thy Neighbour’, but hidden away in there is a basic principle that should always be present in music. Certainly, in any music that involves more than one person, that is.

The Practicalities

So what does it mean? Obviously, if you are making a noise in any situation, you are in fact adding to the sound. But just making noise in an area where other noise is happening doesn’t constitute music. It is how we approach the making of sound that is important, the mental attitude that we have towards the creation of music. How this relates to playing music by yourself is something to be mused upon in the future, but for group playing, no matter what the situation is, the right thought process is in those four words: Add to The Sound.

What do you think about whilst you are playing with other musicians? Do you focus on what you are playing, or what the people around you are playing? Is it the rhythm that takes up the larger space in your brain or making sure you are playing the right notes? How often do you focus on the overall sound? The sound the group is making as a whole. I’m willing to bet that for a lot of people the answer is rarely. But surely the focus should be on the thing you are creating.

Imagine you have joined a group of sculptors and you have an ambition to sculpt one piece of art jointly, a recreation of Michelangelo’s David or similar. If each individual focuses purely on their specific bit while occasionally glancing at what the sculptor next to them is doing, you will have a David with one leg bigger than the other, an out of proportion head, and the arms of a T-Rex. To make a decent job of it, each sculptor will need to be constantly aware of what the overall result is looking like.

This is the same in music. Try it, next time you are in a situation where you are playing in a group of any sort, focus on the overall sound that you are making together and ask yourself, ‘what am I adding to this?’ Are you bolstering the rhythm or filling out the melody? Are you creating subtle chord tones that lie under the lead or filling out a wall of sound? You will be adding something, and it is worth taking the time to consider what that is.

There will be thoughts squirrelling around now, along the lines of, ‘that’s fine if you are an experienced musician; I’m just trying to remember which chord comes next.’ It might seem that I am suggesting an out-of-body experience, where you leave your corporeal form to listen to the sound you are making as an outsider. I’m not; this is open to anyone; you just have to decide what you are doing when you play.

For those of you who attend community music sessions, like the ones I run or many others, it is likely that you are using that time to improve as a musician. The group session becomes practice for you, a way of forcing yourself to make quicker chord changes or learn a tune. That is fine; I encourage it, and if that is the case, then yes, taking yourself away from that to focus on the more existential relationship between you, the music, and your fellow musicians may seem like a tall order. But what I would also encourage is to occasionally forget about trying to improve, or even to get things right. Just listen to the music and add something in. Play less. You don’t have to play the whole chord or all the notes all the time.

Exercise: (for those who attend community music groups with 10 or more people)

Next time you are in a situation playing music with a group, try taking a step back. Stop playing for a moment and listen to what the other players are doing. Now take the keynote for the song (if the song is G, play a G note) play it. Quietly at first and then getting louder. Don’t play it continuously, just here and there. Listen to where you think it might fit and then play it there. It won’t work every time, but you should start finding where it fits. What you are doing here is learning to listen to the whole, rather than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle

How we approach playing music is as important as - if not more so - than technical ability. The reason we play music together is to feel connection; it is cavemen around the fire chanting to feel safe. One caveman chanting away on his own is unlikely to deter any predators. Two cavemen though, not only have twice the strength physically, but the knowledge that neither are alone. Three, four, or five cavemen exponentially magnify this effect. A tribe of twelve cavemen, all chanting with one another, becomes an immovable force; no predator is going to dare challenge them. Yet, each one of those cavemen is still chanting the same thing that first lone caveman was; it is only in the community where there is strength.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” - Aristotle

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

This Friday (22 May) will see the first of a series of posts exclusively for Paying Subscribers. These posts will take the form of video lessons, specifically for guitar and mandolin for now, with a focus on learning traditional songs in a way that promotes participation. This Friday it is a lesson covering the finger style guitar arrangement of My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground.

You can hear it and read about the story behind the tune here.

This week we are talking about ‘My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground,’ which I first came across in a collection of Scottish tunes, accompanied by information that inferred it being known as a military tattoo, played on the bagpipes. Here in lies a pleasing bit of etymology - for those who find etymology pleasing at least - which is that the military use of the word Tattoo comes from the Dutch ‘tap toe’ which means ‘taps shut’, and loosely speaking a tattoo is a tune used to signal to the bartenders that it is time to shut off the taps so that the soldiers can get to their beds*. (It is completely different to the other use of the word Tattoo, which was introduced into English by Captain Cook, having got back from Tahiti, and is the onomatopoeic representation of the sound that the tools natives used to mark each other’s skin.)

So what we have here is a simple Scottish tune that was used in the 19th century to call Scottish soldiers back to barracks at the end of a night in town. Or at least that is what I thought until I dived a little deeper, and, as usual, the story is more complicated, a little messier, and certainly broader than what it would seem at first glance.

*Tattoos are commonly played on drums, sometimes accompanied by fifes. Some Scottish regiments used bagpipes rather than fifes, which is how this tune likely ended up with the information attached to it.

Download My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground Tune Sheet Here.

Paid Subscribers can look out for fingerstyle arrangement Tab and Lesson soon.

The Return of the Recruiting Officer

In a previous post, we talked about the song ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, which was popularised by its use in the play ‘The Recruiting Officer’ in 1706. It wasn’t the only one, ‘My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground’ also appeared in that play. It was a lament that a lady sang about losing her lover to the war. There are a few versions of this, or at least representations of early versions - we can’t be exactly sure how it would have originally sounded in the play - on YouTube which you can listen to. The tune that has entered modern folk repertoires is different, but there is a definite resemblance if you listen hard enough.

The interesting point about this is an understanding of how these songs came into our traditions. What is becoming apparent is that there was never one road in, never one specific way that songs became folk songs, but here is one way that we can directly compare to how we consume music today.

Theatre was a big thing in the 17th and 18th centuries. It had become hugely popular towards the end of the 16th century - when Shakespeare was doing his stuff - and continued to be an important part of society for the next couple of hundred years. This was before television and radio; there weren’t gigs in the way there are today. Also, large parts of the population were illiterate, so theatre really was ‘the’ public entertainment on offer.

When we think of our 18th century ancestors going off to the theatre to enjoy an evening of culture, we shouldn’t get the image confused with how we treat theatre today. This was not just the financially comfortable middle-class, sat neatly in rows, quietly chatting before the performance began, complete silence during the performance. Theatre was a bawdy social event that was open to all except the poorest in society (a night at the theatre could cost as little as 1 shilling, roughly 7 or 8 pounds in today’s money). This meant that plays would often be relatable to a wide range of people; many were satirical and poked fun at the events of the time. The ‘Recruiting Officer’ was a satirical look at the practice of recruiting young, mostly poor, men into the military, which is where our song - a lament for the love lost in war - comes in.

Escaping the boards

There would have been several songs in a play, but only a few would have made it out to the streets. Many of the songs would likely have been short and tied up in dialog or fulfilling a necessary part of the narrative. Others may just not have been catchy. Songs weren’t written down for the public, there was no program being sold with the lyrics. The songs only survived by dint of people remembering them. Audience members would go home, or to the tavern, and sing them. Likely half-remembered, a line or two displaced, the tune a rough approximation of the original. They lasted because they were being hummed the day after in the fields and in the workshops. This could be because of the catchiness of the tune, or possibly the content of the lyrics having particular resonance with certain members of the audience, but also, it would have been down to the performer. The professional musician/actor who made the song what it was, who expressed the feeling and emotion which captivated a crowd and sent them away with it ringing in their ears.

This is something we can still see today, although more often in a different format. The song ‘Let It Go’ became instantly popular following the 2013 release of Disney’s Frozen. Everybody knew it, you didn’t have to like it, it was just there. I lost count of how many times I had to teach someone how to play it. It is interesting to recognise where music sits in our lives today, and how it hasn’t changed. Folk music suffers from a presumption that the way things used to be were somehow better, had more substance, more ‘proper’. But it is good to realise that actually, it hasn’t changed all that much. Frozen was not in any way a satirical look at the plight of young men going off to war - unless I’ve remembered it wrong - but the way we interact with music is in some ways exactly the same as we did 1706. We gather to be entertained, we hear a catchy tune and some lyrics that are easy to remember, we go home humming the melody and end up singing the song in a slightly drunken stupor at the end of the night.

The Military Connection

Having been a popular song in the theatre, My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold ground became a popular song outside the theatre, in the taverns and the wider world. It soon became a broadside, sold and performed on the streets, which just added to its popularity. It’s hard to definitively account for the song’s next phase, but we can make an educated guess about its trajectory from its life as a popular broadside ballad to its place in military life.

The song was popular; people knew it, young men knew it. Young men joined the army, and as it was a song about how a woman was lamenting the death of her love who had gone off to war then it gained particular poignancy for them. So they sang it, or maybe just hummed it. Fiddlers in the ranks heard it and learnt the tune along with many others. It gets written down as a tune and passed around until it lands in the hands of a bagpiper, who transposes it for his own use. Then one night an officer requests that the bagpiper plays something to signal to the company that it is time to return to their bunks, and maybe because he was thinking of his woman back home or fearful of what might be ahead them he decides to play the tune to ‘My Lodgings on the Cold, Cold Ground.’ I don’t think we can be sure about how tunes like this end up where they do, but I think this is a journey that tune could take.

Is Disney Folk?

So am I saying that Let It Go is a folk song? Well, in one definition of the word, yes, it is. So is Seven Nation Army, We Are the Champions and Hakuna Matata. If we go back in time to 2013 you would not have found me singing Let It Go, and I would have been fairly snobbish about anybody who wasn’t a child doing so in a public place. It became one of those songs that people in pubs on a weekend would end up hollering out for no particular reason; alongside Country Roads and Sweet Caroline. Being a gigging musician at the time, I spent most Friday and Saturday nights in pubs with people happily unleashing their own versions of these songs upon the rest of us. Those people in 1706 would have been in the taverns singing My Lodgings, or Over the Hills, or Johnny Todd.

Back in February, I wrote about the 1954 International Folk Music Council’s definition of what folk music is. Part of that definition was the line:

Selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

We, as folk musicians, or academics, or amateur history nerds, do not have control over folk music. We do not own it. Either it belongs to everyone or no-one, an entity of its own making. Past eras of human existence have given names to things we can’t quite explain. Seasons, weather, tides, the sun. They were called spirits, deities, and gods. This was not a way to dissect them, or have them laid out in front of us for all the magic in the world to be undone. It was a way of putting a name to something we couldn’t quite fathom. Maybe folk music is a force, unfathomable but very real and uncontrollable. Particularly after a few pints on a Friday night.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Happy St.Georges Day!

Although this publication is mostly focused on traditional music, it is also about tradition, folklore, history and how these interact with today’s society, so a brief mention of a day celebrating our patron saint seems in keeping. A more recent tradition that has appeared around this day every year is that of divisiveness, it’s a tradition kept alive by talk radio and social media mostly. Already this morning I have witnessed the annual battle of wills between the flag wavers and the pedantic correctives. On one side stand the ever defiant patriots, who shout loudly about how they are proud to be English and about how their patron saint bravely killed a dragon. On the other side of the coin you have a line of people waiting to point out that St. George wasn’t English, is the patron saint of several countries and that it is possibly apocryphal that he killed a dragon. I do wonder, as I do every year, whether somewhere within this to-and-fro, that the point hasn’t been somewhat lost.

St. George was born in Turkey, he died in Palestine after being tortured for not recanting his faith. Worth remembering he wasn’t a saint at this point, he was just George - possibly Georgios. The famous story of him slaying a dragon is presented as an example of good conquering evil, although it is worth noting that in the story George only agrees to slay the dragon if the inhabitants of the town being besieged by said monster agree to convert to Christianity - not quite the clean moral image often portrayed.

Still, the historical facts of George’s life are less important than what he has come to represent, and what we choose to do with that. This is where folk tradition may have something useful to offer us. As we have mentioned in previous essays, the folk tradition is not - and has never been - static. It doesn’t belong in a museum (sorry Indy). Folk tradition needs to grow, to move with the times and stay relevant, to be useful in society. Something that it has successfully been doing for hundreds of years, its constant renewal isn’t a threat to tradition, it is its lifeline.

Which makes me wonder if we are not missing an opportunity with St. Georges Day. Can we reframe the celebrations to fit a more modern day take on it without damaging tradition?

What these annual arguments centre around are England as a nation mostly, not as a people, not as a culture. This is the element of St.Georges day that stands out to me each year, how when compared to other saints days in other countries, we don’t so much celebrate our culture but get nostalgic for an imagined past. It’s out there; our culture, if you go looking. There will be morris sides dancing in village squares, mummers performing and early hints of May Day creeping in. But too often it’s treated as a curiosity, a quaint aside, rather than the main event.

What if we were to approach it differently?

The division is centred around the idea of what England is and has been, an idealistic image of what England was meeting with the cold hard facts of historical evidence. What if instead we reframe it to celebrate what England could become? A day that reflects the mixture of influences, stories and people that make up the country now. The mixing of ideas and the vibrancy and colour that comes with it. St. George’s day should be awash with dancing and music and art and theatre, bringing old songs, old stories, and presenting them afresh in a way that celebrates England as it is today. This is what folk tradition has always done, it has adapted to the present moment.

A few other notes to add to this minor rant about our cultural identity.

• Around where I live, there were several houses covered in St. George Flags a few months ago. This morning there is hardly any - make of that what you will.

• Spray painting a Red Cross on the white part of a zebra crossing for it to be driven over and trodden on is a misunderstanding of what these symbols are for.

• St George wasn’t our first patron saint, before George there was Edmund, who was an Anglo-Saxon king with far closer ties to this land. This too is part of our story that should not be forgotten.

None of this is a finished thought, it’s a work in progress that ties in with me thinking about my own cultural identity. But if we are to carry on marking St. George’s Day then shouldn’t we use it to express an England as we see it today, and as we want to see it in the future. Rather than use it to claim elements of our past?

It’s a day for music, for dancing and for stories. Whatever you do today, whether you are banging sticks together with bells around your ankles or simply enjoying a scone, then do it with compassion and generosity to the people around you.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Download the Session Songsheet for Ward, The Pirate here.

The Most Successful Pirate

John Ward is arguably the most successful pirate that you have never heard of. His name has not survived in the way that others have. Names like Blackbeard, Calico Jack and William Kidd are far more commonly used in modern cultural references. There is, however, an important distinction between John Ward and these other more recognisable pirates that places him as being more successful over all, which is that he died at the age of 71, in bed, at home accompanied by his wife and surrounded by the wealth he had made through a relatively short career in piracy. This is in comparison to the more common hanging, drowning or shooting that ended the lives of many pirates and at much earlier ages.

Another reason that Ward is not mentioned as readily as some other pirates is that he predates the era we have come to know as the Golden Age of piracy, which was the period of time during the second half of the 17th Century into the early 18th when many European countries stopped fighting each other over religion (protestants against catholics mostly) and started trading with each other instead*. The increase in goods - or loot as our pirate friends would call it - being transported around the world by boat opened up huge opportunities for water based entrepreneurs to make their fortune. John Ward on the other hand, died in 1622, a quarter of a century previous to the famed Golden Age, although the era has much relevance to the song.

*This is hugely over simplified, but as it is not our main focus I didn’t feel it necessary to stray into the global politics of the later half of the 18th Century, but it is worth noting here that the end of so many wars around this time left a lot of of unemployed sailors hanging about with nothing to do, shortly before an explosion in piracy.

Becoming a Pirate

John Ward was born in Kent in 1553, five years before Elizabeth I came to the throne. He was a fisherman who later served as a seaman to a privateer - plundering Spanish vessels under protection from the crown. In 1603, when everything was going well for English privateers, the queen died and James I ascended to the throne. England had been at war with Spain at this point for two decades and James wanted it ended quickly, so he made it illegal to carry on plundering Spanish vessels. In essence, he created pirates, because those privateers who carried on, including some that just didn’t get the message, suddenly became wanted men. John Ward was forced into service for one of the King’s ships. From a member of a privateer crew - privateers kept much of the loot they plundered and their crews did very well out of it too - to suddenly being forced into a life of naval discipline is enough to give anyone the hump.

So John Ward fled. He gathered some friends who were of the same mind as himself and stole a ship from Portsmouth harbour, sailed over to the Isle of Wight where they stole another ship - which included a haul of catholic treasure - and started their life of piracy in earnest. John Ward was 50 years old at his point, proving that it’s never too late to start something new.

The Traitor

By 1606 John Ward and his crew had reached Tunis on the Barbary Coast (North Africa) where he did several remarkable things. Firstly, he convinced the local Military Dictator to let him use Tunis as a base of operations, from which he went on to plunder many ships and make a lot of money. He asked King James I for a pardon, which was refused on political grounds so instead converted to Islam, along with his crew, as a show of loyalty to the Tunis authorities. He then taught the corsairs (North African Pirates) about English advances in naval warfare, navigation and sailing. He made one of England’s enemies a far more effective and troublesome force. One of the main goals of Barbary pirates was kidnapping christians to sell into slavery. It was John Ward’s teachings that allowed them to do that, including several successful raids on the Cornish and Devon coasts.

It was this aspect of Ward’s career that gives us the genesis for our song. It was important the people understood that a life of piracy was wrong and that no good was to come from it. So ballads were written, the earliest evidence of one being 1609, which demonised John Ward as a traitor and a villain. Rather than a neat narrative like the song we come to know later, these original ballads were more like a rap sheet, listing out the heinous things that this vile person had done.

The Hero

As we have seen in other songs, and will see again, the narrative of these early ballads tend to evolve once they are in the hands of the public. Around 1680, almost sixty years after John Ward’s death, the song re-appears but with a decidedly different feel. We are now entering the Golden Age of piracy, although still before the names Blackbeard or Calico Jack were entering the discourse. In fact Edward Teach, who would become known as Blackbeard, was born in 1680. However, piracy was still news, particularly in the American Colonies - enter William Kidd who we shall cover in a future post. Songs and ballads were a mix of news and entertainment. John Ward was no longer news and one thing the public tends to like is a story about someone fighting against authority. We have seen this before, in the song Turpin Hero, where a murderer, thief and all-round bastard gets a character enhancement into a romantic highway robber who steals from the rich, sadly forgetting the ‘give to the poor’ part which usually follows.

So John Ward is remembered in song as a courageous outlaw, who fought against authority to live his own life outside of the constraints of society. A rebel, a free man. This is what we like to aspire to, we know that few of us will ever achieve the freedom that these people have, and the realities of that freedom are a far cry from the stories that we sing about them, but these songs give us that hope, that momentary feeling that we don’t have to bow down to our rulers and at any moment we can rise up and become free people who live our lives how we want to. Of course this is something we shall definitely do later, maybe tomorrow or on the weekend if the weather is better, for now we shall just stick to singing the song. Conformity and mindless obedience is certainly easier on the joints.

The Song

The song was collected during the early 20th Century by Ralph Vaughan Williams and keeps much of its 1680 character. Ward’s battle with the ship ‘Royal Rainbow’ is likely apocryphal although there was a ship called the Rainbow at the time. Its inclusion in the song gives Ward a worthy opponent, one of the Kings ships, it’s our rebel pirate against the crown. Ward, The Pirate is another example of how these songs move and change with the times, a constantly evolving part of our culture.

There is so much more to say about John Ward, if you are interested I highly recommend the book ‘Barbary Pirate - The Life and Crimes of John Ward by Greg Bak.’ We shall be revisiting the era with the song ‘Captain Kidd’s Farewell’ in a future essay, that’s it for now though, enjoy.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

A slightly lighter one this week.

Ug is a caveman. He lives with his wife in some prime real estate off the coast of the Indian Ocean. He is a simple man with simple tastes, but the world is strange and full of new experiences to be had. Ug didn’t know he would discover the musical scale 40,000 years before Pythagoras heard a blacksmith’s hammer ‘ping’. But he did. This is the story of that day.

The sun is out and Ug has survived another night in the world that he is struggling to understand. Feeling the warmth of the air radiating from the cave door he lifts himself off the cold stone floor and wanders out into the light. ‘Ug’ he thinks to himself, and so he walks a path through the trees and down to the shoreline, where, upon reaching his destination, he plans to enjoy a few hours of the recently discovered art known as stone skimming. Looking over the ground he picks up a few suitably smooth and flat stones to launch across the crests of the shallow waves that gently roll towards him. Just as he starts to launch his third stone he notices a curious event happening down the beach. Twelve turtles have crawled out of the sea and are progressing up the sand. He is so startled by the occurrence that the stone he throws from his hand goes wayward and hits the shell of the turtle nearest him making a ‘ping’ sound. The stone ricochets off of the turtles shell and flies through the air, only to hit the next turtles shell with a definite ‘pong’ sound, and so the stone continues its journey, bouncing across the shells of turtles with a ‘pang’ and then a ‘ting’, a ‘tick’, one particularly large turtle near then end of the line even made a ‘thud’ sound. “Ug!”, Ug exclaims, as he stands there, pleased with what is by far his most successful skim yet, albeit not a conventional one, whilst being blissfully unaware that he has just invented western musical theory.

Now, it is possible that this is not the account of how the western system of music came to be which you learnt in school, but very little evidence is left in the ground from the stone age. It is entirely reasonable - scientifically speaking - that those twelve turtles that Ug witnessed on that day became the twelve notes that we now use in western musical theory. Of course they have just been turtles.

As Ug stood on that beach, skimming stones off of the shells of turtles for hours. Wondering where he had got, Mrs Ug came down the path. “What have you got there Ug?” She said, having a surprisingly better vocabulary than her husband.

“Ug.” Ug said.

“I can see that,” said Mrs Ug, “what are you going to do with them?”

“Ug?” Ug shrugged.

“Well, you should probably name them Ug, what do you think?”

“Ug!”

“You can’t call them all Ug, Ug, they need their own names, like Aaron”

“Ug!”

“How about Aaron, Abe, Barry, Colin, Chad, Derek, Dave, Ethan, Fredrick, Foggy, Gary and Gaina ?”

“Ug!” Ug agreed.

Now, you may be thinking: ‘hang on, there are many more notes than twelve on my instrument’. Which is technically true if you are looking at a piano or a guitar. Guitars have a minimum of seventy two playable notes and a grand piano has eighty-eight. But here’s the thing, if we had a different name for every single playable note it would be impossible to write it down.

The next day, Ug returned to that same spot on the beach to see if the turtles would appear again. To his amazement, something even more extraordinary happened, it was as if every turtle in the world decided to crawl up out of the sea on that day, all in line like a vast water born army. He looked down the beach and he couldn’t see the end of the turtles, he looked up the beach and he couldn’t see the end of the turtles that way either, ‘It’s turtles all the way, um, across!!’, he thought.

“Ug!”

Ug stood there for a long time, watching as the line of turtles stretched further than he could see in either direction. He continued skimming stones across their shells. Some sounded the same as others. Not exactly the same, but close enough that they seemed to belong together. The same sound, just… higher up the beach. Or lower down.

“Ug,” he said quietly to himself.

He didn’t know it, but he had noticed something important. Those twelve turtles, the ones he could hear clearly, the ones that each had their own distinct sound, would come around again. Not because they were the only sounds in the world, but because after a while, the sounds began to repeat themselves. Higher. Lower. But recognisably the same.

If you’ve ever sat at a piano, you’ve felt this. The notes climb and climb, but every so often you land somewhere familiar again. A kind of home. The same note, just further along.

On a guitar, it’s there too. Play a note, then find it again further up the neck. It hasn’t changed its name. It’s just… moved.

That repeating set of twelve notes is what we call the chromatic scale.

It sounds like a big idea. But really, it’s just a pattern.

And every now and then, it’s helpful to remember:

it might just be turtles all the way across.

“Ug.”

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Finger exercises, particularly ones that are based around a scale, are incredibly useful for your playing.

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The Question

The question we are going tackle this week is ‘Have we lost our way with music?’ It’s a broad reaching subject that will be cut down into various smaller thoughts in future articles. As an introduction to the thought we are going to consider how music now differs from music then, and by ‘then,’ we are not talking about a specific historical period, but a time before music became something we consumed. Before audiences and performers were separate roles. Before formal lessons, record shops, and standardised notation, when music was something people did, as part of everyday life.

I have read and seen a couple of things recently that have led me to this line of enquiry. One was a book which I have yet to finish called The Singing Neanderthals by Stephen Mithen, in which the author proposes the idea that language and music evolved simultaneously. Another was on an episode of Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson interviewing Daniel Levitin on the same topic. Levitin casually drops the idea that neurologically, our brains were capable of creating and understanding music before they were able to produce or discern language. If music and language evolved together, does that suggest that music should be on a level with language in our lives? Something fundamental to us being human, not an optional extra.

Music Today

Music today is a huge part of our daily lives. Even if you are not particularly ‘in to’ music you are still bombarded with it through television, radio, in shops and on the street. Pubs have jukeboxes and live bands playing at the weekend - although the number of these has sadly diminished quite a bit over the last few years. There are music festivals every weekend from spring through to autumn and the music industry in Britain as a whole is worth around £8 Billion a year. Music is a part of us and it’s not going anywhere, but there is a common factor in all those forms of music I have just mentioned, which is that at some point during the production of that music, money has changed hands, an object has been purchased in some way. Even in learning music we pay for books, lessons and courses to bring music into our lives. I realise that I am on dodgy ground here as a musician and teacher, but it’s less the money changing hands for music played or lessons taught, but the transactional relationship we have come to have with music as a whole. When nearly all music is under the banner of being a commodity, have we lost something fundamental to our being?

The Upside Down

Let’s turn the world on its head for a moment. Music and language evolved together as humans came into existence (actually a little before that but that’s another story). Sounds are easier to make than forming a collection of syllables, so it would make sense that music in its most basic form came first. Consider how children learn to speak, making sounds first that become songs which are used to learn the alphabet or the numbers one to ten. With sound you can express emotion. Fear, pain, happiness and contentment can all be expressed with very basic sounds. In modern music - by which I mean the last 500 years or so - far more complicated emotions can be expressed through music due to a vast range of different instruments. We can tell stories with just music, creating a narrative of human experience, listen to The Planets by Gustav Holst or The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. Our early ancestors didn’t have as much variety in the sounds that they could produce, which may go some way to explaining why language took off as the primary form of communication.

What if it hadn’t happened that way? What if early humans had learnt how to express more complicated emotions through music. Imagine a world where language and music got swapped.

Would you pay for a ticket to go and see someone talk? You might do, to a certain extent, that is what plays are. I would certainly pay to see Ian McKellen or Patrick Stewart recite Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of hearing them speak.

Would you buy an album of people talking? Again, possibly, that’s what audio books and podcasts are, although there is a question there as to whether you are engrossed in those forms of media due to the expressiveness of the voice or merely the information being imparted.

I have an audio book of The Hobbit being read by Martin Shaw which I have listened to since I was a teenager. I still go back to it every so often now, purely to hear it. There is something very comforting and nostalgic to me about Martin Shaw’s voice reading a story I know so well. So maybe it’s not that odd to think of language in the same way as we think of music. But the difference here is that you talk everyday, it’s just something that you do, with little thought.

Imagine a world where you didn’t talk as a matter of course, a world where you might take up talking as a hobby. Attending weekly classes or group sessions where you learn to talk. Not for a specific purpose, just for enjoyment. Then it starts to feel a little more odd doesn’t it? You wouldn’t think about talking in the morning or at work. You carve out tiny amounts of time in your life where you can sit down and just talk for a while. Maybe, occasionally you might get together with some friends who are also learning to talk and talk with each other for a bit, but outside of these designated times you have crowbarred into your life, talking isn’t something that you would consider doing. This is where the world starts to seem absurd.

You might enjoy listening to other people talk on the radio or going to hear someone talk on a Friday night down the pub, but that’s an appreciation for other people’s ability to talk. What about your right to talk? We should all be allowed to talk in a way that is uniquely us, with our regional accents and local dialects.

Why would you separate out something that is so fundamental to being human as to keep it at arms length, a thing that you do if you have time, a commodity that only certain people can do and therefore sell their version of it to you. Yet this is exactly what we have done with music. A fundamental part of being human that we have sectioned off in our lives as something that happens as a bonus to life, an extra, an add-on. Suddenly our relationship to music seems a little odd.

The Beginning

Us Homo Sapiens are a little late to the party in evolutionary terms, being that we have been roaming this planet for around a mere 300,000 years. Our close relation Homo Erectus had already been using fire for over 1.5 million years previous to us landing our feet here and there is strong - although not conclusive - evidence that Homo Neanderthalis had already started using musical instruments before we turned up. So we didn’t even invent music, it was a necessary part of being human even before we became human.

There is no evidence left when somebody sings, no evidence left when a tribe stamps their feet to a rhythm and dances in circles around a campfire. But it would be fairly ludicrous to imagine our early ancestors living their lives in silence. Much more probable is that music was an important part of community and communication. Using sound to comfort, to warn, to build trust and to work efficiently. Using certain melodic phrases to let your comrades know which direction the wooly mammoth is turning. There will be some that may argue that this is not music, this is merely sound creation and the basic precursor to language, but doesn’t that show how our relationship with music has been lost? Isn’t music just organised sound? The use of pitch and rhythm to express a feeling, an emotion?

Back to the Future

Fast forward to today and we pay millions of pounds to people to sing songs to backing tracks on stage in their underwear. We club together to stand in front of them and worship them as idols, holders of this mystical thing called music which is seemingly untouchable by the majority of the population. We learn instead of doing it, we consume rather than participate and we treat musicians as a separate class. I’m a musician myself, and a teacher of music, so it would be pretty daft of me to suggest that paying musicians should stop, but maybe the balance needs to be redressed. Nobody is going to pay me to stand up on stage and recite Shakespeare, but they will pay Ian McKellan. Does that mean I shouldn’t talk in my day to day life?

Community music still exists out there, but it is sparse when compared to the multi million pound streaming services. Even sparser still is community music that exists purely for the point of playing music together. Most community music is organised, led by a tutor - like myself - who is paid to organise and lead the group. But where are the people getting together to play music just for the hell of it, with no plan, no agenda, just to say we are here and we are human. They are out there, but they are few in number. What can we do to redress the balance?

Over to You

Tell me about your memories of playing music just for the sake of doing it? Not a gig, not practice, not an organised event. Just playing music with other people for enjoyment of it. What do you remember feeling?

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

This version comes from Caledonian Pocket Companion, published in the 1750s–60s.

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The Chosen Men

In a dimly lit pub somewhere in Dorset a lone guitarist stands on stage in front of a modest crowd.

“Are there any Sean Bean fans in?” he says through the microphone to deathly silence and a room of confused looks.

The silence is broken as he starts playing the song Over The Hills and Far Away. A few of the confused faces around the room turn into nods of recognition and understanding, mostly though the short pre-song banter is forgotten.

That lone guitarist was me, on several occasions and in several different venues. Am I particularly a Sean Bean fan? Well, no. Not in the way that it usually means to be a fan. I don’t watch or like everything he has done, I don’t and never have had posters of him on my walls. What I am a fan of though is the TV series ‘Sharpe’. For those who are uninitiated, it was a mid-nineties romp through the Napoleonic Wars in which Sean Bean played the lead role. Those of you who are aware of the series will likely see the connection that I am drawing here, which is that the theme tune to that series was a version of Over The Hills and Far Away sung by the brilliant John Tams who also happened to play rifleman Daniel Hagman in the series.

Lyrically, the song is clearly meant to be a rousing chorus to any young men who may be thinking about joining the army, promoting honour and duty. Even death gets a certain amount of glory attached to it with the imagery of fifes and drums playing for a fallen soldier. What interests me about the song though is that melodically it is not what you would expect from your typical raising of the blood, let’s fight the enemy at close quarters kind of song. It is more melodic, even a touch melancholic. There is still certainly a rousing element to the chorus, but it almost seems at odds with the melody.

There may be several reasons for this. It could be that the modern versions - which are the only recorded version we have - tend to lean towards a more sombre feel due to our relationship to war. Our empathy towards the soldiers that have died in wars over the years is colouring the timbre of the song to move it away from a more ballsy recruitment drive. Or perhaps the song was always supposed to be slightly ironic. In that it may have been a song that soldiers would sing to keep their hearts brave in difficult times. Singing a song to remind you of duty and honour as you walk towards the Napoleonic forces may well have helped you stand firm, but it is unlikely to have been sung to a particularly jolly tune.

Download Session Song Sheet for Over The Hills and Far Away Here

Ghostly Beginnings

The genesis of this song can be traced back to over a century before Napoleon tried to conquer Europe. In 1694 the tune was included in a collection by a Northumbrian fiddler called Henry Atkinson. The tune was written under the name ‘The Wind hath Blown my Plaid Away’, which was a Scottish ballad from the 1670’s. A plaid being a thick woolen blanket which predates the modern kilt and is being used here as a metaphor for losing the protection of one’s own willpower. The song is about a ghostly knight who promises to wed a young girl if she makes him a shirt without sewing it, having not completely lost her willpower she falls for the knight, but not without requesting his attempt at some impossible tasks first. This is a bizarrely common theme that we shall return to in the future.

So the song, and presumably the tune, had been around since at least the 1670’s and travelled down the short distance to Northumbria, where Mr. Atkinson wrote the tune down. The connection between this ballad to Over the Hills and Far Away is loose but telling - a single line and a shared melodic ancestry hold the key to its evolution.

The Wind Hath Blown My Plaid Away

Original Lyric

My plaid awa, my plaid awa,

And ore the hill and far awa,

And far awa to Norrowa,

My plaid shall not be blown awa.

Translation

My plaid away, my plaid away,

And over the hill and far away,

And far away to Norway,

My plaid shall not be blown away.

Treading the Boards

In 1706 a playwright called George Farquhar used the tune in his play ‘the recruiting officer,’ and this is where the song we know starts to form itself. The lyrics were still not set in stone at this time, often adjusted to suit the audience it was being performed to. The song was used as a satirical piece, noting how the promises made to soldiers about life in the army were a far cry from the reality.

The lyrics were being formed though and lines like ‘in Flanders, Portugal and Spain’ were appearing as these were places involved in the current war, which at the time was the Spanish War of Succession. Other mentions in the song were protagonists such as ‘Marlborough and Galway’ who were commanders in the British army at the time and Queen Anne, who was the contemporary monarch.

Out of Satire

Over the next hundred years the tune pops up in various collections and ballad operas, with varying lyrics to suit the situation. The British armed forces were extremely busy during this period with the many wars they were involved with. There was the Spanish War of Succession (also known as Queen Anne’s War), which was being fought in both Europe and America. The Anglo-Spanish War, The Jacobite Rising and The War of Austrian Succession. They were fighting pirates in the Caribbean and first nation tribes in North America. There was the American War of Independence and a second Anglo-Spanish War to name just a few. This meant that the British Army and Navy needed a constant flow of men to join the ranks. Throughout the 18th century military recruitment drives would have involved music and song as a way to rile up the local populous into a willingness to take the King (or Queens) shilling. Over the Hills and Far Away was a known song and despite its satirical beginnings it’s not hard to believe that it would have been one of those songs used.

Into Melancholy

By the time of the American Revolution (1775) and then the Napoleonic Wars (1803), the song had become more cemented in its military placement, as British soldiers started singing it. Rather than focusing on the satirical nature of its previous incarnation, the song became more about longing, and being away from home. It is this version that was to become popular and formally collected in the 19th century for posterity. Which may go some way to explaining why the tune we know today has a more subdued feel to it than what we can presume the satirical version from George Farquhar’s play would have been, or indeed the rousing version that would have convinced young men to wear a red coat.

Over the Hills

Over the Hills and Far Away is a song which lives in its own ambiguous space. A piece of comedic satire about the absurdity of military recruitment which, paradoxically, slips easily into the world it is mocking. It circulated alongside 18th century recruitment drives and encouraged the next generation of foot soldiers to sign up, before becoming a more mournful song, sung by soldiers missing home and facing the realities of war. It is truly one of my favourite traditional songs.

I’m off to watch Sharpe from the beginning again now and I’ll try not cry when Perkins dies this time.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Music vs Language

Music is a communication tool, but unlike language, which uses narrative to create context, music expresses emotion and feeling. That may seem a little unfair on language, but I’m not suggesting that emotion is unable to be conveyed through words, of course it is. But for language to express emotion it has to be chained together, a sequence of words which individually have broad, ambiguous meanings, but strung together can express the deep emotional experiences of being human. For instance, the word ‘fire’ on its own describes a thing. It’s only when you add words to it that you can create emotion. ‘I’m cold, please light the fire’, ‘My heart is on fire,’ and ‘Get Out! Fire!’ are three distinctly different emotions.

Music on the other hand can convey a range of emotions in a much smaller frame. An Am chord is made up of three individual notes - A, C and E - which when played gently on a harp can be solemn and beautiful, it can portray loss, love and grief all at the same time. Play that same chord, the same three notes that make up an A minor chord, but on an electric guitar with a fast off-beat rhythm and suddenly you are skanking on a beach in Jamaica.

What music doesn’t do, that language does, is provide detail. This creates an awkward relationship between the person making the music and the person listening to it. One cannot easily exist without the other. But even with the most talented and experienced musicians the emotion that is being expressed can be ambiguous, or open to interpretation depending on the listener’s perspective. What the performer is trying to convey may be different to what the listener understands the emotion to be.

This is a particular problem in the modern world, where a lot of music is written to communicate an emotion instantly. We live in a world where our attention is often distracted and the skip button is readily available, producers and musicians are creating sounds that are intended to hook the listener quickly. The result of this is that often the sound of the music is at odds with the theme of the lyrics. This does not diminish music’s ability to communicate effectively, it just means that the lyrics have become a background event, hidden behind the pitches and rhythms of the overall sound.

What does a song say?

There is no shortage of love songs in music. The story of a boy meeting a girl, eyes meeting across a crowded room, and a hundred other tropes are commonplace. They tend to have a certain feel to them too, slow chord changes, building chord patterns and crescendos. You can generally recognise a love song without listening too closely to the words. The music though isn’t telling you details, it’s not expressing the boy’s background or why the girl is really too good for him. But we still recognise it as a love song. Whether it is through cultural memory or a particular nostalgic relationship to certain sounds, a modern love song is not telling us a story, it is simply telling us that love exists.

This is true of a lot of music, it’s not telling you a story, it’s not giving detail, it is merely reminding you that a particular emotion, a feeling, a certain part of the human experience exists. The reason why this is so important to us is that it tells us that we are not alone. If we are missing love in our lives it gives us hope, and if we have had love in our lives it reminds us of it. Punk music tells us that we are not the only ones to be angry, rock music tells us life is a party. Reggae tells us that everything’s going to be alright and blues lets us know that there are plenty more fish in the sea. I’m making some huge generalisations here I know, but the telling factor in this is that the first time you hear a song, it is not the words that you lock on to. It’s not to say that lyrics are no longer important, but when you hear a song for the first time on the radio, TV or at a live show, it is rare that you hear and understand all the lyrics. You may pick up on a few lines, maybe a chorus if it is a particularly simple one. You certainly do not pick up enough to be able to say straight away, “I really love the lyrics of that song”. That is something that comes after, once you have read the sleeve notes (when they were a thing) or heard the song a few times.

What does folk say?

This is where folk music is, or can be, a significantly different beast to the rest of popular music. In folk music the lyrics are often paramount, there is a story to be told. Certainly in traditional songs like Broadside Ballads the lyrics are really the thing that is being communicated. Often ballads would be sung to an existing tune, just to get the story across. The music was merely a vehicle for the narrative.

In modern folk there are often songs that put the music first before the narrative, long drawn out syllables and beautiful instrumentation that create wonderful soundscapes, but make the narrative of what is being sung quite hard to follow. Sometimes the musicians rely on the song being quite well known in folk circles so that they can get away with it, but with new songs, freshly written, they choose to give the music pride of place over the story. But if folk music is a vehicle for story then clarity is not optional. It’s the whole point.

What’s the point of it all?

This is the question we have to ask ourselves, why bother? Why do we play and listen to music? I asked this question of a group of 16-17 year old students who are choosing to do a music course at college. The overriding opinion was that they want to play music because ‘it’s fun’. Is that it? Could it be that all this boils down to is music is just fun and nothing more needs to be said. I would hope not. Music can be something so much deeper than just pure entertainment value.

But I don’t think that there is one answer to the question, what is the point of music? There are so many different facets in which it exists that it would be impossible to relegate its existence to one singular rule. Maybe that’s how we should look at music, instead of genre look at purpose. What was this music made for? Or what does this music mean to me? Organising our record collections into sections of music I listen to when we are sad, music that’s just entertainment, music that reminds us of a loved one. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched an idea although there will be some logistical problems. Would there be a section entitled ‘music where the story is important’? Is that where the folk music would go?

Over to you

If folk music is where story still matters, then the question isn’t whether we can prioritise the music over the narrative—it’s whether we should.

Do we, as folk musicians, have a duty to get the stories across - To be clear and articulate in our performance?

Should we arrange songs so that the music fits the narrative? So that sad songs sound sad and protest songs sound angry?

Take a look through your record collection and think to yourself ‘why do I listen to this?’, is there a specific feeling that it either invokes or comforts?

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

Setting the scene

It’s a bright day out on the cobbled streets of Victorian London when a charismatic young man comes bounding out of the printers shop with a freshly printed batch of papers under his arm. He steps up onto an upturned crate and clears his throat to gain some attention from the amassing crowd. “Hear me, hear me!”, he hollers, “I have a tale to tell”.

What happens next is a common sight out the front of printers shops across Britain. The young man starts to sing. It’s a tune that the crowd recognises well, but the words are different, a new story is being told but in a very familiar way. This story, as are many broadside ballads, is about two young lovers. In this case it is two young lovers which this young man, according to the song at least, has overhead conversing in the local pleasure gardens. After he has finished his song the crowd gather in closer, offering up pennies for a copy of the ballad which is printed on the bundle of papers under his arm.

Download Session Songsheet for British Man O’ War Here

Two Lovers and An Existential Crisis

The song that young man sang was called British Man O’ War (although it may be known by other names) and is about two young lovers in a battle of opposing perspectives. The young lady is imploring her man to not leave to fight in the Royal Navy, whilst the young man is trying to get across the idea that he needs to go and fight for the honour of his country. From the young lady’s perspective - she is called Suzie - there is no need for her love to go off to war, because she will soon be 21 years old. In Victorian London 21 was the legal age you became an adult, which in this case is important because she will be able to receive her inheritance money or funds that have been kept in trust for her - her ‘store’. So her argument is: ‘if money is the reason that you are going off to war then don’t worry, I’ve got it covered’.

The young man in this story - Willie - has a different thought. For him, the reason he is going off to war is not for money but for duty and honour. As far as he sees it, his country has been insulted and it would be very un-British for him, a man in Victorian London, not to step up to the mark and do what needs to be done. The juxtaposition of these two views is innately Victorian. On the one hand we have Susie’s want of the respectable domestic life and stability that was so much a custom of the time. On the other hand we have Willie’s view of empire, honour and duty. Britain is the supreme global power at this time and British society wanted it to stay that way.

A Trip to Aberdeen

As with most folk songs, there are several written versions. Many versions of this song start with the line, ‘I was down in yonder gardens’, and indeed you will find versions where that is in fact the title as well. In the version we have here the first line is ‘Down in Cults garden’, which gives us a wonderful insight into how songs move and evolve though not just time but geography.

Cults is a small town just outside of Aberdeen in Scotland, and presumably at one time there was a pleasure garden there. For those of you who are sniggering at the term pleasure garden, let’s be clear. A pleasure garden in Victorian Britain was no more than a public park, where people would go to walk around, for pleasure. They crop up in stories and songs about lovers because they were a common place for young courting couples to meet and talk, in public, (respectable, all above board your honour, nothing to see here). What this mention of a Scottish village shows is that songs were being adapted to suit the audiences they were being played in front of. The song was most likely written in London - although we can’t be certain about this - by a lyricist whose name we shall never know but who would likely have been paid by the printers shop. The song was sung and the broadside sheets were sold to the public. They would then have been distributed around the county, sung by ‘chaunters’ in pubs and public spaces who would sell the broadsheets.

To make the songs more palatable to a specific audience there were elements of the songs that could change. Here, in our version of British Man O’ War is a great example of this, referring to a local gardens that only people in and around the Aberdeen area would have any knowledge of. But the version on the broadside sheets in the 1840’s would still likely have had the original lyrics on them. So the song was sung in its adapted way, but then learnt in that way by someone, maybe the people of the area decided to keep that variation on as they sang it, and then at some point after that it was such a well known variation that it was eventually written down in that way. Which is how we have ended up with the version here, from London to Aberdeen to New Forest across 180 years.

Empire and Opium

It can be difficult to date a war themed English folk song based purely on the enemy that is mentioned because it’s usually the French or the Spanish. Both of whom we have been having a variety of conflicts with over centuries. If it’s the Germans that are mentioned then at least we can whittle it down the first half of the twentieth century. In British Man O’ War though we have our Willie going off to ‘face the walls of china’. This can mean only one thing, that this song was written during the opium wars of the nineteenth century.

Britain had a taste for several Chinese delicacies; silk, porcelain and of course tea. The only problem was that China didn’t have much want for anything British, so trade was difficult. The solution came in Opium, which was produced in huge quantities throughout British controlled India. Opium was illegally traded in China to gain access to their resources. Millions of Chinese people became addicted to the narcotic drug and it became so bad that the Qing government of China tried to put a stop to the trade. In response the British sent the Royal Navy in to force the Chinese ports to stay open to trade.

So in our song, where Wille is off to face the ‘walls of china’, there is no inaccuracy there. The naval vessels were actively attacking the Chinese ports defences so that British Merchants could continue the illegal trade of Opium so that they could buy tea, silk and porcelain to sell on to Europe.

Mondegreen

Another great example of how songs can change and evolve though natural selection is the mondegreen.

Mondegreen - a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase, resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song.

In our version of British Man O’ War Willie confesses that: “When bellows they surround me and the cannons loudly roar, Then I’ll fight for England’ s glory on a British Man O’ War”. Which is a line I have sung in this song for many years without noticing the oddness of the word ‘bellows’ until recently. What may have happened here is that the original version of this song, or at least an earlier version of this song, would likely have had the line ‘When bullets fly past me and the cannons loudly roar’, or something to that effect. This then being sung through an oral tradition would be subject to being misheard. It is possible that somewhere down the line a singer thought the line said ‘bellows’ rather than bullets and adjusted the line accordingly. So that it became about people shouting, which would still make sense upon a naval ship in the heat of battle.

Sense and Sensibility

There we have it, an interesting peak into Victorian life, with its songs, wars and tea addiction. The question still remains though - why was this song written? Being a broadside ballad it would have most likely been commissioned; broadside ballads were the tabloid press of the era and songs rarely lacked a purpose. In this song we have a balance between a young soldier off to fight for the honour of his country and a young lady looking for stability in Victorian society. With the rather specific mention of China, I suspect that its main purpose would have been to get the blood up of young English men so that they might follow in Willie’s footsteps and join the navy. Forced conscription was no longer a thing in the Royal Navy, unlike the Napoleonic wars thirty years earlier. Tales of soldiers going to war to fight for their country, evoking feelings of duty, glory and honour were surely ways to get hot headed young men into the armed forces. There’s a really telling thing in this song that makes me think that. Unlike many traditional ballads, Willie does not die in this song. He rows away from the shore, waving his torn handkerchief, bound for glory and the China seas. Whether he ever returns is a story the ballad never tells.

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood

A Song That Refuses to Age

One of the most fascinating elements of folk song research is discovering a song that holds as much relevance today as it did at the time it was written. With humans being humans, this is a fairly common occurrence, due to our collective inability to learn from our mistakes. Protest songs and war ballads have particular resonance, their themes seemingly able to traverse time and history. The poor tend to stay poor, soldiers die whilst officers make plans, and the decisions that affect our daily lives are made by a protected bubble known as the political class. The song we are looking at today is ‘The Hard Times of Old England’.

Download Session Songsheet for Hard Times of Old England Here

Bread and Power: Britain After the Wars

This song comes from the early 19th century. In June 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated his title of Emperor, bringing an end to the Napoleonic Wars. Europe had been at each other’s throats for over two decades, and with the end of the war (albeit temporarily) came the reopening of trade routes which had been blocked for several years. This meant that grain suddenly became more available and the price of bread dropped.

It’s worth noting here that for a very long time bread was the major staple of the economy. It was the cheapest, most reliable way to feed a population. So lowering bread prices was a good thing because it meant fewer people would starve. But the increase of imports into the country threatened the rents and land values of Britain’s agricultural elite. Some fairly wealthy members of the political class going to lose money.

In March 1815 the government introduced the Corn Laws, essentially tariffs on imported grain, making it more expensive. This reduced supply and kept domestic prices high, ensuring that the price of bread rose once again.

At the same time, there was an influx of people. Around 8% of Britain’s population had been involved in the war, whether in the Army, Navy, or various militias and volunteer units raised to fight ‘Old Bony’. With no war to fight, many of those men became redundant; only officers and standing regiments were retained in significant numbers.

So in a country suffering from a fragile post-war economy, and with the Corn Laws ensuring that bread prices remained high, there were suddenly thousands more mouths to feed. Britain entered a severe post-war downturn, marked by unemployment, falling wages and civil unrest.

“Every town has its ups and downs. Sometimes ups outnumber the downs — but not in Nottingham.”
— The Rooster, Disney’s Robin Hood

Gas, Grain and the Modern Market

In today’s world, grain production is still a major part of global economics. It remains the main source of calorie intake for much of humanity, and when wars happen — such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — it affects the price.

We cannot easily blame our political class for the war in Ukraine. But we do still have decisions being made that affect working people far more than the decision-makers themselves.

What we have today that was not so prevalent in 1815 is energy — particularly oil and gas. When the Ukraine war began, oil and gas prices rose sharply, and although they have come down since, the shock was immediate and profound.

There was renewed talk of green and renewable energy sources, and they would bring our bills down, surely? Well no, because our energy market was designed around something called marginal pricing — a system in which the most expensive fuel required to meet demand (often gas) sets the wholesale price for all electricity, including renewables. If we used this system for fish eggs then cod roe would be the same price as caviar. It means that when gas prices spike, everything becomes more expensive, even power generated more cheaply.

The system reflects decades of political choices about how markets should function. And like the Corn Laws, those structural choices determine who feels the cost most sharply.

Updating the Refrain

Folk songs are constantly evolving and changing with the times. A good example of this is ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, in which the monarch referred to changes depending on when the version was written down.

Sometimes a song needs a more deliberate push to come up to date. For ‘The Hard Times of Old England’, that moment came in 2007, when Billy Bragg rewrote the lyrics to comment on the realities of the era. It was the end of the Tony Blair’s role as prime minster, which the song mentions, alongside the rise of supermarkets that reshaped small-scale farming and the destruction of hedgerows that damaged biodiversity in the countryside.

Billy did not treat the song as a fragile piece of heritage to be preserved intact. He used it as a framework — updating the grievances while keeping the structure. That was nearly twenty years ago now. Perhaps it is time for another rewrite.

Anger, Apathy or Something Else?

Folk songs like this are a warning, a message that says, ‘this is what humanity does’. ‘This is how power and people have often related to one another’.

It’s a bit of a stark outlook, that basically we have no hope because it’s always been like this and it’s unlikely to change. So what do we do? Currently we moan about it. We get angry. We shout at the TV. Social media and news organisations with their own independent agendas remind us daily what we should be angry about: the cost of living, fuel prices, sewage in our water, or whatever this week’s fashionable outrage happens to be.

We could give up. Close the laptop, shut off the phone, ignore the news and just live our lives in blissful ignorance as the world falls apart around us.

Or we could stay angry, get angrier, march on the streets and demand change. History shows that this can work occasionally, but not as often as we would like.

There is a third way.

Singing Through It

Folk songs like this give us a way out — not a way out of the situation, it holds no secret code which tells how to bring down the establishment but it gives us a way out of the anger and breeds solidarity.

When we sing together all sorts of things happen in our brains that foster a sense of belonging and community. In singing this song we are collectively consoling ourselves about the realities of what is happening around us, we are not forgetting, we are seeing. We are reminding ourselves that we are not facing it alone.

Folk song does not topple governments. But it prevents isolation. It can transform private frustration into shared recognition. And from that solidarity, from that recognition, change can eventually grow.

The Corn Laws were eventually repealed in 1846.

Over to You

Try writing a verse for this song that holds up a grievance about today’s world. Here’s mine:

The fat cats are grinning from one ear to t’other,

They’ve poisoned the oceans but their banks are now fuller,

The rivers are dying and we can’t drink the water,

We sing, Oh the hard times of old England,

In old England very hard times

I’m not a guru. The world has far too many people who put themselves out into the digital world claiming that they have the one and only answer. My writing is based on my own experiences in teaching and playing, there are other opinions and I want to hear them. None of us have learnt everything and through discussion we can learn from each other. So please let me know if you agree, disagree or have something to add.

If you have enjoyed this post and found it in anyway useful to you then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Folk Orc.

Alternatively you can leave me tip at:

https://ko-fi.com/thefolkorc.

Thanks for Reading.

Chris J Barber-Hopgood