A north country maid

[nineveh_uk]

Ages ago marginaliana asked if people had favourite folk songs, and I meant to respond, but didn't. So now I am.

No-one else's version of a folk song you first hear sung by your mother can ever be perfect*, but this one is as close as any could get. The photos of Roundhay Park do it no harm in my eyes.

"A north country maid" (Watch on YouTube)

*Especially when you're the sort of person whose head shrieks "IVY tree, not rowan!" at every chorus.

Comments

[el_staplador]

I learned it off a Spinners LP when I was small. They said 'ivy'.

[white_hart]

I learned it from a recorder book dating back to my mother's schooldays, and it was definitely 'ivy' there too.

[nineveh_uk]

My mother had a terrific school songbook with loads of this sort of thing in - Early One Morning, D'Ye Ken John Peel, The Mermaid etc. Far better than "The Jolly Herring", not least because it actually included the music (albeit there was no song about a malfunctioning muckspreader).

[white_hart]

I had a whole collection of the accompanying booklets for 1960s BBC radio singing programmes for schools, which is where I learnt most of my folk songs.

[nineveh_uk]

Clearly all right-thinking musicians agree.

[aunty_marion]

I rather like the version by the Spinners; but I too shrieked at 'rowan'. WTF?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't give a damn for oral tradition, it's WRONG!

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

What's more, they aren't even pronouncing "rowan" correctly - the tree should be pronounced with its first syllable rhyming with "ow!" not "oh!" as in the name....

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

They're pronouncing rowan completely normally! I've never heard it pronounced the way you suggest, though I see that the OED gives both pronunciations as correct. Regional differences, perhaps?

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Possibly - certainly I have always pronounced the tree and the name differently. Euan McColl uses the "rhymes with ow" pronunciation in his version of the Manchester Rambler.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I've always heard it pronounced with an 'oh', too, although now I come to think of it, if someone's walking around identifying rowan trees it's generally me, so I'm not sure how many times I've actually heard it said.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

POssibly a poll is needed!

[ylla.livejournal.com]

The radio has played the famous version of Whisky in the Jar a couple of times lately - and while of course names do tend to change in folk songs, if the woman's name is supposed to rhyme with penny and (I think) Kilkenny, why decide to call her Molly?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

There is no reason to the rhyming of folk songs! At least with Shakespeare you can sometimes make it work if you use a Birmingham accent.

When I was a child I had a book that had the "Dr Foster went to Gloucester" rhyme in it and it annoyed me every time I saw it because IT WAS STUPID THAT IT WAS SPELT LIKE THAT!!

[marginaliana]

This is quite lovely! And not one that I'd heard before.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I am grateful to you for inspiring me to discover the version!