Bill Taylor writes: If I had another penny, I would have another gill…
Even I’m not old enough to remember when beer cost tuppence a pint (“And it was beer then, not like the muck you get nowadays”), but I know a good song when I hear one.
Byker Hill is a great song, with a lot of terrific renditions. This is by The Longest Johns, a Bristol-based trio who were new to me:
The song goes back a long, long way. It’s listed in Rhymes of Northern Bards, published in 1812, as Walker Pits. AL Lloyd’s 1952 collection, Come All Ye Bold Miners: Ballads and Songs of the Coalfields, also uses that title.
(Pre-war Byker. Newcastle Public Libraries: Public Domain)
Fascinating stuff but, for once, what most interested me were the two songs mentioned in the lyrics:
“I would make the piper play The Bonnie Lass of Byker Hill”
and:
“To the tune of the Elsie Marley”
I can’t find The Bonnie Lass of Byker Hill anywhere, but Elsie Marley is certainly out there. And a very good song it is. I love this version by Luc McNally, on guitar and vocals, and bagpiper Eddie Seaman.
Seaman is from Edinburgh, and McNally from Dipton, Co. Durham, though I believe he now bases himself in Glasgow.
A number of artists have recorded Elsie Marley. Hard to resist this version, from Along the Coaly Tyne, compiled from three other albums. They're not listed as The High Level Ranters but it's Tommy Gilfellon, Alistair Anderson, Colin Ross and Lou Killen, with Johnny Handle doing lead vocals:
And, finally, a very quirky rework by Judy Collins into a children’s song:
So, what other songs within songs are there? (Feel free to throw in any that I’ve missed – probably quite a few.)
Cushy Butterfield for one – performed here by Alex Glasgow, beguilingly backed by the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra:
It references The Keel Row (which is also listed in Rhymes of Northern Bards), done here by the Ian Campbell Folk Group:
Which brings us to Wor Nanny’s a Mazer (though spellings of that differ), Tommy Armstrong’s dialect-rich account of a man and his wife on a clothes-buying expedition that goes awry. This is Bob Fox and Benny Graham:
As Nanny gets into some serious drinking, she manages to sing one song (though the verse mentioning this is often omitted), The Row in the Gutter, and fails disastrously on another, The Cat Pie.
I haven’t been able to pin down the writer of The Row in the Gutter, but it’s featured on Northumbrian Brian Watson’s album, Where Ivvor Heh Thi Gone – Songs of Northern Bards:
It may well have been written by Tommy Armstrong, because The Cat Pie is another of his compositions. Nothing like a bit of self-promotion.
I’ve found the words to this – http://cbladey.com/sang/priests6.html#The%20Cat – but not a recording.
As a consolation, though, there are recordings of another Armstrong culinary song, The Hedgehog Pie (could this be where the north-east folk-rock band of the 1970s got its name?). Again, this is from Messrs. Gilfellon, Handle, etc., but with Maureen Craik instead of Alistair Anderson.
Finally, as a sort of bonus, with only a tenuous connection to the material above, here’s Dave Van Ronk singing one of the few songs that he wrote himself. It’s called Luang Prabang, after a city in Laos, and is about an American soldier, sorely wounded in the Vietnam War. I include it because Van Ronk used the tune of Byker Hill.
It’s a great, pull-no-punches song. But be warned – though not gratuitously so, some of the language is raw.
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