Recorded London, 1960;
Engineered by Bernard Mattimore;
Supervision by Colin Pomroy and Paul Carter;
Produced by Paul Carter;
Cover design by Juliet Renny, used by courtesy of Penguin Books Ltd

The songs on this record were chosen from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, Penguin Books, 1959. Sadly, this gem of a book has been out of print for a long time, but in 2003 it was finally re-published by the EFDSS as Classic English Folk Songs, revised by Malcolm Douglas, with a new bibliography by David Atkinson and a foreword by Martin Carthy. All songs originally appeared in The Journal of the Folk Song Society or its successor, The Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

See also the Fellside anthology A Selection From the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.

Musicians

A.L. Lloyd: vocals;
Alf Edwards: English concertina [1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15-16]

Tracks

Side 1

1. The Devil and the Ploughman (Roud 160; Child 378) (2.09)
2. The False Bride (Roud 154; G/D 6:1198) (1.48)
3. A Sailor’s Life (Roud 273) (2.44)
4. Rounding the Horn (Roud 4706; Henry H539) (2.02)
5. Salisbury Plain (Roud 1487) (2.57)
6. One Night As I Lay on My Bed (Roud 672) (2.00)
7. George Collins (Roud 147; Child 85) (3.22)
8. The Gaol Song (Roud 1077) (2.18)

Side 2

9. The Whale-Catchers (Roud 3291) (1.50)
10. The Trees They Grow So High (Roud 31; Laws O35; G/D 6:1222) (2.35)
11. Ye Mar’ners All (Roud 1191) (2.32)
12. Six Dukes Went A-Fishing (Roud 78) (2.30)
13. The Grey Cock (Roud 179; Child 248) (4.29)
14. The Sailor From Dover (Roud 180; Laws P9; G/D 6:1219; Henry H72) (2.33)
15. Lovely Joan (Roud 592) (2.32)
16. The Gentleman Soldier (Roud 178; G/D 7:1471) (2.20)

All tracks trad. arr. A.L. Lloyd

Review

This review is from Gramophone, February 1961:

Now that folk singers are edging their way into the Top Twenty and one can hear Strawberry Fair in the most unlikely places, there seems to be even more confusion than ever about the best way of singing a folk song. Should the song come first and the singer second, or vice versa? In the case of traditional British folk songs, where anonymity seems ingrained even in the lyrics, the former policy seems the right one. Certainly it’s the one followed by A.L. Lloyd on Collector Git JGB5001, A Selection From the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, a book, of course, which Lloyd and the late Ralph Vaughan Williams edited together. Perhaps the foremost authority on folk music living in this country, A.L. Lloyd adopts, understandably enough, a highly scholarly approach, and his performances here could be classed as documentary, exactly the kind of thing, in fact, that one would expect to find as an appendix to this book. This attitude, it seems to me, is entirely correct, and I’m happy to say that the disc contains sixteen rare and interesting songs, most of them sung unaccompanied but with Alf Edwards playing concertina on about half a dozen. Among the most interesting tracks are The False Bride, The Grey Cock (a bird with Byzantine forefathers), The Whale-Catchers, and The Gaol Song, one of the very few specimens of an English prison song. But the finest poetry is to be found in Six Dukes Went A-Fishing, supposedly about the murdered first Duke of Suffolk and containing such stanzas as “Black was their mourning,/ And white were the wands,/ And so yellow were the flamboys/ That they carried in their hands.” Lloyd’s impersonal style of singing makes the sharp imagery of a song like this stand out even more boldly. After criticising Collector Records quite sharply on one or two occasions in the past for indifferent recording quality, incidentally, may I congratulate them on the great improvement shown on this, one of their very newest releases.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Alistair Banfield for the Folk Lyrics LP cover picture.

Recorded on 7 April 1960;
Engineer: Bernard Mattimore;
Supervision: Paul Carter;
Recording: Colin Pomroy;
Production: P. Martinez;
Cover Design: Charles Deal;
Notes: A.L. Lloyd

Musicians

A.L. Lloyd: vocals;
Alf Edwards: English concertina [1, 3-4]

Tracks

Side 1

1. Broomfield Hill (Roud 34; Child 43; G/D 2:322; Henry H135) (2.41)
2. Geordie (Roud 90; Child 209; G/D 2:249) (2.32)

Side 2

3. The Outlandish Knight (Roud 21; Child 4; G/D 2:225; Henry H163) (4.07)
4. The Whale-Catchers (Roud 3291) (1.50)

All tracks trad. arr. A.L. Lloyd

This is a CD reissue of the above LP A Selection From the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs and EP England & Her Folk Songs.

All songs have been taken from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, selected and edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams & A.L. Lloyd, Penguin, 1959. Sadly, this gem has been out of print for a long time, but in 2003 it has finally been re-published by the EFDSS as Classic English Folk Songs, revised by Malcolm Douglas and with a new bibliography by David Atkinson and a foreword by Martin Carthy.

See also the Fellside anthology A Selection From the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.

Musicians

A.L. Lloyd: vocals;
Alf Edwards: English concertina [1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17-19]

Tracks

1. The Devil and the Ploughman (Roud 160; Child 378) (2.09)
2. The False Bride (Roud 154; G/D 6:1198) (1.48)
3. A Sailor’s Life (Roud 273) (2.44)
4. Rounding the Horn (Roud 4706; Henry H539) (2.02)
5. Salisbury Plain (Roud 1487) (2.57)
6. One Night As I Lay on My Bed (Roud 672) (2.00)
7. George Collins (Roud 147; Child 85) (3.22)
8. The Gaol Song (Roud 1077) (2.18)
9. The Whale-Catchers (Roud 3291) (1.50)
10. The Trees They Grow So High (Roud 31; Laws O35; G/D 6:1222) (2.35)
11. Ye Mar’ners All (Roud 1191) (2.32)
12. Six Dukes Went A-Fishing (Roud 78) (2.30)
13. The Grey Cock (Roud 179; Child 248) (4.29)
14. The Sailor From Dover (Roud 180; Laws P9; G/D 6:1219; Henry H72) (2.33)
15. Lovely Joan (Roud 592) (2.32)
16. Geordie (Roud 90; Child 209; G/D 2:249) (2.32)
17. The Gentleman Soldier (Roud 178; G/D 7:1471) (2.20)
18. The Outlandish Knight (Roud 21; Child 4; G/D 2:225; Henry H163) (4.07)
19. Broomfield Hill (Roud 34; Child 43; G/D 2:322; Henry H135) (2.41)

All tracks trad. arr. A.L. Lloyd