Observations on the Ontology of the Folk Song

Abstract

Work in progress, part of book project on English folk song

Full text

Observations on the ontology of the folk song
Abstract
This paper aims to present evidence to support the contention that songs within the British
‘folk’ tradition have a problematic identity. It initially discusses extant versions of ‘The prickly
bush’ and ‘Dives and Lazarus’. At greater length it then analyses a number of versions of ‘The
water is wide’, observing the impact that particular performances may have on the way the song’s
meaning is construed. Finally, it traces links between ‘Courting is a pleasure’, ‘Loving Hannah’ and
‘The Irish girl’, demonstrating the flexibility with which plot, title, and specific phrases create a
song’s identity.
Prologue
My aim in this paper is to address an aspect of the ontology of the folk song. What is at
stake is this. One can address the identity of the Emperor Concerto with a certain degree of
confidence, no matter whether one identifies it with the score, with its aural image, with a
realisation, or with the totality of potentially valid performances of it1. One can address the identity
of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' perhaps with greater confidence. I submit, however, that one can have no
such confidence in addressing the identity of 'The water is wide', with which part of my argument is
concerned. How, then, might one address 'it'?
Discourse around 'folk' aesthetics, and hence 'folk' music, however we try to circumscribe
that troublesome word, has been central to the study of popular music at least since the founding of
Popular Music. And yet, to develop Simon Frith's insight in that first issue, even though the
ideology of rock (as locus classicus of popular music at the time) is strongly influenced by the
ideology of folk, the practices of musicians who self-identify, or are identified by their fans, as folk
musicians, show significant points of divergence from rock musicians (insofar as a generalisation is
appropriate in either case).
In this article I focus on two practices of 'covering' wherein the material covered has
acquired that 'folk' label, in order to demonstrate the limited understanding we have of the concept.
The course of the article is simple. I begin with two examples of 'covering' which seem fairly
straightforward (although of course they have their idiosyncracies) – a light exordium, if you will. I
then move to exhaustive discussion of 'covers' of a single 'traditional' song, of a song available for
covering, with an apparently distinct point of origin. Finally, I look at the widespread phenomenon
of wandering lines and verses. As Dai Griffiths has so elegantly demonstrated, a cover of a popular
song is rarely just a cover (and I shall offer support for that perspective), but at least it is usually
clear what it is that is being covered – the identity of the covered item is secure. In the field of the
'folk song', we cannot make the same assumption.
Songs move
I begin with a brief examination of a portion of the documented performance history of the
song ‘The prickly [or ‘prickilie’] bush’. In 1893, that most careful and diligent of collectors, Lucy
Broadwood, published a collection of songs, words, melody and piano accompaniments, called
English County Songs. It was believed at this point that songs tended to remain geographically close
to the point at which they were originally invented, hence categorising them by county was an
entirely reasonable activity. Some of the items in this collection had already appeared in print
elsewhere – the book was a selection, a sort of ‘best of’ English traditional song. 'The prickly bush'
appears there, in a rather long-winded version. In recorded performance, what remains from the

extended narrative is basically the ‘ransoming sequence’, in which the protagonist seeks help from
members of her/his family to escape the hangman’s noose, only to be reprieved (at last) by her/his
lover. There are a number of recordings. Judy Collins, US folksinger, recorded it in the 1960s, there
is a live recording extant by the influential Nic Jones, it appears on an album by folk rockers
Steeleye Span, and was more recently recorded by the duo Spiers and Boden, in a version whose
sprightliness of rhythm almost sees the protagonist skipping away from the hangman. But as rock
fans will know, it also appears, under a markedly different name, on Led Zeppelin’s third album:
‘Gallows pole’. This song can be traced back as far as a pre-war recording made by US folk/blues
singer Leadbelly. Note the differences, though. Whereas Leadbelly’s interpolation of spoken
description makes the song sound like the report of a contemporary event, the sting in Led
Zeppelin’s tale, whereby the hangman hangs the protagonist nonetheless, returns it to a mythical
past. And the song remains a blues revivalist staple: Surrey-based bluesman Ben Andrews has
recorded a stunning slide guitar version. So what has happened here? Either the plot is a
commonplace, such that it can give rise to a song in two very different cultural situations, or it
migrated to the USA at some early point and the two versions diverged. However, we need also to
know that very similar versions have been collected in Germany, in Lithuania, in Sweden, in
Iceland, in Slovenia, and at least 50 have been collected in Finland alone2. Even if the song’s history
were susceptible of accurate reconstruction, its contemporary existence does not display that
history.
For a second initial example, I move to the song 'Dives and Lazarus'. This too appears in the
Broadwood collection, but what appeared in print was certainly not what the original collectors
would have heard. The plot of the song is biblical, based on Luke 16:19-263 and it has been
collected in various closely-related versions. By this, I mean that it appears in print in a number of
turn-of-the-century collections usually to the same tune (i.e. where a tune is included, which was by
no means always the case), but with marginal changes to the words. Despite these changes, all these
versions are considered versions of the one song, rather than separate songs – what unites them is
clearly the plot, rather than the precise way that plot is expressed in song. The fact that these early
manifestations all appear with the same tune indicates that it may have originated once and been
strongly identified with that origination – tune and words have always been closely associated in
this particular case. So, how does this printed version differ from what would originally have been
heard? Broadwood's introduction to the collection is instructive, making clear some of her editorial
concerns. She insists the “melodies have in no instance been tampered with”, which at least implies
that every verse was sung identically, and that “words have been left absolutely unaltered”4, which
was by no means always the case in then contemporary collections. As we know from careful
studies of contemporary unaccompanied singing5, singers frequently varied both metre and rhythm,
and also sometimes sang out of tune (not necessarily inadvertently). The printed version of ‘Dives
and Lazarus’ has normalised these possible variations, such that we have no access to them. We can
guess that they might have been present from hearing recordings of more recent untutored singers,
and what they do with such a song. Moreover, in English County Songs, it has been provided with
an accompaniment by noted music critic and editor J. A. Fuller Maitland, making it suitable for
performance at the piano. This was constant practice, for it made the songs more accessible to a
middle-class and suburban audience. You may notice that the tune is familiar from the hymn ‘I
heard the voice of Jesus say’. This is not a case of a sacred tune being secularised (which is a
common practice), but quite the opposite. When the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, still to
make his name in the pantheon of English concert music, was contracted to supply and edit the
music for The English Hymnal (first published in 1906), he was concerned to press the book into
service of the articulation of what he considered an authentic English musical voice, and in the
attempt he used folk song tunes for some sets of words, tunes which he had either collected, or
discovered in others’ collections, and this is one such. And for years, it was in this form that the
tune, at least, survived in English life. When a subsequent generation of young musicians searched
these nineteenth-century collections for new material to sing, songs such as this took on a new lease

of life.
If you have ever been inside an English folk club, or been to a folk festival, you will know
something of how such a song sounds today. If you have not, or are disinclined to do so, the only
way you can get a sense of it is through a recording. A recording of a song, though, is a different
thing to the song itself. The very process of converting it to a digital signal fixes the song, changes
it, takes it out of one environment and places it into another (although one of potentially equal
validity). Although the recordings made by contemporary folk singers are closely related to their
live performance, the two are not identical. So, does the advent of recording mark merely a
quantitative change, or a qualitative one? Actually, it seems to mark both. For a singer to take up a
song, that singer needs to encounter it. It would seem in practice to matter very little whether that
encounter was by means of a printed or written version, a version heard orally, or a version heard on
a recording. Bearing in mind that singers do not aim to reproduce exactly what they hear, but to
modify it in certain ways, then any of these methods will work. Thus, a recording merely marks a
quantitative change. However, if we want to study how a song is performed, then clearly a
recording tells us far more than a notated version can ever do (although it cannot tell us as much as
if we were present at the song’s singing, and able to note the singer’s bodily movements, and those
of anyone listening) – thus, a qualitative change.
‘Dives and Lazarus’ has been recorded a number of times by contemporary singers. I will
just refer to three versions here. Nic Jones’ recording appears on his album Game, set, match, and is
a recording made live prior to 1982, with fairly primitive equipment, but slightly polished decades
later in the studio. Martin Simpson’s recording appears on his album The bramble briar.
Comparisons of recordings are always useful, for they reveal the difference between structural and
ornamental features of material. In this case, initial similarities seem most striking. Both singers use
the same tune, a recognisably similar set of words, and both accompany themselves on the guitar.
However, these musicians use the guitar in different ways. Jones provides a simple chordal
accompaniment, whereas Simpson’s is more melodic. And the harmonisations of the tunes are not
identical between these two versions; clearly the melody carries more importance than the harmony
in terms of identifying the song. And yet the melody is not identical between these two versions.
The notes are very similar, but whereas Simpson sings through from one phrase to the next (much
as in the English County Songs version), Jones leaves gaps between lines. Not only this, but much
of the song he sings only to the second half of the tune (the half that starts higher in pitch, and with
a momentary harmonisation in the major). Another difference, marked by the differences of
harmony, is that whereas Simpson is treating the tune as modal, Jones is treating it as tonal. Jones
also uses the harmonies interpretively: an astonishing change of harmony on the word ‘purgatory’
makes use of a harmonic pattern familiar from a lot of rock music (a pattern we can represent as i-
VI), and which is often used to accompany lyrics which talk of the inevitability of a negative
outcome to a situation. Finally, note that the plot does not have an identical outcome – Jones
finishes the song ‘earlier’ than does Simpson, while Simpson interpolates a long instrumental
section led by the cellist Barry Phillips. And yet, these are recognisably performances of the same
song. I want to draw from this discussion the observation that, while songs have their identity, what
is at least as important to a listener, consumer, audience, etc., is the way they are performed. These
differences of performance detail are rarely discussed in writings on folk song.
I said above that I wanted to focus on three versions here. The third was recorded by the
progressive band Gryphon in the 1970s, on their eponymous album. However, it was recorded
under a different name: ‘The unquiet grave’. ‘The unquiet grave’ is another well-known ballad,
which has appeared frequently in collections, often without tunes, although there are a couple of
tunes widely associated with it. What Gryphon did here, was to combine the lyrics to ‘The unquiet
grave’ with the tune more usually associated with ‘Dives and Lazarus’. And yet, the song is
identified (is given its title) not by its tune but by its lyrics. (The performance style here is very

much of its time, with an extended central instrumental section which seems intended to evoke the
spookiness of the grave from which the dead lover holds her side of a conversation.) From this
discussion alone, we can suggest a hierarchisation of importance in the identity of a particular song.
This song’s identity rests most fundamentally on its plot, of which the lyrics are the major
component; the tune is of less importance, its harmonisation and the manner of its accompaniment
even less so while a performance’s instrumentation has no bearing on the identity of a song. This is
a very different state of affairs from the world of concert music, where a performance of a Mozart
symphony with bagpipes, rock guitar, or didjeridu, could not be taken seriously (folk songs
performed with bagpipes, rock guitars and didjeridus can be very successful). Note that I do not say
a song’s identity rests on its title. In recent years, this has become even more interesting, as singers
consciously develop variants of traditional material and usually retitle their songs as a result, but
that would take us down a path parallel to the one I explore here.
With that brief introduction to the potential complexity of the relationship between
performances of the same song, I move to a more comprehensive discussion of a single case.
Stability: The Water is Wide
The liner notes to Pete Seeger's album Pete include the following comment, referring to the
song 'The water is wide', and I quote from critic Ann Powers: “I learned it from my sister Peggy.
When she was going to Radcliffe in the mid-1950s, I visited Cambridge. I’d seen the song in a book
and I’d passed it by as one more of those weepy-waily sentimental songs. I was twenty-eight at the
time and impatient with weepy-waily songs. Ten years later, at a party in my sister’s house, I heard
this version of it. She’d dropped the waily-waily verses and emphasized the poetic verses.”6 The
practice of learning a song 'from a book', i.e. from a collection of songs gathered from vernacular
rendition, usually during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was particularly a
manifestation of the American Folk Revival of the mid twentieth century, and of the British revival
of the 1950s and 1960s. The practice of learning a song from the singing of another is conjectured
as the historical origin of the previous practice, and is also a contemporary manifestation of it.
Seeger had already introduced the song, in 1958, on his American Favorite Ballads, vol.2. In
table 1, I transcribe the lyrics of the six verses which Seeger sings on that album. Each verse is
numbered. The figure on the right hand side of the line gives that line's number of syllables, while
the diacritical marks identify the line-end rhymes of each verse. Thus, verse one has rhymes
between lines two and four only, verse two between lines one and two, and three and four, verse
five between lines two and four only, and so on.
Table 1. Pete Seeger’s lyrics to ‘The water is wide’
1 The water is wide, I cannot get over 11
And neither have I wings to fly 8*
Give me a boat that can carry two 9
And both shall row – my love and I 8*
2 A ship there is and she sails the sea 9*
She’s loaded deep as deep can be 8*
But not so deep as the love I’m in 9^
And I know not how I sink or swim 9^
3 I leaned my back up against some young oak 10*
Thinking he was a trusty tree 8^

But first he bended and then he broke 9*
And thus did my false love to me 8^
4 I put my hand into some soft bush 9
Thinking the sweetest flower to find 8
I prick’d my finger to the bone 8*
And left the sweetest flower alone 8*
5 O love is handsome and love is fine 9
Gay as a jewel when first it is new 9*
But love grows old and waxes cold 8
And fades away like summer dew 8*
6 The water is wide, I cannot get over 11
And neither have I wings to fly 8*
Build me a boat that can carry two 9
And both shall row – my love and I 8*
Seeger sings five verses, the first reappearing as the sixth. The first verse notes the breadth of the
water which requires a boat to traverse it, to be taken by the protagonist and his lover. I say 'his' at
this point purely because Seeger is male. I shall return to this point subsequently. The second verse
notes that the loaded ship which crosses the sea is loaded less deep than the protagonist's love, an
evocative image of infatuation. The third verse, though, draws an analogy between this love and an
oak tree (presumably a young tree), which breaks when putting one’s weight to it. The fourth verse,
erotically, marks the protagonist's withdrawal (the ‘pricked finger’) from love, either the idealised
state or its physical manifestation (‘put my hand into some soft bush’), while the fifth verse notes
that however positive when young, love fades. This narrative is presented almost as an inevitable
journey. I say 'narrative' although, in that no actors are named, and that the protagonist is clearly
present within the song rather than observing the passage of the plot from outside it, this is clearly
not a traditional narrative ballad, so the term is provisional, at best, at this point.
In an exhaustive study, fully representational of the ways folklorists trace versions of songs,
Jürgen Kloss traces the print history of this song, ending with a short mention of a few recorded
versions from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. I am indebted to Kloss' history, but would argue that
songs' performance is a far more valuable key to their development and that, with the existence of a
century's worth of recordings, a valuable comparator to such studies can be developed by analysis
of what happens in recordings. As a folklorist, he traces changes to a set of words in print, with
passing reference to tunes which, in print, accompany it. Despite the ostensible similarities between
our endeavours (the following of historical change to a set of words continuous between our two
tracings), my intention is very different: by focusing on subsequent recordings, I shall trace changes
to a related set of words, but in the virtual performances captured by the recording process, and with
attention to the entire musical environment within which the persona who delivers those lyrics
operates. And I begin to do that by comparing Seeger's version with that of some other singers. I
move first to the US folksinger Fred Neil, a contemporary of a young Bob Dylan, but with a deeper
voice more reminiscent of mainstream singers like Vaughn Monroe. Neil sings the first two and the
fifth of Seeger’s verses, entirely missing verses three and four. It is in these verses that the negative,
post-infatuation phase of the narrative has its strongest presence. Neil includes verse five, but then
closes with the second half of the first verse. This suggests that the first half does not need
repeating, and leads to a plausible reading that, in spite of love’s inevitable fading, it is still worth
getting out that boat for both to row. The use of an obbligato harmonica suggests an existential
lonesomeness (through its ubiquity in contemporary westerns and prison genre films), while the

immense amount of time Neil takes over singing the lines suggests he has time on his hands, as
opposed to Seeger for whom “…the great indulgence of heartbreak doesn’t interest him”7.
In his study, Kloss traces a number of unaccompanied tunes that have been used for the song
he discusses. Pete Seeger, however, as a child of the American Folk Revival, accompanies his tune,
stabilising it with chords. This accompaniment adds a new dimension which plays no part in
discussion of traditional song, and yet must not be avoided as this material enters popular music
discourse. Seeger's harmonies are straightforward, simply providing a stable backdrop against
which he sings. Neil, though, rethinks Seeger’s harmonies in two ways. First, he treats many of
them as added major sevenths, a richness which hints at jazz8. Having done this, he turns briefly to
the subdominant minor (rather than the major he uses elsewhere) on “my love” (first verse and last
half-verse), an astringency which comes across as highly poignant.
In 1964, at the height of the Beatles' fame, they were at least equalled in popularity in the
UK by an Australian pop group called the Seekers. Amidst the latter's lightweight pop repertory can
be found the occasional traditional song, and they covered 'The water is wide'. Their version is very
straightforward, uncomplicated, smoothing over any emotional difficulties which the lyrics might
hint at. Their choice of verses is exactly the same as that of Neil, but they sing the entirety of verse
six. It seems to me that the difference of affect is noticeable. Whereas Neil's use of only the second
half of the verse invites a 'nevertheless' quality as I have suggested, the Seekers' inclusion of the
entire verse prompts a reading of it as reminiscence. Other US singers recorded comparable
versions, and two are perhaps worth mentioning. Having been part of the Greenwich Village folk
scene of the early 1960s, the African American singer Dorris Henderson relocated to West London,
where she carved out a small career in the English folk revival. She worked with guitar wizard John
Renbourn9 as a duo and in 1965 recorded 'The water is wide 'with him. While her voice is given
plenty of room to manoeuvre rhythmically by Renbourn's uncharacteristically plain
accompaniment, what is particularly of interest is the duo's inclusion of the erotic verse four. Both
Neil and the Seekers omitted this, the latter possibly aiming at a more mainstream10 audience (it
seems inconceivable that neither knew it from Seeger's singing). As we shall see, most other singers
omit it too. Bob Dylan also recorded the song, in a 1975 live recording duetting with Joan Baez. For
completists only, I would suggest (it offers no emotional insights), this version omits only verse
four, replacing it with an instrumental interlude.
The song remains part of many singers' repertoires, and I move next to discuss three English
versions from the subsequent two decades. Yorkshire singer Dave Burland released a version in
1983. His version is sung in a very plain and straightforward manner, drawing attention to the lyric
and its melody rather than to his own singer's persona. It is a manner of singing strongly associated
with pre-revival singers. He stays with the main verses, as sung by Fred Neil and by the Seekers,
but reorders them such that the fifth verse precedes the second. This introduces a degree of
uncertainty into the direction of the narrative, either the protagonist wavers in his position, moves
from positive to negative and back again, or perhaps the reordering should not be understood as
making narrative sense. E2K11, a band who combine traditional song with West Indian and African
rhythms, start with Seeger’s verses one and three but then, after an instrumental verse in a different
key, sing Seeger’s verses two and six. The later placing of verse two suggests a similar conception
of the narrative as found in Burland's version, although it is certainly possible to hear the change of
key as ‘cancelling out’ this fear of unreliability. A third version, that of the noted singer June Tabor,
puts a more obvious spin on the lyric – her reading is undeniably pessimistic. She sings all but the
erotic of Seeger’s verses, and in refusing to close with verse six, her narrative is definitely one of
positive openings moving to negative endings, with no wistful recollection. Because she takes such
immense time over delivering the melody of the song, seemingly taking time to mourn the situation,
this reading seems to me more marked than that of Henderson and Renbourn, about whose verse
order equivalent things could be said.

This is a good point at which to raise a further performance feature. Through all these
versions, minor changes to lyrics can be noted. For instance, Seeger’s “cannot get over” (5
syllables) is often compressed to “can’t cross o’er” (3 syllables), parallelling the line length of most
of the other verses. In verse five of the Seekers’ version, they cut a syllable from each of the first
two lines, as if constrained to regularise syllable lengths, but then (unaccountably) exchange
“summer dew” for the longer “the morning dew”. This exchange is frequently found in other
versions. Perhaps summer dew can be poetically felt to fade gradually over a season, whereas
morning dew fades in minutes. Tabor’s version, though, contains a more substantial change, the
reimagining of the oak of verse three as “she” rather than “he”. Hitherto, all the singers I have
mentioned (all male with the exception of Henderson, and of E2K's Kellie While) have sung the oak
as male (it is very much a male tree in English tradition). Tabor’s reimagining therefore retains the
same sex relationship between singer and protagonist. While it is conceivable to hear this as
referencing a lesbian relationship, within the singing tradition, it is frequently the case that male
singers will sing songs which adopt a female perspective, and vice versa. The significance of
Tabor's change is, thus, probably left in the listener's ear.
Returning to my reading of Tabor’s version as pessimistic, it is useful to counterpose this to
Steeleye Span’s version, sung by Gay Woods. Some history is pertinent. Woods, and husband Terry,
from the Irish tradition, had been a founder member of Steeleye Span, singing on the first album but
never working with the band live at the time. After struggling as a folk singer she had success with
1980s New Romantic band Auto Da Fe, before retiring from music. Steeleye Span's 25th anniversary
concert saw almost all previous members return, including Woods, who would work with the band
for the next three albums, including Time. Her voice is less naturally strong than singer Maddy
Prior's, and in their pairing Woods can sound a little tentative. Steeleye's version uses only Seeger’s
first two verses, in reverse order, and yet it is the longest performance under discussion, coming in
at more than 7mins. 30 secs. The setting for the song, with its improvisatory passages and unmetred
sections, makes clear that it is about unvanquished, intoxicating love – there is no space here for the
more negative side seen in other versions. Woods' voice contributes to this sense: sounding as it
does forceful in spite of a wavering quality to the tone, it is hard not to hear this as the voice of a no
longer active singer gamely returning to her roots.
To conclude temporarily at this point, we have encountered nine different versions of what
purports to be the same song (and, we should note, in a number of different settings – from North
American, Australian and English sources, using African rhythms, and with jazz and rock
intonations). Yet, no two of these nine give us exactly the same understanding of what love is about,
even though they use recognisably the same words. In opposition, then, to what I suggested in
discussing 'Dives and Lazarus', it is not the plot which gives rise to the identity of this song (for
each of these plots is subtly different), but the title and the maintenance of some of the lyric content.
But again, it has been indispensable to pay attention to performance details. To equate the song with
its existence outwith its performance, while it has some value, can say nothing about the potential
meaning generated between performer and listener in the act of music-making. Judged from this
survey alone, to make use of another's material (lyrics, melody, harmonies) within the folk tradition,
i.e. to cover someone else's song, looks different from the general practice of mainstream pop and
rock musicians.
But there is still more to say. As recently as any of these versions, the singer Charlotte
Church recorded the song. The first point to note in her performance is the way that she deals with
Seeger’s verse five. The end of the penultimate line (“waxes cold”) is extended while the orchestral
accompaniment fades away, such that the “fades away” of the final line is literally enacted in the
music. This enactment, while endemic to the way much popular music signifies to an audience, is
foreign to the way folk singers tend to approach their material. This leads me to the second point

which is that, unlike the singers already discussed, Charlotte Church is not responsible for the
arrangement of this particular track, nor (necessarily) for the verses to be sung and the order in
which they are to be sung. Thus, the authority of her persona, as presented in her performance, is of
a lesser degree than that of these other singers. The final point to note is that she sings one verse
which is not present in the song set down by Seeger. The source for that additional verse can be
discovered by listening to a recording by the American singer Andrew Rowan Summers, and which
predates Seeger’s first recording. Rowan Summers sings in very plain, unemotional fashion, to the
accompaniment of a simple dulcimer, a song entitled ‘O waly waly’. He sings all the verses of
Seeger’s ‘The water is wide’, but sings also three additional verses, which I have labelled ‘x’, ‘y’
and ‘z’ in table 2. It is verse y that Charlotte Church includes, and it seems to me that it is these
verses which are likely to to have attracted Seeger's 'weepy waily' comment.
Table 2. Andrew Rowan Summers’ additional lyrics to ‘O Waly Waly’
x A down in the meadow the other day
A-gathering flowers both fine and gay
A-gathering flowers both red and blue
I little thought what love can do
y Where love is planted oh there it goes
It grows and blossoms like some rose
It has a sweet and a pleasant smell
No flower on earth can it excel
z Must I be bound oh and she go free
Must I love one that cannot love me
Why must I play such a childish part
And love a girl that will break my heart
A few more examples of singers tackling the song ‘O waly waly’ will, I hope, serve to
clarify the picture. The mainstream Scots singer Moira Anderson, a light entertainment favourite of
the 1960s and 1970s, sings Seeger's verses one, two and five, as had Church, but in place of
Church's verse y, Anderson sings verse x. The singer Richard Lewis, in a collection of British
‘national songs’12, adds verse four to Anderson’s selection, while Greek singer Nana Mouskouri,
who had a large British following in the 1960s and 1970s, is the only one of all these singers to omit
verse one. So, while there is a great deal of shared material between songs entitled ‘The water is
wide’ and ‘O waly waly’, no two of these fourteen versions takes exactly the same course. Indeed,
the only verse taken by every one of these singers is Seeger's verse two.
It would seem from all this, then, that from the memory of his sister's singing, Pete Seeger
creates a song ‘The water is wide’ from the ashes of ‘O Waly Waly’, and that while both retain some
currency, it is only the former which retains its repertory status as a folk song. Actually, the picture
is yet more complicated. A very similar version to the one Pete heard Peggy sing appears in Cecil
Sharp and Charles Marson’s collection Folk Songs from Somerset in 190613. Collections like this
(and also those appearing for a century or so previously) were mined by leading revivalist singers
for material. The song's appearance in this collection is also the first identified appearance of the
title ‘The water is wide’. The verses it contains are found in table 3. The Sharp/Marson version adds
one verse to the Lewis version (although the titles are different), lacks two verses of the Rowan
Summers version (again the titles are different), and adds one verse to the Seeger version, now with
identical titles.

Table 3. Verses of versions of ‘The water is wide’ and ‘O waly waly’. The dash indicates an
instrumental verse
version by verses taken
Pete Seeger 1 2 3 4 5 6
Fred Neil 1 2 5 6 (part)
The Seekers 1 2 5 6
Dorris Henderson & John Renbourn 1 2 3 4 5
Bob Dylan & Joan Baez 1 2 3 - 5 6
Dave Burland 1 5 2 - 6
E2K 1 3 – 2 6
June Tabor 1 2 3 5
Steeleye Span - 2 – 6 -
Charlotte Church 1 y 2 5
Andrew Rowan Summers 1 x 4 3 2 y z 5
Moira Anderson 1 x 2 5
Richard Lewis 1 x – 4 2 - 5
Nana Mouskouri x 3 z 2 5
collected in Sharp & Mason 1906 1 x 4 3 2 5
What can be learnt from these observations? First, that how a song is performed can change
its meaning, both subtly and substantially. For the latter, the frequent omission of Seeger's verse
four lends the song a slightly false respectability, perhaps. For the former, a change of chord, or
alteration of the prosody, or consideration of the time taken to sing phrases, words, phonemes, will
inflect the listener's reading, for the song addresses a near-universal experience. Second, that
particularly with a song without an overt narrative, the number, order, and even content of verses is
not necessarily fixed. A folk song has fuzzy boundaries, and becomes fixed only temporarily, at the
moment of performance (whether live or in the studio). Third, that the title of a song is no necessary
guide to its content. I shall return to some of these points in my conclusion.
Instability: wandering lines and verses
In comparing a number of versions of 'The water is wide' and its putative parent 'O Waly
Waly', I have illustrated some of the flexibility which can attend what appears at first encounter to
be a stable song. I now move to consider what happens with material which has no such stability
and I begin by noting that individual verses from table 3 can be found in songs with entirely
different titles and narratives. In the collection Songs of the West made by the parson/hymn-
writer/collector Sabine Baring-Gould, is a song called ‘A ship came sailing’ (no.86), of which
Baring-Gould heard 3 near-identical versions14, and which includes our verses 2, 3, 5, and x15. The
Australian song 'Cockleshells' as sung by Martyn Wyndham-Read includes, as its chorus, Seeger's
verse five, with the first half of the first line replaced by the phrase “O Waly Waly”.This is not quite
as strange as it might appear, for the first verse of ‘Cockleshells’ appears as the last verse of ‘O
Waly Waly’ (spelt as “And wale’ wale’”) in William Thomson’s collection Orpheus Caledonius
printed in 172616. And all this is not to go into the presence of some of these verses in narrative
ballads such as ‘Jamie Douglas’, which would take us in a whole new direction.
It is perhaps more common to find lines, or pairs of lines, reappearing in unexpected places.
I want to consider four recordings: ‘The outlandish knight’ by the duo Spiers and Boden, ‘The cruel
mother’ by June Tabor, ‘The elf knight’ by Steeleye Span and ‘Fine flowers in the valley’ by

Barbara Dickson. In their song, Spiers and Boden sing the following burden (i.e. lines two and four)
to the first four verses, and occasionally thereafter:
“Ma ba and the lilly ba…
On the very first morning of May”.
In her song, June Tabor sings this burden:
“Low, so low and so lonely…
Down in the greenwoods of iv(or)y”17.
Steeleye Span split their song into two distinct parts, which alternate, although in both parts they
sing as the burden:
“Fine flowers in the valley…
As the rose is blown”.
Finally, in her song, Barbara Dickson uses this burden:
“Fine flowers in the valley…
And the green leaves they grow rarely”.
It should be clear from this that the first line of the burden is shared between Steeleye and Dickson,
and there is a weak link between the second line of the burden of Tabor and Dickson (the reference
to “green”), but other lines of the burdens are different. So why do I call your attention to the other
two songs? Despite the differences of titles, we are only talking about two distinct songs here. Both
‘The outlandish knight’ and ‘The elf knight’ are versions of a very widespread, and possibly very
ancient, song often known as ‘Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight’, whose narrative is found across
Europe and parts of Asia. While the narratives of both Steeleye Span's, and Spiers and Boden's
performances, have strong parallels, the burden is entirely different. Both Tabor's and Dickson's
performances are versions of a murder ballad generally known as ‘The cruel mother’ or ‘The
greenwood side’ – again, parallel narratives and different burdens. The ‘fine flowers’ line may
possibly have originated in ‘The cruel mother’ and migrated elsewhere, but it is also found in other
songs. This alone, then, further confirms that it is risky to try to identify a song either by its title or
by specific lyrics which it contains.
When we move on from wandering lines of a burden to entire wandering verses, the
situation becomes even more complex. Folk song scholars make use of the concept of 'song
family'18 to identify a number of different songs which share their plot or material. Perhaps its best
known usage is in Francis J. Child's five-volume collection of English and Scottish ballad lyrics19.
While the concept acknowledges a variety of songs within a song family, it implies that each family
is clearly bounded. The narrative outlined below questions this implication.
In the first verse of the song ‘Courting is a pleasure', as sung by Kate Rusby, the protagonist
sings of the joy of courting and of “lovely Molly” with whom he will stay 'til morning. The key
verses are the second and third. In the second, the protagonist sings of having been wounded by
lovely Molly, whose “wandering of her eye” he noticed when “going to church last Sunday”. In
retrospect, the first verse is revealed as ironic for, in the third verse, the singer moves from
protagonist to narrator, identifying Molly's love as “Willie”, someone who gives Molly something
to drink: “drink this, lovely Molly”. The fourth verse gives a moral, and in the fifth Willie declares
his decision to emigrate from Ireland to America. In his cursing the man who came between himself
and Molly, the narrator is presumably talking of the unnamed “lad of high degree” hinted at in verse
two, but if the drink were poison (as it is in many ballads, such as 'Worcester City'), he could be
addressing himself. Nic Jones' 'Courting is a pleasure' is sung to broadly the same melody, and
follows the same course. The second and third verses are as we have them above, although Molly's
eye here is “roving” rather than “wandering” - perhaps greater intention is conveyed thereby. Jones

is a singer of immense stature within the folk community, and Rusby is a highly acclaimed singer.
Doyen of English folk fiddlers (although with a jazz element which marked his idiolect as
somewhat dated), Dave Swarbrick had begun with Ian Campbell's acoustic group in the 1960s
before becoming a long-time member of folk rockers Fairport Convention. Whippersnapper were an
important post-Fairport project led by Swarbrick, making great play of the entirely acoustic medium
they employed. 'Loving Hannah' is, at first glimpse, an entirely different song from 'Courting is a
pleasure'. The protagonist and Hannah have long been close – he recalls her declaring in their youth
“if ever you were to marry, I would be the one”. The song is a little like 'The water is wide', in that
different versions often reorder the constituent verses. In Whippersnapper's version, we have two
verses which portray Hannah's beauty and manner, and a third in which the protagonist sings of
taking himself to the riverside at night in order to bemoan her loss. In the final verse, he sings of
“going to church last Sunday”, of noticing her “roving eye” and realising he had lost her. This is, in
other words, the same verse which appears in 'Courting is a pleasure', but here it marks the
culmination of the narrative rather than a point of change in its direction. The songwriter Steve
Tilston includes a version of 'Loving Hanna' on his recording of folk standards. Here, the “going to
church last Sunday” verse occurs first – if we are sufficiently competent in the tradition to know
other versions of the same song, then we know all is lost before the protagonist reveals just what
that was. We then hear both the first two Whippersnapper verses, a new verse (in which it is made
clear he only courted Hanna for three years), and a turn to the minor for the walk to the riverside –
the protagonist intends a “good long sleep” which with the turn to minor might well hint at suicide.
The first verse then reappears to conclude the song.
There are two, very English, traditional songs which go by the names 'The Bonny [or
Lovely] Irish Maid' and 'The Irish girl'. Louis Killen sang 'The Lovely Irish Maid', whose narrative
of emigration is not far from what lies behind 'Courting is a pleasure' (the song is also known as
'Blackwaterside' and as such was recorded by Scots singer Sheila Stewart). The same song was
recorded by Irish band Oisin, as 'The Bonny Irish Maid', but here with a verse in which Willie's eye
turns roving as his sweetheart bemoans her “going to church last Sunday” - that verse again. In a
very early recording by Shirley Collins, of a four-verse 'The Irish girl', the second mentions the
“roving of her eye” and his consequent loss (although the protagonist here is out riding, rather than
going to church), while the third asks her to recall that that “if you ever married, I would be that
man”, in other words the first verse of Whippersnapper's 'Loving Hannah'. Much more recently,
Roy Bailey has recorded 'Handsome Molly', whose name thus calls to mind 'Courting is a pleasure',
but with a melody whose contour is reminiscent of 'Loving Hannah', without being the same
melody. Bailey's second verse is the “if ever you were to marry” verse, while the fourth is that of
“church on Sunday” and the “roving eye”, both of which we associate with 'Loving Hannah'. Later,
the protagonist wanders to the riverside at night, again a ‘Loving Hannah’ verse, although the name
Molly, who also roved her eye at church, pulls against this. The Scots singer Lizzie Higgins
recorded 'Lovely Molly' in 1968. In the first verse we learn of a courtship begun very young
between Molly and the protagonist (who is a farmer off to war), while in the second he gives
permission for her to be at “church on Sundays and meet your new love there”. But, while there are
clear links between “Hannah” and “Molly”, as seen above, and while both these topics appear
connected with Hannah, despite the name of “Lovely Molly”, this seems to be a wholly different
song, and not to bear the close relationship I have been detailing. Again, the name of the song may
not name the song.
So, what sort of conclusion should be drawn from this meander through these various
recordings? I make absolutely no particular distinctive claim for noticing this pattern of linkages
between disparate things. It is the result, simply, of years of listening and subsequent addressing of
the memory. Other listeners will notice other verses which wander, even perhaps including other
songs with these titles. What it indicates is a general feature, that the identity of the song is

permanently unstable. There are degrees of stability, of course – I have brought to attention in this
section some of the least stable. Newer songs are likely to be more stable before generations of
performers have got their ears on them, while songs with a tight narrative are also likely to be more
stable. What the overlapping nature of these borrowings does point to, however, is the risk attached
to a simple notion of the song family, which is at its best dealing with orthodox lines of descent. The
miscegenation I am hinting at here is far harder to establish theorised guidelines for.
Epilogue
Whatever folk song is, it clearly operates, for its users, within the capitalist system as an
outlier in popular culture, i.e. as a means of acquiring capital, even if by means of it, fans in
particular would like to pretend it were something else. Within that system, the concept of
intellectual property instantiates the understanding that songs are items of ownership, that however
they are covered, remixed, repurposed, that line of ownership both can and should be traced. The
evidence presented here inclines one toward the view that within the performance of, and listening
to, what is self-identified as folk song, ownership appears not to matter – the cliché that the tradition
is 'owned by the people' follows - until an outsider tries to profit from it (which is another story).
From this unorthodox vantage-point, I have tried to suggest that the musical material of popular
culture, residing as it does in the entities we recognise as 'songs' and 'recordings' of those songs, in
practice may have a degree of instability which is not recognised when we conceptualise the
relationship between musicians and the material they take from others as the practice of 'covering',
of making free with the results of others' intellectual labour, for which recompense is due.
Perhaps this distinction of practice means that we should not categorise what I have
documented here as being covered by the term 'popular music'. Or, rather, perhaps it means that our
conventionalised understanding of the term and practice of 'covering', however sophisticated a
typology we may employ20, is yet inadequate to an analysis of the richness with which it operates.
Indeed, I wonder whether the ways that individuals, groups, use 'songs' may be better
understood if we begin from the assumption that they do not have the stability we assume them to
have. Perhaps it is less important to identify the song we are hearing that to actively recognise we
are in the midst of the musical experience.
Bibliography
Baring-Gould, S. et al (eds.). 1905. Songs of the West: Folk songs of Devon and Cornwall collected
from the mouths of the people (London: Methuen).
Broadwood, L. 1907. ‘Songs from Country Waterford, Ireland’ in Journal of the Folk-Song Society,
no.10 (3/1), pp.3-38.
Broadwood, L., & J. A. Fuller Maitland (eds.) 1893. English County Songs (London: Leadenhall
Press).
Child, F. J. 1965.The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York NY: Dover).
Frith, S. 1981. 'The magic that can set you free': the ideology of folk and the myth of the rock
community' in Popular Music, 1, pp.159-68.
Griffiths, D. 2002. ‘Cover Versions and the Sound of Identity in Motion’, in Popular Music Studies,
ed. D. Hesmondhalgh and K. Negus (London: Edward Arnold), pp.51-64.
Kloss, J. 2012.‘”The Water is Wide”: the history of a “folksong” at
http://www.justanothertune.com/html/wateriswide.html, Accessed 9ix16.
Lacasse, S. 'Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music' in The Musical Work:
Reality or Invention? ed. M. Talbot (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp.35-58.
Powers, A. 2005. ‘The water is wide’ in The rose and the briar, ed. S. Wilentz and G. Marcus (New

York NY: Norton), pp.19-33.
Sharp, C. and C. Marson. 1906. Folk Songs from Somerset. Third Series (Taunton, Somerset:
Barnicott & Pearce: Athenaeum Press).
Shuker, R. 1998. Popular music: the key concepts (London: Routledge).
Stock, K. (ed.) 2007. Philosophers on Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Discography
Moira Anderson, 'O Waly waly', 20 Scottish favourites, Lismor LCOM9033, 1990.
Ben Andrews, ‘Gallows pole’, Gallows pole, Powerhouse PR0104, 2001.
Roy Bailey, 'Handsome Molly', Below the radar, Fuse Records, CFCD407, 2009.
Dave Burland, ‘The water is wide’, Rollin’, Moonraker M006, 1983.
Charlotte Church, 'The water is wide', Enchantment, Columbia COL505110, 2001.
Judy Collins, ‘The prickilie bush’, A maid of constant sorrow, Elektra EKS-7209, 1961.
Shirley Collins, 'The Irish girl', Rare first recordings,Trunk PD131, 1959.
Barbara Dickson, 'Fine flowers in the valley', Parcel of rogues, Castle Communications CTV
CD126, 1994.
Bob Dylan (and Joan Baez), 'The water is wide', Bootleg series, vol.5, Sony 88697732902, 2015.
E2K, 'The water is wide', Shift, Topic TSCD522, 2001.
Gryphon, ‘The unquiet grave’, Gryphon, Transatlantic TRA262, 1973.
Dorris Henderson & John Renbourn, 'The water is wide', There you go!, Columbia SX6001, 1965.
Lizzie Higgins, ‘Lovely Molly’. Re-released on Voice of the people 5: Come all my lads that follow
the plough, Topic TSCD655, 1998.
Nic Jones, 'Courting is a pleasure', Penguin eggs, Topic TSCD411, 1980.
Nic Jones, ‘The prickly bush’, Unearthed, Mollie Music MMCD02/03, 2001.
Nic Jones, 'Dives and Lazarus’, Game, set, match, Topic TSCD566, 2006.
Louis Killen, 'The Lovely Irish maid', Old songs, old friends, Front Hall, FRH012, 1977.
Leadbelly, ‘Gallis pole’, Negro sinful songs, Musicraft, Album 31, 1939.
Led Zeppelin, ‘Gallows pole’, Led Zeppelin III, Atlantic 2401002, 1970.
Richard Lewis, 'O Waly, Waly', Heart of Oak, Classics for Pleasure, CFP4556, 2004.
Nana Mouskouri, 'O Waly Waly', Songs of the British Isles, Phillips 9101 024, 1976.
Fred Neil, ‘The water is wide’, Bleecker and MacDougal, Elektra EKS7293, 1965.
Oisin, 'The Bonny Irish maid', Bealoideas, ID Records, IDLP2011, 1978.
Andrew Rowan Summers, 'O Waly waly', The faulse lady, Folkways FW02044, 1954.
Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, ‘Courting is a pleasure’, Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, Pure
Records PRMC001, 1995.
Pete Seeger, Pete, Living Music, 1996.
Pete Seeger, American Favorite Ballads, vol.2, Folkways 02321, 1958.
The Seekers, 'The water is wide', Hide and seekers, World Record Club STP 443, 1964.
Martin Simpson, ‘Dives and Lazarus’; The bramble briar, Topic TSCD513, 2001.
Spiers and Boden, ‘The outlandish knight’, ‘Prickle eye bush’, Bellow, Fellside FECD175, 2003.
Steeleye Span, ‘The elf knight’, ‘The prickly bush’, Time, Park PRKCD34, 1996.
Sheila Stewart, 'Blackwaterside', From the heart of the tradition, Topic TSCD515, 2000.
June Tabor, 'The water is wide', A quiet eye, Topic TSCD510, 1999.
June Tabor, 'The cruel mother', An echo of hooves, Topic TSCD543, 2003.
Steve Tilston, 'Loving Hanna', Of many hands, ADA, ADA106CD, 2005.
Whippersnapper, 'Loving Hannah', Promises, WPS, WPS001, 1985.
Martyn Wyndham-Read, Jackeroo, Wynding Road, 2008.

1 Debate over which of these is more correct is of long standing within philosophical aesthetics, and
shows no sign of resolution. A recent consideration of this debate appears in part 1 of Stock 2007.
2 Information posted by Sheffield folklorist Malcolm Douglas,
http://www.folkinfo.org/forum/topic.php?topicid=421&pagenum=1&reverse=false, accessed
10iv08.
3 Although the biblical moral tends to be missing.
4 Broadwood 1893, p.v.
5 Not least those made by Broadwood herself, a pioneer of such careful study. Her 1907 article is
exemplary in this regard.
6 Powers, ‘The water is wide’, p.31.
7 Powers, ‘The water is wide’, p.32.
8 On both sides of the Atlantic, products of the early jazz revival and the folk revival, in the 1950s
and 1960s, were not always entirely discreet, in part because some musicians were part of both
scenes.
9 Renbourn would later form Pentangle and go on to become a leading guitar stylist in the English
post-revival scene.
10 To have outsold the Beatles in 1964, their audience must have been far from niche, with a wide
age range.
11 Originally Edward II and the Red Hot Polkas, the name change coincided with the run-up to the
millennium (the ‘Y2K’) celebrations.
12 ‘National songs’, such as ‘The British Grenadiers’, 'Hearts of Oak', or ‘Rule Brittania’, tended to
originate in the eighteenth century, frequently coming from contemporary musical theatre, and
which in some usages are close to the idea of folk song.
13 See also the discussion in Kloss 2012.
14 He also discusses the potential source of some 'borrowed' verses. Songs of the West, section
Notes on the Songs, p.25.
15 5 and x are somewhat altered. There are two other verses, unrelated to those discussed.
16 See the discussion in Kloss 2012.
17 See the lyrics, and alternative versions, given at
http://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/thecruelmother.html, accessed 17iii15.
18 See Shuker 1998.
19 First published between 1882 and 1898, the vast majority of versions Child prints were taken
from earlier published sources or from communication with other collectors.
20 For example, in Serge Lacasse: 'Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music'
in Michael Talbot (ed.): The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?; Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2000, 35-58.