As promised, here’s another fantastic tune composed by the late Dave Shepherd, and once again, its first appearance on record was on Blowzabella’s 1984 LP Bobbityshooty. Unlike ‘Carl Wark’ I’ve been playing this one for some time, although not as often as I should, given what a great tune it is. Partly, that’s because I don’t play it either in the key that Dave wrote it in (G minor) nor the key in which it is most commonly played (E minor). However on one of the few occasions when John Spiers played with our local dance band Chameleons we did play this in B minor, and jolly good it sounded too.
This is a definitive version of William Taylor’s and hopefully all the clodhopping, galumphing border morris teams who play this will listen to the B music and learn to play it properly. It is in G minor, so fiddlers, stand your ground and don’t be browbeaten into playing it in E minor by the malodorous melodeons (who should be thinking diatonic accordeon and not melodeon!)
Well, I could probably play it in G minor on my Bb/F box, but I really like it in this fingering on my G/D anglo. I also make no apologies for playing it rather slower than Dave. Hopefully it’s not galumphing – I think it works well at this rather gentler pace. And, I’m glad to say, I do play the B music correctly – I’m not generally dogmatic about things but there is definitely supposed to be a major chord at the start of the fifth bar of the B music (D major here, Bb in Dave’s original key).
As for the tune’s title, here’s Dave explanation:
The tune is named after a great-great uncle of mine who was the son of a dancing master in Sheffield in the mid 19th century. William earned extra coppers by step dancing on top of a table in pubs.
I was sad to hear of the death at the weekend of Dave Shepherd, best known as the fiddle-player with Blowzabella. I didn’t know Dave personally, but I had enjoyed listening and dancing to his music since 1983, or possibly even earlier. He was a really good fiddle player, an excellent dance musician, and the composer of some very fine tunes.
Dave’s best known tune is probably ‘William Taylor’s Table Top Hornpipe’, and I should have a recording of that to post here in a few days. But I’ve always been very fond of this elegiac composition which appeared – with a deceptively simple but really effective recorder-based arrangement – on the 1984 Blowzabella LP Bobbityshooty. You can listen to the Blowzabella arrangement here: https://blowzabella.co.uk/album/2083246/bobbityshooty. In fact you can download the whole album for the ridiculously bargain price of £3.50 – if you don’t already have a copy then I can’t think of a single rational reason why you shouldn’t download it right now. And Wall of Sound and A Richer Dust while you’re at it.
I’d never actually played ‘Carl Wark’ before this week, but I checked it out in Encyclopaedia Blowzabellica, transposed it from the original G minor into a key that worked better on the C/G concertina, and while I won’t claim to have got the tune completely under my belt, it’ll do for now. Thank you for the music, Dave.
For the uninitiated (and until recently that included me) Carl Wark is a rocky promontory on Hathersage Moor in the Peak District National Park, about 8 miles South West of Sheffield.
Carl Wark
Played on a C/G anglo-concertina
Carl Wark and Higger Tor. Photo by “polandeze”, via Wikimedia Commons.
Today I will be raising a glass to celebrate the 90th birthday of Dixie Lee, formerly Dixie Fletcher. This tune is dedicated to her.
Alan Prosser – with unexpected trombone! – and Dixie Lee, May 2016.
Back in the 1970s Dixie was the organiser of the renowned folk club Duke’s Folk, which ran on a Sunday night at the Duke of Cumberland in Whitstable. That club was a veritable hotbed of talent, including among its regulars Fiddler’s Dram, and the members of the Oyster Ceilidh Band. Dixie was also involved in organising the annual Whitstable May Day celebrations, based on a revival of the old Jack-in-the-Green custom which had died out in Whitstable round about 1912. And Dixie has been involved in the event every year since then – even during lockdown a small socially distanced event took place – right up to last year, when I was very happy to be one of the hundreds of people celebrating the 50th Whitstable May Day.
I can never quite work out if I first went in 1976 or 1977, although I think the latter year is more likely. I definitely first danced in the procession in 1979, which was my first year with Oyster Morris. And would have done so from then until 1987, shortly before moving away from Kent. The May Day weekend was the highlight of the Oyster Morris year, and a key part of this was the May Monday procession – all the way from the East Kent pub at one end of the town, via the Horsebridge where the Jack first makes his appearance, on to Whitstable Castle and Gardens at the other end of town. Google Maps says it’s only 1 mile, but it definitely feels much further than that when you’re dancing!
I returned for Oyster Morris’ 40th anniversary in 2016 (the Whitstable May Day predates Oyster by a year) and played in the procession. This was the first time I’d been a musician rather than a dancer. And I returned again as a musician last year. Typically for a Bank Holiday Monday, the weather was not especially kind. In fact for much of the route I wore a big waterproof poncho to keep myself and, more importantly, my concertina, dry. But as the road began to slope gently upwards towards the castle gardens the sun finally came out. I turned around to see that Dixie was just behind the musicians riding in her chariot (“mobility scooter” seems an insufficiently grand term). The sun shone bright, and Dixie, at the heart of the procession, as she had been for 50 years, was simply beaming, with a smile from ear to ear. It was a magical moment, deserving of being memorialised in a tune. And if Dixie felt a certain pride at having helped to start this tradition, and having promoted and nurtured it over so many years, then that pride was entirely justified.
Driving home that afternoon, I had bits of a tune going round my head, and eventually they settled into a 32 bar jig. Having no obvious way of recording the tune, I just had to keep singing it in my head until we got home and I was able to jot it down. And here it is.
Dixie with the Jack-in-the-Green at the front of the Whitstable May Day procession, 2023. Photograph by Tim Hinchcliffe, from the Whitstable Jack in the Green FaceBook page.
Dixie being saluted by the Jack’s attendants, Duke of Cumberland, 2025. Photo by Tim Hinchcliffe.
I picked up my Bb/F concertina the other day and, somewhat to my surprise, I found myself playing this tune. To my surprise because, as far as I can recall, I hadn’t played it for years, and hadn’t been thinking about it at all recently. However no surprise that it was lurking at the back of my brain, just waiting for an opportune time to pop out, as it’s the final track on Shreds and Patches, the 1977 LP by John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris, and I played that album repeatedly in the late 70s / early 80s. Indeed, if forced to choose, I’d say it was my favourite of the 5 albums they made for Topic Records. None has been re-released on CD, as far as I know, but you can get them all on download, and they all come highly recommended. As does Live at the Wyeside, John and Sue’s first album together in over 35 years, which came out a few weeks back, taking me and a lot of other people totally by surprise. It features some of their “greatest hits” from the old days – including ‘Gipsy Laddie’ ‘Oakham Poachers’, and the evergreen ‘A Shropshire Lad’ – as well as some completely new material.
The Shreds and Patches sleevenotes tell us that this waltz was written by John for his youngest son.
Two tunes from early nineteenth century manuscripts belonging to the Welch family of Bosham in West Sussex, and printed in The Sussex Tune Book by Anne Loughran and Vic Gammon. Apart from that I know nothing about them.
I was reminded of ‘Bonny Part’s Birthday’ when it was played by Sussex musicians Will Duke and Mary Motley at the recent English Country Music Weekend at Whitchurch in Shropshire. Of course everyone piled in thinking it was ‘Dingle Regatta’, but Mary and Will ploughed bravely on. Incidentally, why is it that I hate ‘Dingle Regatta’ with a vengeance, but I really like ‘Bonny Part’s Birthday’? Sheer musical snobbery, I suppose.
I believe that I got the idea of playing a sharpened note leading into the B music of ‘A Jigg Ashling’ from another Sussex musician, Bryan Creer. I resisted it at first, but now I’ve started playing it that way, I’m finding it difficult not to.
A step dance tune from Bob Cann (it’s the very last tune on his wonderful Topic LP, West Country Melodeon) and one of the hornpipes that gets used for the step dance competitions at the Dartmoor Folk Festival, held in the village of South Zeal. I’ve always admired this tune, but for a long time I really struggled to play it. I seem to have got it more or less OK on this recording, although I can’t claim to be as rock solid as Bob, or his wonderfully musical grandson, Mark Bazeley.
According to the notes on the Topic record, “The Cokey is titled after the nickname of a local man called Crocker”.
I see that it’s a little over 8 years since I went to see Leveret play at 21 South Street in Reading. A splendid evening all round, but the tune which really made an impression on me was ‘The Height Of Cader Idris’, which had appeared on their 2015 album In the Round. The CD notes say that Sam Sweeney found the tune in an 1859 collection, Two Hundred and Fifty Welsh Airs For a Shilling. “Hang on!” I thought, “I’ve got a copy of that”. Well, two copies actually, both inherited from my much missed friend and musical companion Dave Parry. The two copies have got different coloured covers, which must have confused me into thinking they were different volumes. I hoiked the book off the shelf, found the tune, and then realised that it was an incredibly simple tune – it sounds great when Leveret play the tune – but I couldn’t see what I could do with it (incidentally in Two Hundred and Fifty Welsh Airs the tune is marked ‘Maestoso’, and the Leveret arrangement is nothing if not majestic).
I had another go at it a few weeks ago, and suddenly things seemed to slot into place. Was it simply the realisation that I needed to start the tune on the pull on the G row? had I really not thought of that previously? So here it is. I won’t pretend that my solo rendition can compete in any way with that of Messrs Cutting, Harbron and Sweeney, but it’s very satisfying to play.
Oh, and should you be wondering, the height of Cader Idris is 893m.
The Height Of Cader Idris
Played on G/D anglo-concertina
Engraving of Cader Idris, Merionethshire, 1860. Image from the National Library of Wales, via Wikimedia Commons.
I was taught this many years ago by Dave Parry. His source was Part Third of Niel Gow’s Complete repository of Original Scots Slow Strathspeys & Dances, where the tune is provided with a simple bass part. It’s described as “A Scotch Measure”, and Dave rather liked the term Measure – he thought it useful for describing those English tunes in 4/4 which clearly weren’t reels, but which pre-dated, and were musically distinct from, polkas.
You’ll find other versions of the tune in the Traditional Tune Archive, under ‘O’er the Muir to Ketty’; and notes on the history of the tune – dating back to its first publication in 1700, in London music publisher Henry Playford’s A Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes, (Full of the Highland Humours) for the violin; Most of them being in the Compass of the Flute – on the page for ‘Madam McKeeny’s Scotch-Measure’
The Traditional Tune Archive tells us that this is a completely different tune to ‘O’er the Moor to Katie’. It’s also a completely different tune to John Stickle’s rather lovely ‘Owre da Moors ta Maggie’.
The Marsh in the tune’s title refers not to the area in the quatrième arrondissement of Paris, but to Le Marais Poitevin in the West of France, almost 1000 square kilometres of marshlands drained by monks in the middle ages, and now a Parc naturel régional (but thanks to man’s ill-judged interventions, infested with various invasive non-native flora and fauna – coypus, crayfish and some kind of aquatic weed).
Le Marais Poitevin at Arçais
My friends Mike and Linda moved to the small town of Arçais in Le Marais Poitevin some years ago. Somehow we’d never managed to organise a visit and then, at the start of last year, I heard that Mike had died. I’ve written before about my friendship with Mike, and how important he and his family were in my journey into folk music, when posting his compositions ‘The Waterlog Jog / Mox the Rog’s Jog’, and on my A Folk Song A Week blog. His funeral was attended only by immediate family, but one year ago they organised a memorial weekend for Mike in Arçais. Obviously the whole weekend was tinged with sadness. I certainly shed a few tears. But what I remember most about the weekend was a feeling of joy, great life-affirming joy. I met up once again with Mike’s sisters, and a couple of old school friends, none of whom I’d seen for 40 years or more; and we met lots of people for the first time – Mike’s in-laws, neighbours, work colleagues, friends from the year abroad that Mike and Linda spent in Germany as part of their degree courses… It should, I suppose, come as no surprise that someone as witty, entertaining, gregarious and irreverent as Mike, capable of discoursing knowledgeably on a wide range of topics, should have assembled a collection of interesting and entertaining friends. The sun shone, we ate, drank, chatted and reminisced, and those of us using the improvised outside Gents’ loo were able to piss directly onto photos of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. Mike absolutely would have approved.
Arçais – playing a few tunes by the camp fire
Then, a few weeks later, I was fooling around in F on my C/G concertina, and found that – thanks to the extra buttons on that concertina – I could fairly easily put in a descending F-E-D-C run on the left hand. From that discovery, this tune was born. I can’t claim it’s particularly original – I’m pretty sure I’ve nicked bits of several other tunes, and knitted them together with a chord sequence which is fairly predictable, but no less satisfactory to play. But it does, as intended, sound like it might be French – I can imagine couples waltzing to this in the main square of Arçais…
A week or so ago, having bumped into a couple of people that we fist met at “Mikefest”, I realised that the first anniversary of that memorable weekend was fast approaching, and that I really ought to record this tune. Annoyingly, I’d forgotten how to play it, and then during the week I continued to muck it up; but on Thursday I cracked it (mind you, looking at the tune as originally written, I’ve clearly deviated from it in several places). And, as I always had at least half a mind to do, I played along to the recording on a variety of other concertinas. And here is the end result. The lead instrument is the C/G anglo, joined by my Crabb F/C and then, on the last time through, by two Bb/F anglos and another F/C.
This is for Mike and Linda, and everyone who has spent time at Eatonia.
Le Marais
Played on C/G, F/C and Bb/F anglo-concertinas
Here’s the ABC notation for anyone who wants it – please transpose into the key of your choice!
When my teenage friends and I started going to dances with the Oyster Ceilidh Band in the late 1970s, we absolutely loved a dance that often served as the finale – the ‘Horse’s Brawl’. The Oysters used a different tune for the dance: with Chris Taylor’s bouzouki very much to the fore, they played a rather stately version of ‘La Morisque’, a tune from Susato’s 1551 publication Dansereye (like this proper Early Music version, but quite a bit slower, so the dancers could really get into the stepping and, indeed, into something of a trance-like state as the dance wore on).
Essentially the same version of the tune appeared in Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchésographie (1589). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this tune was also used as a morris dance tune – a wonderful survival from the Renaissance court to the early 20th century English countryside, I thought. Of course, I know better now, but Cecil Sharp fell for it too – Mike Heaney, in his definitive history, The Ancient English Morris Dance, relates that in the introduction to Sharp and MacIlwaine’s The Morris Book (1st edition, 1907)
Sharp adopted the standpoint that the dance [i.e. Morris dancing] was of Moorish origin, though much altered. In vindication of his views on the antiquity of folk music and the dance, he pointed out that the tune of the Bidford ‘Morris Off’ was identical to the ‘Morisque’ of Arbeau, published 350 years before
He was embarrassed just a few years later when he discovered that actually the antiquarian D’Arcy Ferris had introduced the Arbeau tune when reviving (inventing) the Bidford tradition.
But in the meantime William Kimber must have learned the tune from Sharp and taken it back to Headington Quarry, and it became established as the Quarry side’s dance off tune (it was recorded as such in T. W. Chaundy’s article on William Kimber in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 8, No. 4, Dec. 1959). It’s certainly the tune to which the team end their performances these days.
And speaking of performances, Headington Quarry Morris Dancers will as ever be dancing out on the evening of the coming Bank Holiday Monday. You can find us on Monday 26th May at
7:30pm The Six Bells, 3 Beaumont Road, Headington Quarry, Oxford OX3 8JN
8:30pm The Masons Arms, 2 Quarry School Place, Headington Quarry, Oxford OX3 8LH
Squeezed Out 