Category: Judy Collins


Single Song Sunday: Gallows Pole and Variants with today’s guest host: Dean

July 20th, 2008 — 09:40 am

Greetings, music lovers! I’m Dean from snuhthing/anything and I was invited to be your guest blogger for the day. You might also know me from Star Maker Machine, the group music blog that both Boyhowdy and I participate in. I was excited by the invitation because it gives me a chance to discuss a song that’s been part of music’s collective memory for hundreds of years, the story the ballad’s based on stretches back to 438 BC with Euripides’ Alkestis. There’s literately hundreds of versions, some titles you might be familar with: The Golden Ball, Maid Saved, By a Lover Saved, Down by the Green Willow Tree, Girl to be Hanged for Stealing a Comb, Hangman Slacken, Ropeman’s Ballad, Hold Your Hands Old Man, Old Rabbit the Voodoo, Mama Did You Bring Any Silver, Freed from the Gallow, among others. The two we’ll be concentrating on today is Gallows Pole and The Prickly Bush.

The Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary defines Folk as “music of the common people that has been passed on by memorization or repetition rather than by writing and has deep roots in its own culture” – Gallows Pole surely fits the bill. The Child Ballads is a good place to start with the modern version of the song, since it found popularity during the 19th century via the collection.

Child Ballads

The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898 by Houghton Mifflin in 10 Volumes. The ballads vary in age; for instance, a version of “A Gest of Robyn Hode” was printed in the late 15th or early 16th century, and the manuscript of “Judas” dates to the 13th century. The majority of the ballads, however, date to the 17th and 18th century; although some probably have very ancient influences, only a handful can be definitively traced to before 1600. Moreover, few of the tunes collected are as old as the words. While many of them had been individually printed, e.g. as broadsides, Child’s collection was far more comprehensive than any previous collection of ballads in English. (However, there were comprehensive ballad collections in other languages, like the Danish collection Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, which Child referred to in his comments.)

One Child number may cover several ballads, which Child considered variants of the same story, although they may differ in many ways (as in “James Hatley”). Conversely, ballads classified separately may contain turns of phrase, and even entire verses, that are identical.

The Child Ballads deal with subjects typical to many ballads: romance, supernatural experiences, historical events, morality, riddles, murder, and folk heroes. On one extreme, some recount identifiable historical people, in known events. On the other, some differ from fairy tales solely by their being songs and in verse; some have been recast in prose form as fairy tales. A large part of the collections is about Robin Hood; some are about King Arthur. A few of the ballads are rather bawdy.

For a listing of all the Child ballad types, and links to more information on each individual type, see List of the Child Ballads.

This brings us to John Jacob Niles, who recorded The Maid Freed From The Gallows (Child Ballad No 95).

John Jacob Niles

John Jacob Niles (b. Louisville, Kentucky, April 28, 1892; d. Lexington, Kentucky, March 1, 1980) was an American composer, singer, and collector of traditional ballads. Called the “Dean of American Balladeers”, Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Joan Baez, Burl Ives, and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others, recording his songs.

Niles learned music theory from his mother, and began writing down folk music as a teenager. He became a serious student of Appalachian folk music by transcribing traditional songs from oral sources while an itinerant employee of the Burroughs Corporation in eastern Kentucky, from 1910 to 1917.

Starting in 1938, he recorded a number of his compositions and transcribed songs, performing the material in an intense, dramatic manner. He employed a trademark very high falsetto to portray female characters, and often accompanied himself on an Appalachian dulcimer, lute, or other plucked stringed instrument.

Lead Belly recorded the cover most modern day artists draw from.

Lead Belly Version

Legendary folksinger Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly), who also popularized such songs as “Cotton Fields” and “Midnight Special” first recorded “Gallis Pole” in the 1930s, and set the stage for the song’s popularity today. Lead Belly’s rendition, available through Folkways music and recently re-released by the Library of Congress, differs from more familiar recordings in several notable ways. The Lead Belly version is performed on acoustic twelve string guitar, and following an introductory phrase reminiscent of the vocal melody, Lead Belly launches into a furious fingerpicking pattern. His haunting, shrill tenor delivers the lyrical counterpoint, and his story is punctuated with spoken-word, as he “interrupts his song to discourse on its theme”

After a few years, Huddie made it his own.

Time to back up a bit and discuss The Prickly Bush variant.

Origin

The song likely originated in a language other than English. Some fifty versions have been reported in Finland, where it is well known as Lunastettava neito. It is titled Den Bortsålda in Sweden, and Die Losgekaufte in German. A Lithuanian version has the maid asking relatives to ransom her with their best animals or belongings (sword, house, crown, ring etc.). The maiden curses her relatives who refuse to give up their property, and blesses her fiancé, who does ransom her.

Francis James Child found the English version “defective and distorted”, in that, in most cases, the narrative rationale had been lost and only the ransoming sequence remained. Numerous European variants explain the reason for the ransom: the heroine has been captured by pirates. Of the texts he prints, one (95F) had “degenerated” into a children’s game, while others had survived as part of a Northern English cante-fable, The Golden Ball (or Key).

Child describes additional examples from Färöe, Iceland, Russia, and Slovenia. Several of these feature a man being ransomed by a woman.

The theme of delaying one’s execution while awaiting rescue by relatives appears with a similar structure in the classic fairy tale “Bluebeard” by Charles Perrault in 1697 (translated into English in 1729).

The song is also known as “The Prickly Bush”, a title derived from the oft-used refrain lamenting the maid’s situation by likening it to being caught in briery bush, wherein the brier prickles her heart. In versions carrying this theme, the typical refrain may add:

O the prickly bush, the prickly bush,
It pricked my heart full sore;
If ever I get out of the prickly bush,
I’ll never get in any more.

Here’s some great versions of The Prickly Bush, a real treat for the ears.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include these fun variants – though I must warn you that In Extremo labels itself a German folk metal band, you might want to turn the volume down.

Modern day arrangements.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. For more information about Gallows Pole and Child Ballad Number 95, I recommend The Prickly Bush/The Prickle-Holly Bush and The Child Ballad Collection.

Dean blogs about all genres of music at snuhthing/anything. He is also a regular contributor to blog collaborative Star Maker Machine.

1,423 comments » | A.L. Lloyd, Fred Hewett, Guest Posts, Ha Ha Tonka, In Extremo, John Jacob Niles, Judy Collins, Lead Belly, Page and Plant, Spiers and Boden, Steeleye Span, The Stairwell Sisters, Weavers

(Re)Covered V: More Covers of and from Richard Shindell, Cindy Kallet, Doc Watson, James Taylor

May 4th, 2008 — 06:38 pm

News, new releases, and new discoveries leave us no choice but to bring you yet another long-overdue installment of our popular (Re)Covered series, wherein we recover songs that dropped through the cracks too late to make it into the posts where they belonged.

A huge news trifecta this week from Cover Lay Down inaugural-post favorite Richard Shindell: he’s started a blog, he’s decided to reopen sales of his recent live album as a digital download, and he’s decided to try financing his next record by offering every single one of us the chance to become a producer.

Shindell’s blog is already proving to be a vibrant space for thoughtful, well-written treatises on the world and how it is changing, though we’d expect nothing less from this articulate singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter; the first two entries offer a short journalistic report from his adopted homeland of Argentina, and an artist’s-eye reflection on how changes in the music industry have altered the relationship between musicians and fans, primarily for the better. And the news that others will soon be able to order his well-produced and wonderfully organic live album, which I wrote about in our six-month anniversary post, is just plain great.

But I’m especially excited to see Shindell join the growing ranks of folk artists who are not only embracing the new, digital world, but tapping into its fullest potential. Album microfinancing through the fanbase is a gutsy move, but it is a viable one, as singer-songwriters Kris Delmhorst and Jill Sobule have successfully demonstrated; the multi-tiered approach Shindell is using to finance his new work seems creative, and offers real return for investors: at the entry level, you’re basically buying the album in advance; from there, investment return climbs all the way up to house concerts and housepainting.

As Richard points out in his most recent blog entry, working with “big music” and the RIAA has its costs, and often require that artists work in ways which are not consistent with their own value systems. But the file-sharing landscape offers new opportunities which greatly improve the potential for the relationship between artists and fans. Fan financing is just one example of this; a second is Shindell’s creation of an open guitar case, where those who have downloaded his work for free, or just appreciate it, can choose to stop by and support Shindell directly. Here’s hoping that this is only the tip of a very big iceberg.

Please join me in supporting the creation of Richard’s new album, and celebrating yet one more musician who has decided to leave behind the crumbling, artist-unfriendly industry. Even if you aren’t interested in purchasing a full album, or participating in microfinancing at this time, if you like the songs I’ve included here, or enjoyed previously-posted covers from Richard Shindell, including songs by Springsteen and Ritter, Leonard Cohen, and Jeffrey Foucault and Dar Williams, please consider donating to Shindell via his open guitar case.

In other (Re)Covered-worthy news, I just recieved my review copy of Heart Walk, the new album from the trio of Cindy Kallet, Ellen Epstein, and Michael Cicone. As expected, it’s a beautful work, full of robust harmony and sincere emotion, primarily comprised of coversongs of underappreciated folk artists who share the same social and ecological sensibilities of Kallet and co. Like the trio’s previous two albums, which I wrote about in our previous feature on Cindy Kallet, Heart Walk is both an especially powerful musical experience, and a great and loving introduction to the work of other folk musicians you may not have heard of, but should. Kudos, all around.

Order Heart Walk and hear samples here; if you live in the Boston area, come join me at First Parish Church in Watertown on May 17th for the Kallet, Epstein, and Cicone CD release party, a rare opportunity to see the trio (and friends) perform live. In the meantime, these two covertracks from the new album — a cover of an old Judy Collins tune, and an absolutely stunning cover of Peter Mayer’s Holy Now featuring Michael’s warm, clear lead vocals — are a great way to whet the appetite.

  • Kallet, Epstein, Cicone, Holy Now (orig. Peter Mayer)
  • Kallet, Epstein, Cicone, Since You Asked (orig. Judy Collins)

Our recent vacation to North Carolina was lots of fun, but being without the bulk of my music collection meant a relative dearth of music availability for the posts I produced while on the road. Happily, since my return, my continued search for songs from fathers to daughters and more old folk song covers from Doc Watson led me to Daddies Sing Good Night, a decade-old compilation from bluegrass label Sugar Hill records. This great coveralbum, which turned up in my daughter’s vanity, was the source for the Seldom Scene cover of Sweet Baby James I included in our recent James Taylor coversongs megapost; it also includes these two great father-to-son cuts from Doc Watson.

And finally, speaking of ol’ JT: thanks to all my readers, especially long-time reader and fan Carol, for the many songs and suggestions that poured in after the aforementioned James Taylor megapost. Though I’m saving most of my newly-embiggened collection of Taylor covers ever-hopefully for a future post on other members of the mightily talented Taylor Family, here’s that Alison Krauss and James Taylor cover of the Louvin Brothers I’d been looking for — it’s even better than I hoped it would be.

801 comments » | (Re)Covered, Alison Krauss, Cindy Kallet, Doc Watson, James Taylor, Judy Collins, Louvin Brothers, Merle Haggard, Pete Seeger, Peter Gabriel, Peter Mayer, richard shindell, Townes van Zandt