SONGS from the EEL's FOOT JUMBO BRIGHTWELL Traditional

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SONGS FROM THE EEL’S FOOT JUMBO BRIGHTWELL Traditional Songs and Ballads from Suffolk TSDL261

1 The Flower of London William Brightwell was born in 1900 in the small village of Little Glenham, Suffolk, one of eleven 2 The Derby Miller children. While a youngster, he became friendly 3 The Loss of the Ramillies with an old sailor from the village known as Jumbo 4 The Green Mossy Banks of the Poacher, and when the old man died the nickname stuck with the boy. Songs From Lea The Eel’s Foot Traditional 5 Blow the Candle Out Songs and 6 The Bold Princess Royal music was at the age of eight when he remembers Ballads from standingOutside the outside family, the Jumbo’s Glenham first Lion contact looking with after the thelocal Suffolk 7 Newry Town horses and carts for the local shepherds and listening 02 8 The Indian Lass to their singing coming from the cellar. Some of their 9 Muddley Barracks songs which he picked up, in addition to a bottle of ginger beer as a reward, he still sings to this day. 10 The False Hearted Knight 11 The Lost Heiress scarer on a farm at nearby Blaxhall and worked there 12 Down in the Fields Where the untilHe first his started father, awork platelayer, at the agemoved of thirteen the family as ato bird- Buttercups Grow Leiston in 1916. 13 Rambleaway After a spell of two years in the Army of Occupation, 14 The Life of a Man he returned to Leiston in 1919 to work as a bricklayer’s labourer. It was not long after that he began to visit the local pubs with his father and elder brother, Bob, and they would regularly cycle across

nights.’the fields about two-and-a-half miles to the Eel’s Foot Inn at Eastbridge. ‘We didn’t miss many Saturday TSDL261

As at many local pubs, Saturday nights were for Challenge Cup four times. They travelled to many of the local pubs such as the Middleton Bell, Snape Quay, a Chairman – Philip Lumpton – who would keep the Friston Chequers, Marlesford Bell and Blaxhall Ship tinysinging bar and in order the Eel’s with Foot a gavel was or no the exception, cribbage having board and it was at such functions that Jumbo was able to for matches which generally finished with a sing-song Songs From or pay’. Jumbo however remembers one chap, a The Eel’s Foot and the ruling was that everyone had ‘to sing, say wouldn’t have to hear a song more than twice before Traditional sing someone would generally pay him a tanner not Ipick had up it.’ many of the songs which took his fancy – ‘I Songs and steamroller driver, who ‘whenever it was his turn to Ballads from to – he wasn’t all that good.’ The money went into a Suffolk kitty to supply the singers with beer which had to be However, shortly after the Second World War the

03 brought by hand from the cellar to the bar, one pint at a time. out – Jumbo himself stopped singing publicly about tenEel’s years Foot agochanged at about ownership the same and time the he singing retired died from his job as a rail shunter, after twenty years’ service.

acquaintances,Jumbo, with many soon songs became from a hisregular father singer (a fine at the Keith Summers delicate singer nicknamed ‘Velvet’) and childhood The Flower of London Although Jumbo calls this Button.Eel’s Foot, There in company was also with generally older anmen accordion such as Diddy player song The Flower of London it is far better known –and Boxer Carter Fairweather Cook, William – or oneSmith of andthe SeamenJack and Family Edgar or either as The Young Sailor Bold or as The Rich Merchant’s Daughter. John Pitts printed it in the dancing at which his brother, Bob, excelled. early 1800s and John Ashton reprinted a broadside Jack Button on fiddle to provide the music for step- text in his book Modern Street Ballads (1888). Lucy In June 1939 Jumbo and the other singers were Broadwood collected the song in Sussex in 1901 and recorded by A L Lloyd for the BBC and this recording printed it in the following year’s Folk Song Society was subsequently broadcast. Journal, while subsequent sets have been noted in In addition to singing Jumbo was also an expert at Nova Scotia, Michigan and New York State. steel quoits, helping Theberton to win the Suffolk TSDL261

The Derby Miller The Derby Miller, often called The amongst country singers’, and her words are almost Miller’s Will, began life as a medieval tale. Converted as true today for the song turns up again and again into a ballad, it appeared as a blackletter broadside in the mouths of country singers. Although Jumbo (c.1730) called The Miller’s Advice to his Three Sons believes that the song refers to the River Lea which in Taking of Toll. Peter Kennedy collected the song

Songs From for the BBC in Boscastle, Cornwall, and in his book The Eel’s Foot Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (1975) notes that versionsflows through suggest North that London it was the – the River song’s Lee narratorin Co. Cork Traditional whichhaving provided left County the Kildare inspiration for England for the song.– earlier Jumbo’s Songs and of the mill by working the hands and elbows on the tune is used for several Irish songs, many of which are Ballads from Suffolk table‘in many during places the the chorus.’ tradition is to imitate the clatter Bold Reynard the Fox and Dick Derby the Cobbler. 04 The Loss of the Ramillies According to the song well known in England, including collector Alfred Williams, HMS Ramillies, a man Blow the Candle Out While Blow the Candle o’war, was lost on the Bolt Head, a promontory on the Out appeared on many 19th century broadsides – coast of South Devon on February 15th 1760. Seven Catnach, John Gilbert of Newcastle and John Harkness hundred and thirty four persons are reported to volume 6 of Tom Durfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy the wreck. At least three songs commemorate the whichof Preston was allprinted printed in 1720.the song The – itsong’s first appearedpopularity in eventhave been – our lost present and only one, twenty-six which George men Gardiner saved from also was such that Catnach, a wily old printer with a good collected in Dorset in 1906; The Fate of the Ramillies, nose for earning an extra copper or two, issued a which was printed by Henry Parker Such in the 1860s Blow the Candle In, a rather risqué and which was found by Alfred Williams being sung thefollow-up song The sheet Banks of Sweet Dundee. War; and The Fatal Ramillies a broadside by James send-up of the original. Jumbo’s tune is often used for Catnachin the Thames of Seven Valley Dials. sometime prior to the Great The Bold Princess Royal

The Green Mossy Banks of the Lea Of The Green our present song derives ultimately Although from several a Catnach mid- Mossy Banks of the Lea Lucy Broadwood was able to broadside18th century of sometimeballads mention prior to a 1838.‘bold Princess Perhaps Royal’, the

write in 1899, ‘The words are astonishingly popular birth of Queen Victoria’s daughter, the Princess TSDL261

Royal, had something to do with the song’s success. of The Indian Lass in Yorkshire, felt that the song

seaboard but also in the Maritime Provinces of North AmericaVersions ashave well, turned and one up notversion only ofalong this theseafaring British imaginationnarrated in simple of some language printer’s ‘the hack joys who of aproduced sailor’s life the ballad, titled The Lorena Bold Crew, has even been songashore’. for MoreJames likely, Catnach however, who included it reflected it in the his fertile 1830

Songs From reported from the mountains of North Carolina. catalogue. The song seems to have begun life as an The Eel’s Foot account of a meeting in the American backwoods Traditional Newry Town Newry Town, in the eyes of the between a pioneer and a Red Indian girl. Later it was Songs and Ballads from Suffolk changed to the South Seas. Jumbo’s version has bits English folksong scholar Margaret Dean Smith, is ofadapted, both sets perhaps in it. by Pacific whalermen, with its scene 05 havethe ‘archetype also been ofnoted the executionin Arkansas, ballad’. Kentucky, It has Missouri, been Northcollected Carolina extensively and Tennessee. in England Jumbo’sand Ireland reference and sets Muddley Barracks Muddley Barracks is popular with folksingers, if not with folksong collectors, few of Henry Fielding, who was appointed Chief Magistrate whom seem to have chosen to write the song down. to ‘Fielding’s gang’ is interesting, in that the novelist It’s a pity because, in its own way, the song gives us policemen, the Bow Street Runners, in 1751. Another a far better insight into army ways than any number of Westminster in 1748, formed London’s first version of this song, sung by the late Bob Scarce of of patriotic pieces – such as Drink Old England Dry – Blaxhall in Suffolk, can be heard on the record Fair could ever do. In Norfolk the song is usually known Game and Foul (Topic 12T195). as Bungay Town, whilst in Oxfordshire the well known The Indian Lass Broadside printers, ever eager to Cantwell Family of Standlake call it The Yorkshire sell their wares, were quick to exploit the unusual Blinder. and exotic in their stall ballads. How many rural The False Hearted Knight The False Hearted Knight, labourers, I wonder, dreamed of chasing buffalo on the American plains or of swimming naked with an or Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, to use Professor aborigine girl in a cool Australian river, solely as a Child’s title, is one of the most ancient and mysterious of all the classic ballads. Its origins lie lost in the song? Frank Kidson, who noted several sets Steppes of Central Asia, from whence it result of hearing about such events in a village sing- TSDL261

Ireland (1975). church frescoes are still to be seen depicting aspects ofcame, the ballad’sspreading story. into TheEastern ballad Europe may have where spread medieval Down in the Fields Where the Buttercups Grow with migrating gypsies, many of whom sing it today, Many country singers have Down in the Fields in their repertoire, no doubt as a result of the song being although the version printed by John Pitts in the recorded in the early 1930s by the north country Songs From early 1800s had an important effect in stabilising comedian Charlie Higgins. It’s the kind of song that The Eel’s Foot the ballad’s present form. One elderly gypsy, Mary Traditional Songs and Ann Haynes, can be heard singing her version on many a Suffolk pub. Ballads from the record Songs of the Open Road (Topic 12T253) Suffolk country singers love and is still a firm favourite in while Fred Jordan, a Shropshire farm worker, sings Rambleaway Rambleaway have been 06 a version which he learnt as a boy from a family of collected in Devonshire by the Reverend Baring Gould, in Dorset Versions by the Hammond of Brothers, in can be heard on the record When the Frost is on the Hampshire by George Gardiner, in Somerset by Pumpkingypsies who (Topic were 12T233). camped on Wenlock Edge, which Cecil Sharp and in Yorkshire by Frank Kidson. Peter Kennedy recorded a version for the BBC from Alec The Lost Heiress In the classic ballad of The Gypsy Laddie we hear tell of a rich lady who volunteers to Jumbo, places the song’s activity in Burlington Fair – a leave her castle and family to roam with a wandering corruptionBloomfield of BirminghamFramlingham Fair, in Suffolk the title who, given unlike to the band of gypsies. Our present song, often called The song by early 19th century broadside printers such as Lost Lady Found, tells of an heiress who is stolen by Jackson of Birmingham. Unlike other singers, Jumbo gypsies and, like The Gypsy Laddie, it has survived uses the well known Villikins and Dinah tune for his well in tradition – no doubt on account of the Such set of words. Family of broadside printers, who included it in their late 19th century songsters. The late Harry

includedCox of Norfolk in Peter sang Kennedy’s this song, Folksongs as did ‘Pop’ of Britain Maynard and of Copthorne in Sussex, and Harry’s fine version is TSDL261

The Life of a Man First published by Topic 1975

First I’ll compare (man) to a tree, Which you sometimes all green may see; NotesRecorded by Keith by Tony Summers Engle and Mike Yates Bit suddenly his leafes doe fall MainProduced front by sleeve Tony photograph Engle and Keith by Mike Summers Yates That he was beautify’d withall. Songs From Other front sleeve photographs show Jumbo – centre The Eel’s Foot Traditional These lines, printed by Frances Coules sometime Songs and job on the railways in the 1950s. Ballads from front - member of Theberton quoits team and at his Suffolk blackletter broadside The Life of Man – concerning howduring fickle the his period estate 1646-74, doth stand, form flourishing part of a long like a Tree, Sleeve design by Tony Engle 07 a Vine, or dainty Flower. The comparison of man’s life to that of a tree was not, however, new even in the 17th century. More than two thousand years

the life of man’ and, for all we know, this notion may haveearlier been Homer old then.had written, The Life ‘As of leavesa Man onwas trees, printed such on is numerous 19th century broadsides which possibly explains why it turns up fairly frequently today. I recently recorded a similar version from Harry Holman of Copthorne in Sussex, and this can be heard on the record When Sheepshearing’s Done (Topic 12T254).

Mike Yates x

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Songs From The Eel’s Foot Traditional Songs and Ballads from Suffolk

TOPIC TSDL261 www. topicrecords.co.uk