TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

Hello
I have recently returned from the depths of Yorkshire where i was staying with a Maddie (an old friend from uni) & her parents. The parents in question were remenicing one eve when it emerged that the father of said uni mate tried to woo Mad's mum by constantly singing Matty Groves at her. When asked why he chose this particular route of romance 'he thought that she would be impressed he could remeber all the verses'. Hmm, clearly worked though. The question I was going to ask was that they were saying there were many, many versions of Matty groves, yet I can only think of two the dazzling orginial by fairport & the Planxty - Little Musgrove. Are there any others?
Vikki xx 

I vaguely recall Maart saying recently that he'd found about 180 versions of Matty Groves.  Try http://www.talkawhile.co.uk/yabbse/index.php?topic=9014.0 for more details.

But I'd be impressed by anybody who could remember all the verses and words to Matty!  Now I wonder if there is anybody who can remember all the verses and words to "Tam Lin" without having to look them up. :D

Another good one to go courting to would be The Naked Highwayman ;) ;D

The audience at Beverley on millenium night managed it. Simon gave up and left us to it!

As for differant versions, I first heard it sung by a barber shop quartet (As "The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard") in a concert in Pilgrim's hall, Winchester. I was a young kid who hadn't heard of Fairport. In fact, if I thinnk about it, it could have been before Fairport existed, it must have been around 1967. I still recall it as the only memorable song in the concert.

I was going to say, I reckon most of the more long-time Fairport fans could probably recite all the verses...and just about every vocal nuance!...for 'Matty'. Same with most songs probably, certainly anything pre-split.

Now playing: Total coincidence, but 'Matty' from Cropredy 1985...the Friday night version.

you might be able to get a bootleg version of a certain Lorna Campbell singing it  ;)

Yup.

Mind you, I can remember the whole of the nightmare song.

Paul

Seeing as everybody here already knows my similarity to two short planks, I might as well complete the embarrassment and ask...
Matty Groves, Tam Lin, lot's of verses? 
Could someone point me towards some information please?

Mic :-[

Hope I'm not being equally thick Mic....but I don't quite understand the question  ???

I think we were just saying that both songs have lots of verses...i.e. lots of words to remember.

Ahhh, I think I see :-\
I thought it meant there were lots of 'other' verses.  I hadn't noticed that there were more than the ordinary number of verses in either of them, but then.... I'm thick so that would probably explain that ::)

Thanks Alex
mic

Ah, gotcha  :)

They are very wordy if you think about it - a normal song would usually perhaps have three or four verses, both of these have about a dozen.

The statement could also apply as you'd read it, the Fairport versions are exactly that....Fairport's take on the song, both musically and lyrically. They've both been rewritten quite a lot, loosely based on the traditional ballads, rather than accurate renditions. So there are other verses - some totally different, some similar to the Fairport ones but worded differently.

I bet there's lots of info on the net if you try googling.

I've always thought that Tam Lin does go on a bit (and on, and on).   I usually get about half way through and find myself wishing they'd just get on with it!

I was listening to the 1997 Cropredy version of Matty Groves (The Cropredy Box) the other day and I could have sworn there was a verse missing, but I wasn't paying 100% attention seeing as I was hacking round the M25 at the time...

But all kudos to those who can remember all the words in the right order.  I think I'll stick to simpler fare!

Typical woman.... ;D.....my sister said the same thing the other day.


Stuff that goes on a bit is good because it goes on a bit. Sloth, Tam Lin, Matty, Jack O'Rion, Wounded Whale....not to mention non-Fairport stuff like Kashmir, Achilles Last Stand, Dingly Dell, Pibroch, Firth of Fifth, etc, etc.

You're right about Matty @ Cropredy '97 though  :) Vikki was that chuffed at throwing in her Sid Kipper line that she fluffed the rest of the verses.

I think knowing the words comes pretty automatically if you hear something a few times. You'd be hard pushed to have heard a song like Matty hundreds of times without the words sticking in your head. Think it's a bit of a bloke thing to an extent though...

Have you heard Jean Ritchie's Appalachian version of Little Musgrave: no music, just her brilliant voice - Martin Carthy uses the 1651 text from Wit and Drollery (which University students with Athen's accounts can get in PDF from Early English Books Online) on Prince Heathen - that's long as well.

I think I read Martin Carthy say that Bert Jansch's Jack Orion was the first super long trad. ballad in the folk revival and inspired everyone else to dig out the big songs - in any event its a great song - especially when Bert obviously forgets the words and sings 'la-la la dee'.

I seem to remember that Ashley's mob did a version of Matty in the Cecil Sharp centenary show -Sharp collected his version in the appalachians if I remember right.

Reckon I kow the fairport version pretty well now, but a real challenge would be all the verses of The Famous Flower of Serving Men - even Martin Carthy skips a few. To bring it full circle- his version gave fairport the riff for the instrumental at the end of Matty. 

Really? Funny how Sandy remembered all those verses then.

Cecil Sharpe's version did come from the Ritchie family in Viper, Kentucky - I think it was Jean Ritchie's older sister Una Ritchie who taught it to Sharpe.  In fact the Ritchie familiy pretty much preserved all the songs of the folk revival - I am not a musicologist but I think Nottamun Town was unknown until Cecil Sharpe had Una Ritchie sing it for him in 1912.  The Folk Brittania show with it's 'the folk revival was a tool of socialist propaganda' organising narrative totally ignored the importance of the Ritchies and Sharpe's Appalachian adventure in the rediscovery of trad. folk back in the UK.

Ok sorry, rant over.  phew

(Doc puts on his folkie anorak.....)

The "big ballads" such as Matty are generally long songs because they are stories, often magical fantasies (such as Tam Lin) - sort of 16th century escapism.  Sir Patrick Spens is another one where the original/typical traditional version is quite a lot of words - Fairport cut it down by perhaps 2/3.  Because some of them are also very old, I guess divergence and many variants on the theme is an inevitable development over the 400 years plus which we know for sure some of these songs have existed.

Didn't we have a thread a year or two ago about the age of the big ballads?

Talking of versions, the Spinners did a version of Matty Groves (with Mick Groves singing it) in the early 60s.


Cecil Mahone

When I was a young girl in Kentucky, my great-grandmother taught me a bunch of songs, some of which I haven't heard anywhere else.  I think I'd better dig out that notebook.... :o

Jo

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060212/FEATURES07/602120327/1086

Here's something that might be of interest to the thread.

I think I remember seeing Matty Groves on an old Joan Baez album from the Vanguard days......or maybe not?  ???

Ralph Stanley does it on his cd of a couple of years ago as mathie grove
 and if this is a straight reading of the old timey version from kaintuck then its not a million miles away fom the fairps version

There's a group called Isambarde in the West Country (?I think), who do a pretty smart version too.

The Isambarde that I know hail from Coventry....

Close 'nuff...  They've got an oboe player...

Eden Burning did a good version. Have it on CD if anyone wants a listen  :)