Category: Folk Song Stories

I first heard ‘Henry Martin’, or ‘Lofty Tall Ship’, on Sam Larner’s album, A Garland for Sam. Shortly afterwards I was lucky enough to spend a day with Martin Carthy, in which he talked about ‘Lofty Tall Ship’ as his favourite traditional folk song. It was also the subject of the first episode of The…

‘John Riley’ is a common title, and an even more common character, in the canon of traditional English songs. He’s so ubiquitous, in fact, one might assume he’s a single character of great renown. However, as this article finds, he appears to be many men caught up in multiple stories, each belonging to a song…

Published in 1833 by Whitings, a street ballad seller who appears to have had limited success in the songs world, the “Pretty Girls of Brummagem” has the kind of title you might associate with bawdy singsongs. However, it’s quite the opposite, being something of a sweet, melancholy look at how various Brummie men of the…