Following his Black Crow Blues which we premiered a few weeks back, here’s the second in a series of three videos by veteran English folk & blues artist Ian A Anderson filmed recently at the Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol.
This one has particular significance for Ian as Ralph Vaughan Williams collected it in Horsham, Sussex, in 1904 from Ian’s great grandmother Emily Agnes Stears. As Ian told Jeanette Leech in fRoots earlier this summer, he’d noticed that credit given by Shirley Collins in her notes to a re-issue of her recording of it and rang his late mother, the family’s genealogist. “She said ‘Well, there was Ernest Alfred, born in the 19th century, so I’ll see what I can find out’. About a day later she rang me back in great excitement. ‘It wasn’t Ernest Alfred. It was Emily Agnes. It was your great-grandmother!’ followed by the killer revelation, ‘yes, she did used to sing those old songs you’re interested in!’”
Quite how the name of James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl Of Derwentwater, changed to Lord Allenwater by the time the song had reached Sussex isn’t known: Jim Moray has recently released a Cambridgeshire version called Lord Ellenwater. But it’s a true story of how the subject lost his head in 1716 after being on the wrong side in the Jacobite rebellion.
Ian’s next gig is part of the Weirdshire series at Babar Cafe, Union Street, Hereford on the Autumn Equinox, Sunday 22nd September (3pm).