While trolling my ipod, I noticed that I have several powerful songs about The Great War (WW1), and that’s prompted me to find a few more and put together a playlist or CD on this theme in time for Nov 11.
It’s occurring to me that ww1 songs are like the songs of no other war. We don’t think about world war 1 in the same way(s) we think about other wars, even now. The emotions it provokes in us are quite singular, and that’s what these songs express.
So, I’m looking for suggestions for other songs to fill out my playlist and to check if my observation holds water. Who’s got some other candidates?
One of the pieces I plan to include isn’t a song at all, but a recording of Ted Hughes reading his poem “Six Young Men”. Others likely to be included are Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land, David Olney’s 1917, (probably as covered by Niamh Parsons, because that’s the version I know) and a few others, but these are typical.
Six Young Men
By Ted Hughes
The celluloid of a photograph holds them well –
Six young men, familiar to their friends.
Four decades that have faded and ochre-tinged
This photograph have not wrinkled the faces or the hands.
Though their cocked hats are not now fashionable,
Their shoes shine. One imparts an intimate smile,
One chews a grass, one lowers his eyes, bashful,
One is ridiculous with cocky pride –
Six months after this picture they are all dead.
The one that springs to mind at the moment is Karine Polwart’s version of Will Ye Go Tae Flanders:
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
We’ll get wine and brandy
Sac and sugar candy
Oh will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
Tae see the bonnie soldiers, my Mally O?
They’ll gie the pipes a blaw
Wi’ their kilts and plaids sae braw
Aye the fairest o’ them a’, my Mally O
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
An’ tak the royal shillin’ there, my Mally O?
Will ye tae a foreign shore
For tae hear the cannon roar
And the bloody shouts o’ war, my Mally O?
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
Tae see the bold commanders, my Mally O?
Will ye see the bullets fly
And the soldiers, how they die
And the ladies how they cry, my Mally O?
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
Will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
We’ll get wine and brandy
Sac and sugar candy
Oh will ye go tae Flanders, my Mally O?
You can find it on her album of traditional songs “Fairest Floo’er”
I spent a minute or two googling it, because I know I’ve heard that song before, sung by some guy who’s probably not Karine Polwart.
Like you, I think of it as a ww1 song, but I’m surprised to learn that these words were first published in 1776, in Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, David Herd, ed.. Which seems fairly prescient of him.
I guess there’s been no shortage of blood spilled in that part of Europe over the centuries. The song could be written about any of a dozen conflicts probably.
While I was googling it I came across mention that a version of it is played over an exhibition at one of the museums at Ypres http://www.inflandersfields.be
Might have been John Faulkner who worked with Dolores Keane for many years. They were married at the time. The time of recording together that is, not the War
A really haunting song that speaks to the aftermath of the Great War is "Dancing at Whitsun, " written by John Austin Marshall. There are wonderful versions on record by Jean Redpath, by the trio of Gordon Bok, Ed Trickett, and Ann Mayo Muir, and by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior.
It’s fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen with ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.
The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age will allow,
Through groves of white blossoms, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true-love.
The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow (go) free–
No young men to turn them or pastures go see (seed)
They are gone where the forest of oak trees before
Have gone, to be wasted in battle.
Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There’s a fine roll of honor where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
There’s a straight row of houses in these latter days
All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze.
There’s a field of red poppies (a gift from the Queen)
But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
Another sad musical fact of the First World War was that a lot of localised traditional music and dance was lost with the deaths of the young men who performed. There just weren’t enough left to keep the groundswell of local music going. This was made worse by ‘boys brigades’ where entire villages lost their young men in one group.
Good guess, but further reflection shows it to have been Archie Fisher.
But I’ve owned There was a Maid for years - it’s the one Dolores Keane project that I like whole-heartedly. Her later work has some beautiful singing, but on TWaM her voice, style and material complement each other perfectly. Something’s always out of whack in her later records, IMO. I blame Nashville.
James Keelaghan has a song about the time in the thirties when Canada’s parliament building burned, and had to be rebuilt. The nation was scoured for stonemasons capable of doing the work (Victorian gothic revival with statuary, etc). Most were happy to have several years of work during the depression when not much was being built, but the sad fact was that every one of them were master masons aged 40 and up, because an entire generation of apprentices and trained journeymen had been wiped out in the trenches.
