Jug of Punch

Composer: Ewan MacColl, and Sam Larner’s words

Roud Folksong Index 13642

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: I followed Ewan McColl on this song except for the last verse, which is my own creation. The North Sea herring fishery collapsed in 1978.  In justice, it did recover, only to collapse again in the mid 1990s. Great Yarmouth Harbor has now been put to other uses which are less tasty but perhaps more in accord with contemporary values (servicing offshore oil and gas drilling).

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 687

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Talcahuano, a port in Chile, was a source of supplies and companionship for whaling ships in the 19^th century. Huasco and Tumbez are also Pacific coat ports, in Chile and Peru respectively. This is A. L. Lloyd’s version of what is clearly a traditional whalers’ song. I heard it on his “Leviathan.” We can’t know the names of all those who have contributed to this song, but we are happy to be singing in their tradition. This is another case of beauty out of ecological disaster. The whalers have overkilled the whales and made great songs.         

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 252

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: I heard A. L. Lloyd’s version on “English Drinking Songs.” The Isle of Wight, not far off the south coast of England, was once known for its cheap liquor, smuggled over from France and boisterously, and in this instance continuously, enjoyed by the islanders.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 929

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: The Holy Ground was the red light district of theIrish  port of Queenstown, now Cob.  I heard this sung by the Clancy Brothers on more than one album! I can’t give a rational answer as to why I like this song so much. Perhaps because it has such soul. This song should really be sung to an audience of a few hundred who will be singing the chorus and stamp on the floor at “Fine girl you are!” The audience must perform it! 

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 488

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: This song is traditional, but I take my inspiration from Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd’s version from the album “Blow Boys Blow”. Their version avoids naming the Devil as a participant of the dance, referring instead to “a long-tailed black man,” perhaps out of caution lest the singer “speak of the Devil and he appears.” So far as I’m concerned he may be named and may participate in the dance as long as he doesn’t tread on the heels of the other dancers! There have been a number of verses that one finds here or there, and so I’ve put together what seemed to have the best bits of them all.  It is alas geographic nonsense, since the Lizard Lighthouse in Cornwall and the Isle of Wight are landmarks on a voyage up the English Channel to the Blackwall Docks in London, while Dan Lowrey’s Malakoff Music Hall was in Liverpool. But Daniel, publican and impresario though he might be, was more importantly “The greatest Irish singer of the present day [1859], bar none,” and so could hardly be omitted; the voyage must culminate there!

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 1192

Arrangement: David Ormond 

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: This is very traditional and multifarious, and I just did a selection of lyrics I liked from a very large number of verses that have been sung over the years. I first heard this song in the 5th grade—thank you, Miss H. Bessie Heale!  I most admire A. L. Lloyd’s version from the “English Drinking Songs” album. I’m hoping to record another version on a future album to be called “Your Demon Lover”.   

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 395

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Inspired by A. L. Lloyd as so often, this time by his version from “The Black Ball Line.” I changed a line because I thought it was fun to mismatch a  Quaker (not committed to celibacy) and a Shaker (so committed) with one of Little Sally Racket’s consoeurs in a rowdy sea song.  I’m sure many of its long-ago singers made up verses as they went along and I did the same. 

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 328

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Inspired by A. L. Lloy’s version in “Blow Boys Blow.” I’ve never encountered a more economical way of expressing instant romantic love, immediate and total disaster, and swift and Stoical acceptance of ultimate and inexpugnable reality than this song. 

Composer: Traditional, 19^th century

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: I could swear I heard this first from the Clancys, but I can’t trace any version of theirs, and I surely did hear the Dubliners’ version somewhere somewhen. After Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin was blown up in 1966, some singers have sung “the Liffey” where they would previously have sung “the Pillar,” but I sing it as I heard it, and anyway I saw the Pillar before it went down, and it was quite the sight.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 354

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard on vinyl, Burl Ives “Down to the Sea in Ships.”  Lyrics are a mashup. The “her” to be left is the ship, being pumped dry after docking, on whose many deficient qualities this song is a rude farewell commentary. 

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 2627

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Another mashup from the songs of 19^th century stevedores and sailors loading and packing bales of cotton to be moved  from Mobile Bay to old and New England. John Masefield collected a different version, one among many.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 3013

=Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: A nicely ambivalent song with what has been called “cross-community appeal,” in Ireland, i.e. Orange-Protestant and Catholic-Nationalist. Heard it on the Clancys-and-Makem “Luck of the Irish.”

Composer: Francis Forbes, Chief Justice of Newfoundland

Roud Folksong Index 1812

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: First heard it on MacColl and Lloyd, “Blow Boys Blow.” “Packet ships” carried British mail across the oceans and so were pushed hard to make speed; they also carried passengers like Bridget Riley, and some died during the voyage. “Holystone” was a sandstone used to scrub the deck, the sailors kneeling as if in prayer.  “Dungaree jumper” is a denim jacket, easy enough, but “monkey jacket” is harder: organ grinders’ monkeys wore tight, short, ceremonial jackets; sailors and officers wore short, tight, “monkey jackets” which for officers were semiformal “mess jackets.”  But Herman Melville calls the human version a “foul,” “rude sort of shaggy garment” with deep pockets, worn over a coat in its turn worn over a shirt, in which a harpooneer could get “wrapped up.” To suggest that a sailor in freezing weather should wear type 1 monkey jacket would be malevolent nonsense; Melville’s version, type 2, was just the thing.  The “pilot jacket” or “pea coat” of heavy wool is probably “monkey jacket” type 2.  Why mislabel it? Irony. Double irony, in fact.  “Monkey jacket” type 1 sneers at officers dressing up for a “mess” (another ironic word for dinner, yet!) “Monkey jacket” type 2 sneers both ways—that harpooneer wrapped in his foul, rude, shaggy overcoat looks just like an officer, don’t he?

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 703

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard Ewan MacColl’s version on “Blow Boys Blow.” Lots of versions with dueling geographies from West Africa to Hawaii; I did a mashup with not too much consistency but keeps the best verses with mods to fit.  Stuart Frank classifies it as a “long-drag halyard chantey” used for heavy hauling, as in raising a topsail, with a one-line solo call by the song leader (“chanteyman”) and a one-line refrain by all hands, with the pulls on the accented downbeats. Are the haulers being counseled to make deep breaths to do the heavy work by the words “blow, boys, blow”?

Composer: Traditional

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: An 18^th century Irish drinking song, referencing the roistering lads of Garry Owen in Limerick, Ireland, and adopted as a marching tune by American, Australian, British and Canadian regiments, including Custer’s 7^th Cavalry, an association that has since caused pain and recently controversy.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 29

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard on Lloyd and MacColl, “The English and Scottish Popular Ballads” Vol. 8.  Lots of versions from the Middle Ages to now; I have kept the lady in distress, the bold knight, and the boar; the wild woman, the giant, and the drove of pigs were too much to handle, and have evanesced; and I have added a bit of social-climbing snarkery to the he-she conversation, plus a happy or fitting ending for the three characters.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 533

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Too many sources to trace back…. A successful Irish rapparee is betrayed by his darling, tsk.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 477

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard on Lloyd and MacColl, “The English and Scottish Popular Ballads” Vol. 8. Inspired by Luke 16: 19-31

Composer: Traditional

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard on “The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.” This is a loving tribute to—a jug of the good!

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 926

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard A.L. Lloyd with Ewan MacColl and chorus on “The Black Ball Line.”  Maryland’s Eastern Shore is on the Chesapeake Bay; Tage W. Blytmann has told the story of the Baltimore clipper schooner Vigilant that only sank three times in its 130-year career. 

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 677

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard on “The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Greatest Irish Hits.” However, I jibbed at the line “he robbed the rich to help the poor.”  Unlikely. The poor are easier to rob, while those who rob the rich are more likely to get more loot, but caught. So I made the hero’s robberies nondiscriminatory.

Composer: Traditional

Arrangement: Nic Jones

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard as Jon Boden’s Nov. 23, 2010 entry on “A Folk Song A Day.”  It’s about how Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, invaded Russia in 1812 and lost about 300,000 French soldiers, 200,000 horses, and 1000 cannon in less than 6 months.  Charles XII of Sweden had invaded Russia in 1707 and lost 10,000 or so; Adolf Hitler invaded Russia in 1942 and lost about 10 million dead, captured or missing.  “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 325

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard it on MacColl and Lloyd, “Blow Boys Blow.”  At Mainly Norfolk it is variously cited as both a capstan shanty (sung by sailors “heaving” or pushing at the bars that turned a winch to wind the anchor rope and raise the anchor) and a halyard shanty (sung by sailors ”hauling” at the halyard, a rope pulled to raise a sail, and the chorus “Heave away, haul away,” does double duty.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 475

Arrangement: Ted Howard

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard it on A.L. Lloyd, “All For Me Grog.”  The money is gone, the alcoholic horrors are not, but it’s time to find a ship.

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 1808

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard it first on A.L. Lloyd, “English Drinking Songs,” but I especially like the increasingly-aggressively-cheerful renditions by The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.  

Composer: Traditional

Roud Folksong Index 1238.

Arrangement: David Ormond

Singer: David Ormond

Produced by High Priestess Productions

David’s Commentary: Heard as the June 5, 2011 entry of Jon Boden’s “A Folk Song A Day” as a duet by Jon and Fay Hield.   Also I love the soulful choral version by David Jones and the Revels Chorus (The Wild Mountain Thyme, Revels Records CD 1094).  And for a very lively version, try The Poxy Boggards (Liver Let Die).  And yet another approach by Folly Bridge, under the title “Come Me Lads,” (All in the Same Tune, Wild Goose Records, WGS 352 CDR).