Music of the Moment

Social Distortion - Gimme the Sweet and Lowdown

Mighty Poplar - Chico/When I Was a Cowboy



Andrew Marlin (the singer & mandolinist above), Jordan Tice (on guitar, voice) and Christian Sedelmeyer (fiddle)—all excellent musicians, have an album together called “Wild Rose of Morning” which also has the second song along with a few other cowboy songs. The following is an instrumental I liked from that album.

Si Bheag Si Mhor



The Blind Harper. Not a cowboy song, but definitely an outlaw—a blind harpist from Lochmaben plans to steal King Henry’s brown horse. He charms the king and all to sleep, sneaks down and ties the king’s wanton brown to his own good grey mare’s tail, and then in the morning gets paid for the loss and for that of the suckling foal.



More outlaws—not outlaws of the plains but seafaring pirates! Certain people find this song dreadfully annoying, but I enjoy it. Pete Seeger - Elder Bordee

Planxty - The Lady on the Island / The Gatehouse Maid / The Virginia Reel / Callaghan’s Reel



Mickey MacConnell - Only Our Rivers Run Free



The Albion Band - Come All Ye



The Strawbs - Part of the Union

There is a song well known in modern British folk music, Willy o Winsbury. It has been known in one particular form since the sixties, and that is the version I memorized.

Then I learn about all the other forms and how much better preserved they are! And the tune fits better, too. One version of the tune for “False Foodrage” was applied to Willie o Winsbury, and while it is beautiful…so is the original too.

There is widespread disagreement between versions as to the actual name of the suitor—Willie o Winsbury, Lord Thomas of Winesberry, Johnny Barbour (esp. in North America), John Barbary… makes me think the events of this song may have happened twice, one with John Barbour(?), and one with William (or more likely Thomas—Willie is the John Doe of British folksongs) of Winsbury, and the names got switched out to commemorate two different events.

The common version also has nonsensical or anachronistic parts, especially involving Lady Janet’s raiment. One of these is the term “berry brown gown” when not many berries are brown, and anyway there are all kinds of colors of berry! More likely is a corruption from “bonny brown” as sung below.

Anyway this is Barbara Dickson’s Lord Thomas of Winesberry in Scots(?):

There may be more in that phrase ("berry-brown") than meets the eye! ;-]

We often run into nonsensical-looking compounds when reading 17th-century (and earlier) poetic compositions using 21st-century dictionaries.

Thanks for sharing, I'd never run across this version.

Donner MacRae wrote:There may be more in that phrase ("berry-brown") than meets the eye! ;-]

We often run into nonsensical-looking compounds when reading 17th-century (and earlier) poetic compositions using 21st-century dictionaries.

Thanks for sharing, I'd never run across this version.

That makes sense!

I tend to give those things the benefit of the doubt but after hearing the other versions, they seem to make so much more sense in other ways too.


I’ve heard that back then they often gathered their dresses in the front leading to the appearance of pregnancy, making it hard to tell from a glance if someone was pregnant or not. But they would have worn something under it, i.e. a shift, so either “stand naked upon the stone” was a hyperbole or it was altered. And the original Child Ballads entry says she put the gown on the stone, not herself.

I smell a modern innovation in this lyric and it isn’t an innovation I particularly like. It struck me as bawdy in, to me, very much the wrong way, sort of disgustingly patriarchal in a way that seemed so offensive to chivalry that it didn’t fit. And so I almost didn’t learn the song because of it. But I liked it enough in other ways and decided it was the song telling us just how horrible of a person the king was.

The Mammals—What It All Is



Flora MacNeil, Mo Run Geal Og. A tune I learned to play in high school but had not heard it sung until lately. I think the Gaelic sounds perfect with it.