This is the first song in Songs of the West, and I chose it for the title of this, my first C.D. The tune and words come from James Parsons, the hedger of the village of Lewdown (between Okehampton and Lifton in Devon) who had learnt the song from his father 'The Singing Machine'.

In his notes Sabine is inclined to think that the song dates from the time of James I or Charles I. He found the song in the British Museum in ballad books entitled 'The Court of Apollo' and he notes that of the six verses there, three are almost word for word as that collected from James Parsons. Concertina accompaniment by John Kirkpatrick.

Another song taken down from James Parsons, Sabine gives references to broadsides that have different endings, and notes that the Devon tune is of a much earlier character.

The song is meant to be sung by a male/female duo and it appears in Barrett's English Folk Songs #32 to a different tune.

This song, with a story, (cante fable) I found interesting as a not so common form of folk song in England. Due to it's sexual content, which would have shocked the Victorian middle classes which Sabines song book was marketed for. We find it in the notes to the songs in the back of Songs of the West. Sabine kept the tune and replaced it with a more acceptable song to be sung and played in the drawing rooms of England titled Come to my Window.

It was taken down from John Woodrich; who told Sabine how he heard it in an ale-house near Bideford in 1864, from an old man, who recited a tale, in which the song comes in snatches. He had been soaked by the rain, and he told the tale as he dried himself by the kitchen fire. This is almost certainly the original framework to which these snatches of song belong. Story read by Lisa Nolan.

Sabine wrote that, this charming ballad was taken down, words and music, from J. Masters of Bradstone. The Broadside versions that were published by Fortey, Hodges, Taylor of Spitalfields, Ringham of Lincoln, and Pratt of Birmingham, are all very corrupt. The version of old Masters is given exactly as he sang it, and it is but one instance out of many of the superiority of the ballads handed down traditionally in the country by unlettered men to those picked up from the ballad-mongers employed by the Broadside publishers.

F.W. Bussell took this down from Edmund Fry of Lydford. Sabine noted that the last verse had to be modified.
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O' where are your maiden heads
Ye maidens brisk and gay
We left them in the public bar
We drank them clean away.
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modified to
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O' where be your characters
Ye maidens brisk and gay
O they be a swallowed
We've drunk them clean away
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Some of Sabine's daughters had learnt the song (perhaps before it had been 'modified') and sang at a fete at Lew Trenchard one summer. Among the audience of locals there were several gentlewomen who must have been greatly shocked by such coarse words from the beautiful Baring-Gould girls. Which created a demand for smelling salts.

Sabine was fortunate to have people who would collect songs on his behalf, this song was sent to him by Captain Hall Munro of Ingesdon House, Newton Abbott, sung to him by an old man there. In the notes on the songs in SOTW there is no mention of the source singer or the year it was collected. But, the air of Death and the Lady Sabine regarded as being an old tune.
The song was also collected from Roger Hannaford.

F.W. Bussell took the words and music for this song from Edmund Fry of Lydford, John Bennett of Chagford and shepherd John Hunt of Postbridge.

Sabine suggests a comparison with 'Jolly Roger Twangdillo' a ballad in d'Urfeys 'Pills to Purge Melancholy of 1719 and a broadside version printed by Jennings of Water Lane London circ 1790.

The Pepysion collection and the Roxburgh Ballads have entries with the same theme.

This version I learned from the singing of the late Burt Lloyd in the late 1960's. Sabine collected this version from Sam Fone of Mary Tavy titled Arthur Le Bride, with words almost identical to that of Arthur McBride. Sabine was, in my opinion, gifted in getting information about the lives of his singers as well as songs from them. The following tale Sam told to Sabine and Freddie Bussell about his father, which Sabine included in his notes to the song.

Taken down from Sam Fone, Mary Tavy, by Mr. Bussell, in 1892. Sam told us that this was his father's favourite song. He had learned it from his father when he was quite a child, for the elder Fone deserted his family, and was never heard of again.

But one day Sam, when aged eighteen, saw a workman standing at a cottage door, talking to someone within and he had his hand against the doorpost, clutching it as he leaned forward. Same exclaimed: "That's my father's hand!" The man turned about, and without showing his face, walked away. When Sam came from his work in the evening he made enquiries, and ascertained that a stranger had been lodging in the cottage for a few nights, but was gone. He asked the woman of the house about her lodger. "Well," said she, "I don't know his name, nor nothing about him. But he asked me for a tallow candle, and melted it up into his boots." "That was my father. It was a trick of his," said Sam.

I remember the Watersons version of this song and I had great difficulty getting the tune in my head to this version. Sabine collected this version from James Olver, a tanner from Launceston. James came from strict Methodist parents and he and his sister were forbidden to sing anything but hymns. But young James and his sister would leave their house by their bedroom window, and sneak away to listen to the men singing in a near-by pub.

Once again a better version to a song is found in Sabine's Notes, although here he does state that he rewrote the words that we find printed in S.O.T.W. His notes read as follows:

Taken down from James Parsons. After the second verse he broke away into 'The Seeds of Love.' Joseph Dyer, of Mawgan in Pyder, sang the same ballad or song to the same tune, and in what I believe to be the complete form of words.

This is Joseph Dyers version which I added the first verse as an extra verse to end the song.

This was the first of Sabine's songs I learnt back in the 1960's. Bell ringing was perhaps one of the national sports of Cornwall, before the boys found rugby. The ringers mentioned in the song now lie in Egloshayle Churchyard, where their gravestones can be found. Egloshayle lies on the east bank of the Camel, facing the town of Wadebridge on the west bank, just a short distance up river from the estuary at Padstow.

Collected from James Townsend of Holne, who learned it from his grandfather, William Ford who died at about seventy in 1887. This song is in several collections with varying titles e.g. Newlyn Town and The Robber.

The reference to Fieldings crew! Henry Fielding was appointed chief magistrate of Westminster in 1748. After Henry's death in 1754, his blind half-brother, Sir John Fielding, who died in 1780, carried on his work of fighting crime.

Sabine's Notes from S.O.T.W.:
The melody was taken down by W. Crossing, from an old moor man, to 'Rosemary Lane.' Roger Luxton and James Parsons also sang 'Rosemary Lane' to the same air. The words are objectionable. Moreover, in other parts of England, this Broadside song is always sung to one particular air. We therefore thought it well to put to our melody entirely fresh words to be included in S. O. T. W.

Now to where Sabine got the idea for the new song he created & titled 'The Blue Flame'. From his auto biography Further Reminicences 1834-1864 he wrote the following.

A prevelant superstition when I was a child was that a flame from the churchyard would travel along the lanes to the house of the one who was about to die & tarry there till the death occurred. Then 2 flames would go side by side to the graveyard. The following ballad I wrote on this theme, it is original & not a traditional ballad. It was written to a beautiful & touching Devonshire air, wedded to a very gross set of words.

But, he did keep the original words as taken down from the singers as you hear me sing Rosemary Lane on this

This is my version of The Broken Token the song that Sabine and Henry Fleetwood Sheperd took down in the winter of 1888 from Robert Hard of South Brent. Hards version has a different title, with almost identical words to which I sing. A song with lyrics possibly changed by the oral tradition.

This is another song from Robert Hard I have sung for many years! Sabine and Henry Fleetwood Sheperd took the song down from Hard but he sang a song titled The Hearty Goodfellow, with almost identical words to those I sing in Bold Gambling Boy. Hards version is titledt The Hearty Goodfellow, with almost identical words you hear me sing.

F. W. (Freddie) Bussell collected this song from Mary Trease of Menheniot in South East Cornwall. The song is dated prior to the American War of Independence. A Silver Mine started working in Menheniot in the 1880's and it is a possibility that a Cornish miner returning from abroad, maybe seeking a wife, brought this song with him.

Here is proof that some songs came back across the Atlantic so it was not always an outward flow. Because of the American connection I had always imagined this as a country music song being sung by Willie Nelson. While we were rehearsing this song, I mentioned this to John Kirkpatrick and this is what I imagined it would sound like coming from Willie.