A treasure trove for anyone interested in the folklore of the British Isles. Illustrated throughout, this lovely collection contains 360 folk songs from field recordings. Includes melody lines, lyrics, and chord symbols. Melody line format.

Originally published in 1977. The Travellers, from those living in bow-tents and horse-drawn caravans to those dwelling in motor caravans and permanent homes, are an important source of traditional music. Their society means that songs that have died out in more settled communities are preserved among them. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, widely known as two of the founding singers of the British and American folk revivals, here display a vast fund of folklore scholarship around the songs of British travelling people. Resulting from extensive collecting in southern and southeastern England and central and northeastern Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, this book contains 130 songs with music and comprehensive notes relating them to folkloristic and historical points of interest. It includes traditional ballads and ballads of broadside origin, bawdy, tragic and humorous songs about love, work and death. Most are in English or in Scots dialect with four in Anglo-Romani.

In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research into ’street literature’ - that is, the cheap printed broadsides and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by professional writers and reached the populace in printed form. Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of traditional songs by examining street literature’s interaction with, and influence on, oral traditions.

This collection is filled with songs that tell of the pleasures and pains of love, the patterns of the countryside and the lives of ordinary people. Here are unfaithful soldiers, ghostly lovers, whalers on stormy seas, cuckolds and tricksters. By turns funny, plain-speaking and melancholic, these songs evoke a lost world and, with their melodies provided, record a vital musical tradition. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside � but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land � as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man�s relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

(Fake Book). The ultimate collection of over 1,000 folksongs perfect for performers, school teachers, and hobbyists. This book includes a huge variety of songs spanning hundreds of years and originating from America, England, Canada, Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and other countries. It includes all styles of folk music, including spirituals, cowboy songs, sea chanteys, work songs, children's songs, love ballads, protest songs, and more. Titles include: All the Pretty Little Horses * All Through the Night * The Ash Grove * Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair * The Blue Tail Fly * Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie * Clementine * The Cruel War Is Raging * Danny Boy * Deep River * Down by the Salley Gardens * The Erie Canal * Git Along, Little Dogies * Go, Tell It on the Mountain * Home on the Range * The House of the Rising Sun * How Can I Keep from Singing? * Hush, Little Baby * Jacob's Ladder * John Henry * Kumbaya * Lonesome Valley * Michael Row the Boat Ashore * The Old Chisolm Trail * Shall We Gather at the River * Shenandoah * Simple Gifts * The Streets of Laredo * Swing Low, Sweet Chariot * When Johnny Comes Marching Home * Yankee Doodle * and many, many more! Features the original version of each tune, and all known verses.

Northern Ireland remains a divided community in which traditional culture is widely understood as a marker of religious affiliation and ethnic identity. David Cooper provides an analysis of the characteristics of traditional music performed in Northern Ireland, as well as an ethnographic and ethnomusicological study of a group of traditional musicians from County Antrim. In particular, he offers a consideration of the cultural dynamics of Northern Ireland with respect to traditional music.

Many of the great songs that have inspired performers around the world in the last 50 years come from the English folk song tradition. This book provides words and melodies for nearly 100 songs, along with an exploration of their history and meaning, the context in which they arose, and their value to writers and performers around the world.