For nearly 60 years, Ewan MacColl, an activist and left-wing socialist, expressed his views as a playwright, social activist, songwriter and performer. During the course of his lifetime he composed a body of work that ranks among the best in the British folk genre. Among the songs he wrote that others recorded and made famous are "Dirty Old Town" (Rod Stewart, the Pogues), "Freeborn Man" (The Pogues), and his Grammy Award-winning song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," a hit single for Roberta Flack in 1971, and which he wrote for his longtime collaborator and life partner, Peggy Seeger.
From the sleeve notes:
"Childhood memories of City Streets from Glasgow, Salford and
Dublin
The Oral Lore of Children
In listening to this recording, one will find three distinct types
of oral children's lore. First there are the items which have little or no
restrictions of national boundary. Some of the pieces recited and sung in this
recording are known throughout the English-speaking world, originating, perhaps,
in the British Isles and spreading out from there to all of the many countries
culturally and linguistically affected by the British and their far-flung
empire. Who, in the English-speaking world, for example, has not heard one or
another version of the singing-game The Farmer Wants a Wife (heard in a Dublin
Irish version on this recording), or Poor Mary Sat A-Weeping (from Salford on
this recording). You may know these pieces by other names, and in forms
differing quite radically from those presented on this recording, but it will
require little imagination or insight to realise the relationship of the
versions you know to those presented here.
A second category of pieces found in this recording are those
which appear to have strictly national boundaries, being known either only in
the British Isles or, perhaps, only in a single country or national group. Such
pieces are frequently related to festivals or events which are purely national
in character and incidence, or are so dependent upon purely national events or
references as to make them almost meaningless outside of the national boundary
of the country in which, they may be found. Such pieces include the holiday song
Christmas is Coming (item number 67, from Dublin, but known throughout the
British Isles), and the Scottish jibe, Wha saw the tattle howkers (item number
62, from Glasgow, but known in other parts of Scotland) among numerous
others.
The third category consists of those pieces of a purely local
nature, existing almost exclusively in a single community, town or county, but
rarely found elsewhere. The reasons for such limitation of tradition are similar
to those given for the second category mentioned above, but with considerably
more localised references or language. Such piece include Up The Mucky Mountains
(item number 64) and Jessie Stockton (item number 68), both from Salford, and
Cheer up, Russell Street (item number 56) from Dublin. Into this last category
must also go those pieces which are the creative efforts of a moment, in use for
only a short period of time, and fading into the world of lost traditions almost
before they were born. Occasionally such-pieces fall into the collector's lap,
but the collector (at best, just an accident in time, in such instances) has no
way of sorting out these pieces from those which are more than just mere
ephemera.
The record contains an even 100 pieces of diverse examples of
children's lore. Here will be found game songs, nonsense rhymes and ditties,
counting games, ball-bouncing games and rhymes, skipping-rope pieces, jibes,
taunts, oaths, street ballads, seasonal songs, and insults. What is the origin
of these pieces? For most of them we cannot even begin to speculate on the
question of origins.
Some few can be pinpointed to historical occurrences and
personages King Henry, King Henry (item number 12), tells of the affairs of love
of a well-remembered English monarch. Others are the breakdown of older
traditional ballads and tales; I know a woman, she lives in the woods (item
number 23), obviously derives from the ballad The Cruel Mother (Child 20). Some
like items 4, 56 and 59, are children's parodies of recent creations, including
music hall and popular songs. Most of the pieces are created out of happenings
and sights of everyday life. Because of the universality of their subject matter
they might arise anywhere or at almost any time so it is an impossible task to
do much more than guess at their origins.
First, we are introduced to the cultural milieu with which we are
dealing. Poverty, a proud working-class inheritance, slum conditions, and the
everyday, mundane things and occurrences affecting the individuals concerned.
Next, we are presented with the oral products of that environment, set off
against a train of thought concerning those products, not of the children
living, playing and reciting those pieces of lore, but of two adult bearers of
this urban tradition whose sensitivity to the setting is expressed in terms of
mature afterthought. The opportunity presented by this recording to study the
whys and wherefores of urban childhood traditions is the next best thing to
working in the field with the children themselves.
One fascinating problem suggested by working with children's lore,
and, even more specifically, with the lore of working-class children, is the
question of class boundaries of such lore. Of this question, Dominic Behan has
written:
"It can — so far as kids are concerned — be made only by children
who own so little other rights to amusement that they must sing and make up
songs about themselves and the places they inhabit; tenement house schools,
neighbours, and, most and biggest of all, their playground — the streets. Maybe
this is not quite true, maybe other classes of folks' children make up other
classes of songs. All I can say is if they do, I have never heard them."
"So much for the songs: what of the games? Are they 'class' bound?
Do they belong to certain people or are they the property of all? Once again, I
don't know. Once again I will guess, and say all".
The challenge has been issued. It is the duty of folklorists,
sociologists, and psychologists to take it up and answer the question. An
attempt to do so from a library chair will prove futile; the data are
insufficient and largely undocumented in most of the existing works on
children's lore. By utilizing the existing tools of each discipline we can
expect to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. We are fortunate in dealing with
children's lore, to be working in an area which appears to have no beginning or
end in time, and while some scholars have bemoaned the dying of oral tradition
(such claims have been made for the past century, though I for one prefer to
think of traditions changing and evolving rather than dying), none will be so
rash as to deny the very vital nature of children's songs and games. There is no
question of the existence of sufficient material for study.
Kenneth S. Goldstein"
Tracklist:
| A1 | Introduction And Oaths | |
| A2 | Singing Games And Ring Games | |
| A3 | Skipping Rope, Ball Bouncing And Counting Rhymes | |
| B1 | Chants, Cheers An Election Ditties | |
| B2 | Seasonal Songs And Dhants | |
| B3 | Rhymes And Taunts | |
| B4 | The Day's End
|
(256 kbps, front cover included)
