English Folk Songs

One of the Spectator's Books of the Year 2012 'Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain For we've received orders for to sail for old England But we hope in a short while to see you again' One of the great English popular art forms, the folk song can be painful, satirical, erotic, dramatic, rueful or funny. They have thrived when sung on a whim to a handful of friends in a pub; they have bewitched generations of English composers who have set them for everything from solo violin to full orchestra; they are sung in concerts, festivals, weddings, funerals and with nobody to hear but the singer. This magical new collection brings together all the classic folk songs as well as many lesser-known discoveries, complete with music and annotations on their original sources and meaning. Published in cooperation with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, it is a worthy successor to Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L.Lloyd's original Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. 'Her keen eye did glitter like the bright stars by night The robe she was wearing was costly and white Her bare neck was shaded with her long raven hair And they called her pretty Susan, the pride of Kildare' In association with EFDSS, the English Folk Dance and Song Society

Lyrics and piano music for traditional ballads and songs collected from singers throughout Britain are accompanied by notes on their probable origins, related versions, and historical allusions

This collection is filled with songs that tell of the pleasures and pains of love, the patterns of the countryside and the lives of ordinary people. Here are unfaithful soldiers, ghostly lovers, whalers on stormy seas, cuckolds and tricksters. By turns funny, plain-speaking and melancholic, these songs evoke a lost world and, with their melodies provided, record a vital musical tradition. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

In Victorian times, England was famously dubbed the land without music - but one of the great musical discoveries of the early twentieth century was that England had a vital heritage of folk song and music which was easily good enough to stand comparison with those of other parts of Britain and overseas. Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger, and a number of other enthusiasts gathered a huge harvest of songs and tunes which we can study and enjoy at our leisure. But after over a century of collection and discussion, publication and performance, there are still many things we don't know about traditional song - Where did the songs come from? Who sang them, where, when and why? What part did singing play in the lives of the communities in which the songs thrived? More importantly, have the pioneer collectors' restricted definitions and narrow focus hindered or helped our understanding? This is the first book for many years to investigate the wider social history of traditional song in England, and draws on a wide range of sources to answer these questions and many more.

First published in 1932, Cecil Sharp's English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians contains 274 songs -- ballads, songs, hymns, nursery songs, jigs, and play-party games -- with 968 tunes, collected between 1916 and 1918 from traditional singers in the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It remains one of the foundational collections of American folk music.