3. Seven Yellow Gypsies

Tuning: EACGBE, Capo: 3rd

Child ballad #200. I've known this song for a long time in the back of my mind without really knowing it and when I started playing around with the chords, it seemed to fall into place without any trouble. The simple unresolved chord structure paired with the warmth that I find the dropped-C tuning and the slightly blue-noted melody brings a certain soft feel to the song that had a definite impact as I rewrote the final stanza, a twist that makes the story more realistic, though real it most certainly isn't!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gypsy_Laddie

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/child-ballads/ch200.htm

http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/shirley.collins/songs/sevenyellowgipsies.html

2. Rights of Man

Tuning: DADGAD, Capo: 5th

This hornpipe, most commonly associated with the Irish session may have been written by a Scottish piper called James Hill. Hill lived in Northumberland for most of his short life (1811-1853) and left a large body of work behind him. This tune is thought to refer to the book of the same name written by Thomas Paine which is a political work supporting the use of political uprising if the government does not safegurad the natural rights and national interests of its people (please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Man).

For more reading, look at this thread from mudcat: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=5530 as it includes information about a set of lyrics not from the same tune but with the same name.

1. Handsome Dark Lover

Tuning: DADGBE, Capo: 5th

A nice little ditty to start the CD off, a story of a young lady poisoning her former lover's drinks around the country!

I heard this track on Tim Van Eyken and Rob Harbron's 2001 release "One Sunday Afternoon" (BEJOCD-34) and was instantly struck by the beauty of the tune called "orange in bloom" and the playful nature of the lyrics, it was a song that instantly brought that most wonderous of thoughts: 'I have to learn this' to my mind... alas the push of my university work was not so kind to my desires and the song was pushed to the back of my mind until playing with my melodeon friend one day when he started up the tune. After a couple of times around I had it firmly in my head and asked for the CD to be posted up from my homeland of Dorset to Bath to learn the words, the folk process had then begun...

Looking for the tune, it appeared in two guises: the original is a jig used for morris

but the timing has also been altered to create "The Sherborne Waltz".

The change to the original was made by Rod Stradling, then with the Old Swan Band, he wrote in 1995 of the change: "I put the 'Sherborne Waltz' together while failing to get to grips with 'Orange in Bloom' - it has been so widely played in the intervening years that I feel rather sorry for the original!"

The latter is used for the song which I subsequently swung and jazzed up upon the original, such is the aural process!

more information at:

Tune of the month: http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=5cd4e2e80de72edcb95aa57cbf4de5b7&topic=3405.0

The Old Swan Band: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swan_Band

The Sherborne Waltz (despite what the website says!): http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=www.lesession.co.uk/music/lgsdmweb/0078&p=y

P.S: Sherborne is lovely... I'm pretty sure that nothing that happens in this song could possibly have happened there.