TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

Please correct me if I get this wrong.
The lyrics from matty groves comes from the Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.
Also Sung by among others Planxty. This Ballad has also made it over to Blue Grass in the states.
It's well worth checking out Planxty live 2004 by the way it's one of many stunning songs.
The music to matty groves may have been composed by Martin Carthy am I right??
This is where it gets interesting. There is a traditional Blue grass chune called wait for it......
Shady Groves and sound very similar to Matty Groves.
I am aware that ballads and folk music has been carried round the globe for a while now!
Can anybody link these threads together for me I am running out of clues.
By the way have been at cropredy every year since i was 4, am now 30!!!

pretty much bang on there si,the tune fairport used at the end was nicked off "the famous flower of serving men" by carthy
ralph stanley did a version on his last cd called mathie grove, so i suspect that  is one version that made it over the pond
cheers
  Jim

Sir Robert - I heard a different recording on Mike Harding's prog about a year ago sung by a senior sounding chap from Norfolk, whose name escapes me. It was slightly different words ending with 'he cut off his wife's head and kicked it against the wall'. The burial bit was omitted.

No doubt this will prompt someone to remember more details that I have.

Malcolm

Thanks for the warm welcome folks.
Check out this version
http://www.smsu.edu/folksong/maxhunter/0280/
My question still remains however if there is some connection between Matty groves and shady Groves.
There are some poeple from over the pond who think that shady groves may be a traditional song from the Appalachian Mountains. Where ever that is :)
But like most folk songs the lyrics are easy to trace it's the tunes or melodies that are harder.
I would guess it's the tendencyin the folk circle to learn by ear as oppessed sheet.
It's much easier to write down lyrics than music.
Sorry to witter on. this ones just got me. ya no .

Just another quick link
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/303.html.
This is a explanation of the ballad.
Good reading
 ???

The Appalachian Mountains, located in Eastern North America, extend 1600 north-south miles from Quebec to Georgia. The most popular attraction for mountain hiking enthusiasts is the Appalachian Trail, a 2,100-mile hiking trail that winds through forested mountains from Springer Mountain in Northern Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine. This trek crosses portions of fourteen states, and generally takes five to six months to complete.

In other words, it's one hell of a big area to trace one song from.

Yep true
But in american.
It's there equivolent to the cotswolds!!! :D
And the reason there is so much music on the streets down here is, Musicians can't afford the houses ;D

Unless indigenous injuns have a Chief Matty Groves I think it much more likely to be of European origin and to have sailed over with settlers.

Not even claimin it to be from these islands. Story tellers/musicians travelled and the songs went with them and evolved. The interestin bit is when they went somewhere for a while and then bounced back suitably modified..

Puggs  :)

Thanks pugwash
The ballad of little musgrave or matty groves would appear to be from the uk.
But what is unclear is if the tune by carthy for matty groves comes from the u.s or the tune Shady Groves comes from the u.k.. :o

Simon check out the following:
http://www.contemplator.com/child/mattie.html

Thats amazing!!
Have followed the threads and ended up on this link
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0813109272/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-4749351-1271822?v=glance&s=books
I  may actually have to buy a real book and read it.
It looks like there may be some history between some families in the mountains and scottish ballads.
You have all been a great help thanks so much.
Has any body read this obscure book.

also see this link
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/ritchie.htm
Must go to bed
Night Night
 :-[

A great Shady Grove version was performed by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, a good different version of Matty can be heard in tha last album by one of the finest scottish singer, Billy Ross; the very northern british Pete Morton recorded a good Musgrave based upon Christy Moore unattainable singing.

Cheers

Paolo

I also suspect some interference, probably taking place in the northern border in the XVII century, between Musgrave/Matty and Raggle Taggle Gypsy: in both case there is a nobleman's wife escaping with a low class young man, and we may notice some common minor topic -the lady says that she prefers to kiss the lover's lips than ... it depends; in both song some version mentions a "good feather bed". I have no information, but I think Musgrave/Matty could be the oldest plot anf the Gipsy a later topic borrowing some fragment from Musgrave because of common features in the story.

Speaking more truly and sincerely, I don't know

Best

Paolo

There are definitely connections between the two songs. The most obvious is the music, but it seems the lyrics differ completely. Most versions of Mattie all end the same in the story. I've heard Shady being talked about as a person in Doc Watson's version & as a place in others. Another thing is some versions of Shady Grove are in a major key  some in minor & Mattie Groves ,at least all the versions I've heard are in a minor key. It's basically to us a traditional song, it comes from the Appalachian's here & that can then be traced back across the pond to
England, Ireland, &/or Scotland, who had settled in that area of America when they came here. Hope this helps.
& As a secion hiker of the A.T. here's a cool link www.appalachiantrail.org

Appalachians are notoriously a precious conservative area for traditional songs and dances making available living connctions between songs fron the opposite shores of Atlantic. Being an amateur hammered dulcimer player I really appreciate this distinct conservative flavour in appalachian music.

Cheers

Paolo

I've posted this same answer in another thread (Researching trad music) but just in case it gets overlooked, last Friday night at Oxford Folk Club the guest was American blues guitarist Brooks Williams. He played what is noted as a traditional song Shady Grove and it has the identical melody to FC's Matty Groves - so this must be where the Liege & Lief line up got it from.

I always thought Fairport borrowed their version from Hedy West (the US singer who died a couple of years ago). Her version is called Little Matty Groves.

This sound like Harry Cox. Famous old traditional English folk singer; I believe he was from Norfolk. Also believe our own Judy Dyble has some knowledge of Harry Cox going back to her connection to a pub in Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk. He may have been one of the many traditional singers that also once regularly sung in the famous, musically, but geographically remote Eels Foot pub (?) near the Suffolk coast.

Not Harry Cox,- it was Sam Larner who lived in the same village (Winterton-on-Sea) as my father's family, who knew him very well and indeed sang with him from time to time according to my uncle, now in his 90's, and who has yet to tell me why they called him 'Funky' Larner in their youth...... :o

Jude ;D

On a Cordelia's Dad album there is a song Little William and Lady Margaret (or something like that), which has a similar noble woman fancies a bit of rough theme, replete with the "how do you like my feather bed.." etc although with a twist as in this song the lady is remembering the ghost of a past lover..must re-listen to this.  Very good album by the way, mixing trad folk with some appalachian stuff, very different to some of their more thrashy electric efforts.

Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard is probably a southern English Ballad from around the sixteenth century - it is mentioned in Fletcher and Beaumont's 1607 play The Knight of the Burning Pestle - it appeared in full in Royalist Drollery books from in the 1650s (Like Playford's dance books, the Drollery books used the songs of 'merrie England' as a form of propaganda against the Republic and Cromwellian Protectorate - those lucky enough to access to a University database system could look up Wit and Drollery on Early English Books Online).  From what I can tell Matty Groves is a English/Scots border version of the tune that may predate or postdate the southern English version - I take this from the fact that the early 20th century folklorist Alan Lomax recorded old people singing it as Little Matty Groves in Scotland.

Martin Carthy sings a version of the song that uses the exact words as the 1650s text, although I wonder if the tune originates (as does Nottamun Town in its modern form) from the Ritchie family of Kentucky - you can hear a very similar version on Jean Ritchie's English Ballad (available in all big record stores and a must for all folk historians) - the Ritchie/Carthy version is very different to the early 20th century recordings from England and Scotland taken down by people like Alan Lomax.

As to Shady Grove - this is an Appalachian ballad, I don't think it has an English root, and the FC tune to Matty Groves can be traced to Shady Grove from the early 20th century (I have a compilation of 78s of Kentucky music that has it on) - I always thought Fairport Convention directly or indirectly took the tune to Shady Grove for Matty Groves - as far as I have heard the early 20th century English and Scots versions never used the Shady Grove tune.

Apologies for the OT
Can I make a minor point to mods please. This is why we shouldn't delete posts. Until yesterday the last post in this thread was 2.5 years ago. Other than the Corp Arms please take note.

ta

Good stuff Curt.

Theres a version of Lady Margaret on 'The Garden of Jane Delawney' by The Trees as well. Obviously the same root as Matty.

And another, really good, version of Lady Margaret by Cassie Franklin appears on the Cold Mountain soundtrack album.

Top stuff Curt,  :) I've done a fair bit of research into the origins of Old Time/ Bluegrass tunes and have come to a similar conclusion; namely that the Celtic emigration, particularly from Presbyterian lowland Scotland and Ulster, to the Appalachians, Virginia, Eastern Kentucky,Tennessee and western Carolina was the source of a lot of these tunes.

There is a book I've had recommended to me , but which I haven't got round to yet, it's 'America Across the Water', Shirley Collin's account of her collecting trip to the Southern States with Alan Lomax - might be worth a look

"Matty Groves" is one of the songs featured in the film "The Song Collector" about collecting music in the Appalachians 'round the turn of the last century. Stars Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn. Not a very good film but worth it for some excellent music(instrumentals mostly--and Iris Dement's "Pretty Saro"....)

Wasn't it called "Songcatcher"? let's see .... yes, Songcatcher: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210299/

Yes, Thank you, Bob. And sorry to everyone else.

Is there more than one song called Shady Grove? When I was in The Mounthoolies we used to do a version of Shady Grove but it bore no resemblence to Matty Groves being more like 17 Come Sunday.

Was this the one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRw3NX0zBr8

I don't know as the sound is disable on this office computer, but I'll check it out at home later.

Here's a recording of The Mounthoolies doing it. http://www.geocities.com/mounthoolies/shady.htm Unfortunately the bass didn't go through the mixer desk so it's a bit toppy and it's a windows media recording so Mac users can't hear it, but it will give you the gist.

Yes, that's the other version of the song I've heard. There is much less resemblance to Matty, except in the chorus. Sing the words "Come home with me Little Matty Groves" instead of "Shady Grove my little miss" and you'll see what I mean. It's a bit of a stretch, but it is there. The melody of the Jean Ritchie version is much closer to "Matty".

Hi Bob,

I've been able to listen to the Jean Ritchie version now and I must say I loved it. I'll be seeking some more of her recordings out I reckon.

Of course, the first version of the song I heard was the one whose sample can be played on this page:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:giazefukhgfj

I think theirs is much closer to the version you played than the one Jean Ritchie did.

I can't do that but here are a couple of references from our notes (http://www.folkinfo.org/songs/displaysong.php?songid=34)

Wit Restor'd (1658), reprinted Facetiae (London, 1817, I, 293)
Wit and Drollery, 1682, p.81.