YEAR’S END – CD INFO
Here is the CD front cover artwork, text and the liner notes.
Front cover
1 The Wren Song (2:43)
2 Flaming Seraphs (2:59)
3 The Fleecy Care (1:57)
4 The Sinners’ Redemption (4:03)
5 King Pharim (3:58)
6 There Is A Fountain Of Christ’s Blood (3:56)
7 While Shepherds Watched (5:59)
8 There Were Two Ships (1:20)
9 The Sussex Mummers’ Carol (3:04)
10 The Hampshire Mummers’ Carol (3:49)
11 Time To Remember The Poor (round) (1:01)
12 The Minchinhampton Wassail (4:18)
Some say that the Devil has all the best tunes, but those people are wrong — and not just because the Devil doesn’t exist. This is a collection of songs associated with celebrations of the natural and supernatural that usually take place at the end of the year.
Roud numbers refer to the Roud Folk Song Index, which may be searched here:
archives.vwml.org/search/roud
The following websites have been invaluable sources of information and inspiration:
glosfolk.org.uk
efdss.org/vwml
mainlynorfolk.info
mustrad.org.uk
cecilsharpspeople.org.uk
1. The Wren Song
Roud 19109. Possibly of Celtic or Druidic origins, the custom of hunting the Wren was once widespread throughout the British Isles. Participants, known as “Wren boys,” would go out on Boxing Day to catch their Wren and then parade the bird’s body around on a pole. This Irish version was noted in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, by Janet Blunt from a Mrs Hoskins, originally from County Cork. We found it in Tony Foxworthy’s book Forty Long Miles, songs from the collection of Janet Heatley Blunt.
2. Flaming Seraphs
Roud 8367. Flaming Seraphs is from the Cornish carolling tradition. It appears in The Cornish Song Book (Ralph Dunstan, 1929), where the tune is credited to Mr. W. Cowling of Bolingey. According to notes in the book: “This carol has been sung at Stratton from time ‘immemorial,’ so far as our fathers and grandfathers can recollect, and is still sung there and in many other places where Strattoners foregather at Christmas…” Stratton is near Bude.
3. The Fleecy Care
Roud 1518. We found The Fleecy Care in Roy Palmer’s Everyman’s Book of English Country Songs. The song was written by Nuneaton excise officer Joseph Key. It was first published in 1785 in Five Anthems, Four Collects, Twenty Psalm Tunes [etc], Book III. A slightly different version, which includes a chorus, has become part of the West Gallery Christmas repertoire.
4. The Sinners’ Redemption
Roud 2431. This one comes from Cecil Sharp’s English Folk Carols, where he says: “Sung by Mrs. Gentie Phillips, of Tysoe, at Birmingham. Mrs. Phillips could remember no more than the first stanza; the remaining stanzas have been copied from a broadside.” Sharp collected four carols from the 82-year old Gentie (or Genty) Phillips in September 1910 at Aston, Birmingham, where Mrs Philips had moved from Tysoe, near Stratford, after her husband died in 1890. The song also goes by the name of All You That Are To Mirth Inclined.
5. King Pharim
Roud 306, Child 55. We learned King Pharim from The Watersons LP For Pence and Spicy Ale. It’s really a mash-up of two carols: Herod and the Cock, and The Carnal and the Crane. The first tells the story of how King Herod is about to feast on a roasted cock with a visiting guest and how the bird then rises from the dead and crows in Herod’s face to proclaim the birth of Jesus. The second is just as odd as the infant Jesus, fleeing to Egypt with Mary and Joseph, causes a newly-planted field of corn to miraculously sprout to maturity, confounding Herod’s troops when they visit a short while later.
6. There Is A Fountain Of Christ’s Blood
Roud 663. We first came across this in the book A Secret Stream, Folk Songs Collected From English Gypsies, edited by Nick Dow with Steve Gardham and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, and then discovered some more tunes for it in The Folklore of Herefordshire by Ella Mary Leather. According to the latter volume, the tune was sung by “Eliza Smith (Gypsy) at Weobley, October, 1908” and “Noted by R. Vaughan Williams, from a Phonograph Record.” The words, abbreviated from longer broadside versions, were collected by Cecil Sharp from the 67-year old former farm labourer Thomas Taylor at Ross-on-Wye workhouse in August, 1921. Ella Mary Leather says, “This carol is a great favourite with Herefordshire singers, and was formerly sung at Christmas, although the subject is the Crucifixion and not the Nativity.”
7. While Shepherds Watched
Roud 936. There are very many versions of While Shepherds. This one is from the great Black Country singer George Dunn. We found it on the Musical Traditions CD George Dunn: Chainmaker (MTCD317-8). George worked in iron foundries as a chain-maker in Quarry Bank, near Dudley. He once had a reputation in the area as a fine singer but in 1971, at the age of 84, it was rather for his knowledge of chain-making that George was visited by a researcher from Wolverhampton college. On discovering his song repertoire the researcher, Rhoma Bowdler, contacted BBC producer Charles Parker and a number of recording sessions followed. George learned this version of While Shepherds, recorded by Roy Palmer in June 1971, from his father, Sam. According to George, Sam was a keen ornithologist and a champion whistler. One summer he went out at night and hid in the local woods where he proceeded to imitate the song of the Nightingale, attracting audiences from far and wide. In George’s words: “It went on for about a fortnight until it got too big to ‘andle. There come too many people down at night. From Dudley and Brierley Hill and Wolver’ampton. It was summut special. When it got too ‘ot ‘e dae go no more. The Nightingale dae sing no more. That hoax was never known, only t’us kids. ‘E towd us about it.” Full disclosure: the chorus sung by George Dunn is “Christians rejoice with heart and voice, Christ is born in Bethlehem.” We changed this to “Let us rejoice with heart and voice, ring all the bells for Christmas Day.” The first tune is Chelford Races, from the Aston-on-Carrant manuscript in the Coleford Jig tune book. The second tune, after verse 4, is the Welsh jig Doed a Ddel, which means Come What May.
8. There Were Two Ships
Roud 700. Vicky lives in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, so we had to do this one. Also, we like it. The tune is called George Ridler’s Oven. It was sung to Cecil Sharp by his wife, Constance, who apparently learned it from Charles Poole of Wotton-under-Edge in 1882. The words come from Lemmie Brazil, who sang them to Pete Shepheard in Gloucester in 1967. We found it in the book Let Us Be Merry, Traditional Christmas Songs and Carols from Gloucestershire, edited by Gwilym Davies and Roy Palmer.
9. The Sussex Mummers’ Carol
Roud 1066. This song was assembled by Lucy Broadwood and published in her 1908 book English Traditional Songs and Carols. The tune comes from a version sung by Horsham mummers after their Christmas play of “St. George, the Turk and the Seven Champions of Christendom” in 1880 and 1881. Broadwood made an appeal for words to the song in the West Sussex Gazette in 1904 and received five responses which she used, along with a few other variants, to construct the set of lyrics published in the book.
10. The Hampshire Mummers’ Carol
Roud 1065. From The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, by Alfred Williams. In the book the song is simply called Christmas Carol. The words are from Jane Ockwell of Poulton, Gloucestershire. When he was young, Alfred Williams worked as a steam-hammer operator at the Great Western Railway works in Swindon. Alfred had left school aged eleven but studied literature and the arts in his spare time. The Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard newspaper published 439 of his collected songs between 1915 and 1916. In 1923 Williams’ best-known book, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames was published, containing 234 of these songs. The 2021 book The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, edited by Martin Graebe, contains the songs not included in the original book. Both books are fantastic resources for folk song lyrics, but contain no tunes – Williams wanted to preserve peoples’ language and interests rather than their music. We have paired the song with a tune based on one we found in the 1701 edition of Playford’s English Dancing Master. The tune is Lumps of Pudding, which seemed an appropriately festive title, if not a very festive melody. Other tunes are available.
11. Time To Remember The Poor (round)
Based on Roud 1121. The full version of this song is the last in Frank Kidson’s 1891 book Traditional Tunes. It was given to Frank by Charles Lolley who in turn got it from an unnamed East Riding singer. Frank says, “Time to Remember the Poor is a great deal in advance of the usual street ballad, and the air is an excellent one.” Despite this, we’ve chopped most of the words out and butchered the tune to make it into a short round.
12. The Minchinhampton Wassail (round)
Roud 209. The glostrad.com website is a fine resource for those interested in the traditional songs and tunes of Gloucestershire. It was there that we found this song, one of many versions of the Gloucestershire Wassail. The tune was noted by James Madison Carpenter from Thomas Tranter and William Evans in Minchinhampton, and the words from George Herbert of Avening some time between 1927 and 1935. In Gloucestershire, the wassail was of the travelling variety, rather than the dousing-apple-trees-with-cider variety. The practice involved a group of people visiting houses singing the wassail song and collecting money, sometimes accompanied by accordion or concertina. According to the booklet I remember — Social Life in Gloucestershire Villages 1850-1950, “the wassailers of Minchinhampton carried a large bowl decorated with evergreens, among which were some small dolls. During the year, the bowl was kept by one man known as the king of the wassailers. There used to be twenty or so of these wassailers; later they dwindled to three or four and it was looked on as ‘rather low and rough.’” The song’s verse order might vary; a particular verse might be prompted by a member of the group shouting out a key word or phrase. The Broad was a south Gloucestershire variant of the hobby horse carried by one of the wassailers. The Broad’s head represents a Bull, often made from a flat white wooden board with horns and red glass eyes attached. The head was held aloft on a broomstick by a carrier whose body was covered in sacking. When the door of the visited house was opened the Broad’s head would be thrust in first with a loud roaring noise to summon and/or terrify the inhabitants.
All tracks arranged by Cooper and Toller.
Vicky Cooper: violins, voice.
Richard Toller: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, octave mandola, violin, concertina, voice, midi programming. Morris bells (track 12) and triangle (track 1).
Jenny Toller: cello (track 10).
Photography and design by Richard Toller.
Recorded, produced and mastered by Richard Toller in Bristol, UK, in the first half of the year 2024.
The sound of the bell at the start of track 7 was downloaded from the MixKit website. Luckily, the bell is in B-flat.
The bells at the end were recorded outside the church at Priddy Folk Festival in July, 2024. (It’s always a pleasure to wake up to those early Sunday morning bells.)
The dog bark in track 12 was downloaded from the Freesound website from user abhisheky948, licensed under Creative Commons 0.
The background image of the tree for the composite cover image is licensed from iStock, credit Letfluis.