"Folk can folk off"...no, actually, sign of the times, there's a revival going on

[Katie-Ellen]

We now have "Nu -Folk"

“If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.”....

I used to sing at a weekly folk event in the place where I lived in the late 1980's-1990, up in Weardale. There was always something going on in that small town.


All songs tell stories, but folk songs in particular lean towards narrative.

"A northern county maid down to London did stray
Although with her nature, it did not agree
And so she'd repent, and often did lament
Pining again in the north for to be
"Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny rowan tree
Do flourish at home in my own own countreeee-eeee"

I don't recall if she wandered off, got lost in a wood with other, rubbish useless trees in it, and lay down and died of a broken heart.
Easier to go back home.

Now, does this graphic belong under general FY1 , amusement or inspiration. Or annoyance.
You folk can decide.

 

[Rich.]

Brilliant! But... but... so much drowning! What is that? The protagonists were all aiming for other bits of the pie but tripped and fell in a river? England is a notably watery place, I guess. Or are the drownings echoes of bronze-age ritual: "Just gonna chuck me golden torc in this here river. Careful now. These banks are slippery..."

Definitely file under "inspiration", I'd say.

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

They left one out: someone stealing your thyme.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

They left one out: someone stealing your thyme.

Never 'nuff thyme, neither then nor now. And is not drowning the same as a broken heart? Or vice versa. And wandered off into the woods and laid down to die, kidnapped by the elf queen, 'tis more broken hearted drowning in sorrow. Now, hanged, mistaken for a swan, or killed in a war (show me one not cruel) are all a bit different, but the theme remains. Broken hearts dead everywhere, the battlefield, the wood, at home.

 

[mickleinapickle]

Ah yes... 'The Spinners' (not the ones from Detroit). I remember it well and could possible do a reasonable rendition of the song if I had a couple of pints of best porter inside me.

'the one who I wed
must be north country bred
and tarry with me
in my north country home'

 

[CarolMS]

Brilliant! But... but... so much drowning! What is that? The protagonists were all aiming for other bits of the pie but tripped and fell in a river? England is a notably watery place, I guess. Or are the drownings echoes of bronze-age ritual: "Just gonna chuck me golden torc in this here river. Careful now. These banks are slippery..."

Definitely file under "inspiration", I'd say.

It's all those danged castle moats, I'll bet! People falling off the ramparts and all that sort of thing!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Brilliant! But... but... so much drowning! What is that? The protagonists were all aiming for other bits of the pie but tripped and fell in a river? England is a notably watery place, I guess. Or are the drownings echoes of bronze-age ritual: "Just gonna chuck me golden torc in this here river. Careful now. These banks are slippery..."

Definitely file under "inspiration", I'd say.

Once upon a time @Rich...this is true...upon the banks of the Severn, where the resident deity was/is Sabern/Hafren- or Sabrina in the Romanized version of her name...there was a wooden breast shop.

Buy the wooden breast...go on and buy two if they are on special offer. Throw them in to the water. Petition Hafren/Sabern/Sabrina to help you to conceive, or to help you with breast feeding. Because she is a deity of water, she is a deity of fertility and plenty and healing.

There was a whole row of stalls. You could buy a wooden eye for the healing of eye problems, and so on.

Just don't make her angry. She ain't funny when she is angry.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, she had a human namesake who was....yes.... drowned. A Love triangle tragedy and little drowned Hafren was the innocent child of that triangle, and the war that followed.


Worshipped by the Dubonni, the invading Romans worshipped her too, after she swept away the cavalry of General Aulus Plautius, the men and horses screaming, the druids yelling and showing their backsides from the far bank.

The Romans were after Caractacus. But what they lacked was local knowledge. The druids knew when the bore wave was due, and
the Romans didn't.
But now they did.

Here comes the tidal bore wave. If we are lucky we may see Hafren/Sabrina herself, riding upriver in her chariot, flanked by salmon and porpoise.

Get out of her way, you lot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKA39LQOIck