The Cowgirl's Lovesong

This week's song comes from Sue Harding:

When I began to write songs for the Angel Ridge project, it was like beginning again in a whole new genre.  Things that started out as 'sampler' pieces as I tentatively began to explore the conventions of Americana folk turned out better than expected and I piled on the conventions both musically and lyrically just to see what would happen.

I am not an American and despite a shared folk heritage, this is not my tradition. I'm a complete fake. My perceptions of the American West are informed by the Cowboy films my dad watched on TV.  

Later when the music got me, anything from Blue Grass to Gospel to Rock and Roll, I created my own Wild West which became a place where anything could happen: a place for pioneers of all kinds and a perfect back drop for the human drama. I peopled this imaginary landscape with characters drawn unashamedly from a cast of stereotypes and cliches.  What I want is for the the story telling which drives these songs to have emotional integrity and to resonate with a contemporary listener.

The Cow girl's love song is celebratory even if there is no happy ending.  Unlike so many traditional folk songs where the abandoned girl is a helpless victim, the cowgirl in my song embraces  her experience. In my imaginary west, the figure of the  cowgirl has feminist overtones.  I suspect that the historical truth is far from that, but for me in this song she is a fully functional human being in  control of her own sexual and emotional destiny and a true pioneer. 

Sue

When Johnny said meet me
Where the creek gives the rise
He’d a slide to his hips
And fire in his eyes
I’m glad he remembered my name

It’s his wild words that won me
When he said I’d be dressed
In stars and the night
I thought I’d been blessed
I'm not looking for someone to blame

Where you been Johnny Slim
Where you been?
Blown with the wind
Johnny Slim
Till the next time we meet
Oh the memory’s sweet
You know you won’t stay very long

If he stole those sweet words
Well he never took nothing from me
When I’m with my Johnny
I'm free like a bee
I know he’ll go South all the same

But one night with Johnny
Sweet flowers hung on the breeze
I soaked up his songs
'Neath the sycamore tree
My happy heart a flickering flame

Where you been Johnny Slim
Where you been?
Flown with the birds
Johnny Slim
Till the next time we meet
Oh the memory’s sweet
You know you won’t stay very long

In the light all his fine words
Were gone but I swear
Love stuck in his throat
Like a long lost prayer
Adrift on the air as he whispered my name

Where you been Johnny Slim
Where you been?
Gone with the wind
Johnny Slim
Till the next time we meet
Oh the memory’s sweet
You know you won’t stay very long 

Sovay Sovay

In some respects I'm surprised that we've gone this long without a cross-dressing song! This lover's test (Roud number 5) is a popular one for singers having been done in its various guises by Martin Carthy , Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Chris Sarjeant to name a few.

The name Sovay appears in various forms such as Silvy, Shilo, Sally etc and is most likely a corruption of Sophie or Sylvie. The time signature is, to quote Martin Carthy quoting Bert Lloyd, "a beautiful illustration of (the) notion that all English folk music is cast in the time signature of one beat in a bar". If you look at the way that the song was originally performed to collectors such as is recorded in the Butterworth and Hammond notes, you can see the different ways they dealt with the irregularities of the singers and in Martin Carty's notes on the song, he purposefully wrote the tune without bar lines to give the stronger emphasis on a free flowing tune.

 This week John Wilson provides vocals and guitar:

"Lovers test each others commitment in numerous ways. None perhaps as graphic as a woman dressing as a highwayman, pointing a gun at her boyfriend and demanding a gold ring, given as a token of true love. The song's presumed happy conclusion is that even under the threat of death, the man does not give up the ring, and in so doing demonstrates that he will not give up his love either. Convinced of her boyfriend's depth of feeling the disguised woman spares his life. In this version of the traditional song the woman's explains why she has devised this test. As the song ends here, we assume all is well. What might be illuminating however is a final verse which would indicate the man's true reaction to his humiliating ordeal.

"Sovay sovay I should just like to say
That it was all very well to test me that way
If only you'd trusted our depth of romance
I wouldn't be standing, standing in a pair of soiled pants."

This, of course, is not a serious suggestion.

As it stands, it works as a complete story set out in economic terms with some perfectly compressed prose. In this, and the fact that it is taken from the point of view of a strong female lead, it is modern in tone. It is therefore a perfect candidate for a model of performance which requires an uncluttered and quick style of presentation. My version owes a debt to Martin Carthy, and in particular the version recorded with Brass Monkey."

John

Sovay, Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man's array
With a sword and a pistol all by her side
To meet her true love to meet her true love away did ride.

And as she was a-riding over the plain
She met her true love and bid him stand
Your gold and silver kind sir she said
Or else this moment or else this moment your life I'll have.

And when she'd robbed him of his store
She says kind sir there is one thing more
A golden ring which I know you have
Deliver it deliver it your sweet life to save.

Oh that golden ring a token is
My life I'll lose the ring I'll save.
Being tender-hearted just like a dove
She rode away she rode away from her true love.

Oh next morning in the garden green
Just like true lovers they were seen
Oh he spied his watch hanging by her clothes
And it made him blush made him blush like any rose.

Oh what makes you blush at so silly a thing
I thought to have had your golden ring
It was I that robbed you all on the plain
So here's your watch here's your watch and your gold again.

I did intend and it was to know
If that you were me true love or no
For if you'd have give me that ring she said
I'd have pulled the trigger I'd have pulled the trigger and shot you dead.

Rounding the Horn

Rounding Cape Horn was one of the most treacherous sea navigations that a ship could undertake and was the quickest route to Chile until the dawn of air travel. In this song, despite the ship being kitted out with all new sails and rigging, two souls are lost despite the best efforts of the crew; however the rewards for a sailor seem to fully make up for the journey although on leaving one wonders how they were getting back home! It's certainly a ripping yarn with the camaraderie between the ship mates and those on other ships providing an excellent backdrop to the action. A real spurring tale to have at a sing around!

As a geographical note, it has to be said in the third verse that the Magellan strait is not close to the Horn itself, the term "beating off" must be taken with a pinch of salt methinks (any other suggestions?)

This song, collected from Mr W Bolton in 1907 by Anne Gilchrist was published by Bert Lloyd and Ralph Vaughan Williams in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs is a surprising rarity in that only one other variation on it has been collected, again by Gilchrist, maybe it was just that good...

Tim and Rob perform this one

The gallant frigate, Amphitrite, she lay in Plymouth Sound,
Blue Peter stood at the foremast head for she was outward bound;
We were waiting there for orders to send us far from home;
Our orders came for Rio, and thence around Cape Horn.

When we arrived at Rio we prepared for heavy gales;
We set up all our rigging, boys, and bent on all new sails.
From ship to ship they checred us as we did sail along,
And wished us pleasant weather in rounding of Cape Horn.

While beating off Magellan Strait it blew exceeding hard;
Whilst shortening sail two gallant tars fell from the topsail yard.
By angry seas the ropes we threw fiom their poor hands were torn
And we were forced to leave them to the sharks that prowl around
Cape Horn.

When we got round the Horn, my boys, we had some glorious days
And very soon our killick dropped in Valparaiso Bay.
The pretty girls came down to us; I solemnly declare
They are far before the Plymouth girls with their long and curling hair.

They love a jolly sailor when he spends his money free;
They'll laugh and sing and merry, merry be, and have a jovial spree.
And when our money is all gone they won't on you impose,
They are not like the Plymouth girls that'll pawn and sell your clothes.

Farewell to Valparaiso, farewell for a while,
Likewise to all the Spanish girls all on the coast of Chile;
And if ever l live to be paid off l'll sit and sing this song:
"God bless those pretty Spanish girls we left around Cape Horn."

The Manchester Rambler

Happy Sunday greetings to all and sundry, today's song is sung by Will, the youngest of our regulars:

"I don't like to read political agendas into folk songs (although this could provide interesting research for anyone with the time) and generally I'll sing a song regardless of its underlying message, but coming from a cooperative youth movement and being pretty lefty myself I suppose there's a certain resonance to me in lines like 'no man has a right to the mountains, no more than the deep ocean bed'. I'm a sucker for sentiment really.

Other than that its another of your fairly generic 'rambling loner' songs, the kind that we all like because of that romantic ideal of travelling, but on a deeper level I suppose it could also be read as an expression of detachment from conventional society. It's from the pen of Ewan MacColl, a prominent skit and song writer for the British Communist party in the '30s and it was written just after the symbolic mass-trespass of Kinder Scout."

'Comrade' Will

I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowdon,
I've camped by the Wain Stones as well,
I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder,
And many more things I can tell.
My rucksack has oft been me pillow,
The heather has oft been me bed,
And sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.

Chorus: I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way,
I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way,
I may be a wage slave on Monday,
But I am a free man on Sunday.

There's pleasure in dragging through peat bogs and bragging
Of all the fine walks that you know;
There's even a measure of some kind of pleasure
In wading through ten feet of snow.
I've stood on the edge of the Downfall,
And seen all the valleys outspread,
And sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.

The day was just ending and I was descending
Through Grindsbrook just by Upper-Tor,
When a voice cried, "Hey, you!", in the way keepers do,
(He'd the worst face that ever I saw).
The things that he said were unpleasant;
In the teeth of his fury I said
"Sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead"

He called me a louse and said "Think of the grouse".
Well I thought, but I still couldn't see
Why old Kinder Scout and the moors round about
Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me.
He said "All this land is my master's".
At that I stood shaking my head,
No man has the right to own mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed

I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade,
She was fair as the Rowan in bloom,
And the bloom of her eye matched the blue moorland sky,
I wooed her from April to June.
On the day that we should have been married,
I went for a ramble instead,
For sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead

So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill
And I'll lie where the bracken is deep,
I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains
Where the grey rocks lie rugged and steep.
I've seen the white hare in the gulleys,
And the curlew fly high overhead,
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead.