Playlist:
* Home This Christmas Tom Jackson 3:39
* Newgrange Tim O’Brian with Heritage 3:05
* The Shropshire Wakes Custer LaRue and the Baltimore Consort 5:51
* The St. Stephen’s Day Murders Elvis Costello with The Chieftains 3:21
Music notes
Home This Christmas This was the opening song on the 2001 Sampler. It claimed that place while I was preparing for a trip back to Minnesota to spend the holidays that year with my parents, family and old friends That was only my second Christmas season back in Minnesota since I moved to B.C. in 1970. The song is performed by the celebrated indigenous Canadian actor Tom Jackson born on the Cree One Arrow Reserve in Saskatchewan, near Batoche. He wrote it in collaboration with K.J. Friesen and J. Park-Wheeler. The song is from a 1996 album called Home This Christmas album that he privately produced for The Huron Carole.
Jackson has an exemplary reputation in Canada as a philanthropist. His generosity perhaps was inspired by the fact that his early life did not appear promising, He dropped out of school at the age of 15 and spent the next several years living on the streets of Winnipeg. But after his acting career took off in 1987 he founded and still leads the ever-evolving annual Huron Carole touring Christmas concerts to raise funds for local foodbanks. He also serves as an ambassador for the Canadian Red Cross, raising awareness and funds for their Emergency Management program, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a former member of its advisory committee
Newgrange Newgrange is a very large circular mound structure in County Meath, Ireland. It is more than 5000 years old – over 2000 years older than Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids! Each year on the winter solstice, sunlight enters through a small window to light the far wall of the burial chamber. Even the much-later Romans had no equivalent technology for determining the time of the winter solstice. The chorus of the song is:
The days get shorter and shorter and thenA window in the stone lets the light shine inOn the darkest day it brightens the tombIt pushes the old year into the new.
It was this song that began to lead me into expanding the scope of my seasonal music samplers to include songs celebrating the Winter Solstice and other midwinter holidays. It was written by Tim O'Brien and Kit Swaggert for Heritage’s 1998 album A Christmas Heritage. Tim is the lead singer and mandolin player for the band Heritage, which seems to be the name for an album-specific Six Degrees Records house band. The otehr band members are Philip Aaberg on piano; Darol Anger, violin; Alison Brown, banjo; Mike Marshall, guitar; and Todd Phillips, bass.
The Shropshire Wakes (also known as Hey for Christmas) This tale of merriment and mayhem is from an anonymous late 17th century broadside, a copy of which is in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. The broadside indicates the tune to which it should be sung was the popular and well-known (at that time) Dargason, that had been included in Playfair's The English Dancing Master which had been published in 1651.
The broadside also says: “Printed for Phillip Brooksby, at the Golden Ball, neer the Hospital-gate in West Smith-field.” I presume that the Golden Ball was a pub and that Phillip Brooksby was a regular performer either in the pub or in front of it. The Bodleian has a number of broadsides for other songs with a similar attribution. I suspect that he probably wrote this song but that is not proof.
Broadsides were commonly sold by what we now call buskers or touring performers. They were equivalent to the way that their modern counterparts sometimes sell self-published CDs. There were no copyrights in those days. Performers frequently heard a song they liked in one town, bought a broadside with its lyrics from the singer for a penny, then re-published it in their own home towns to sing and sell to their patrons. Such broadsides were the first vehicle by which local songs could spread nationwide without the evolution and polishing through the folk process that inevitably comes with oral transmission.
It is performed here by Custer LaRue with The Baltimore Consort, recorded in 1994 on their Bright Day Star album. The Baltimore Consort is a six person ensemble specializing in music of the 16th through 18th centuries, and they meticulously perform it on instruments and in styles that are authentic to the time period. The lyrics (with their original spellings from the broadside) are:
Come Robin, Ralph, and little Harry,And merry Thomas at our GreenWhere he shall meet with Bridget and Sary,The finest young wenches that ere were seen.
Chorus (repeat after alternate verses) Then hey for Christmas once a year Where we have Cakes, both ale and beer And to our Christmas feast there comes Young men and Maids to shake their bums.
For Gammer Nichols has gotten a CustardMy Neighbour Wood a roasted PigWidow Franklin hath beer & mustardAnd at the Thatcht house there is good swig.
There's a fidler for to play ev'ry DanceWhen the young Lads and Lasses meetWith which the Men & Maids will pranceThe violer before them down the street.
The Morris dancers will be readyMeat and Drink enough to lade yeAnd in a fools dress will be little NeddyTo entertain our Christmas Lady.
And when that they shall all appearThat are to be at our brave WakesTo eat up the Meat, and drink up the BeerAnd to play at cards for Ale and Cakes.
Then Grace and sweetest WinniferAnd all the Lasses on the placeWhen that the young men they have metSee how the Devil’s dream they'll trace.
They side and then turn ‘round aboutAnd briskly trip it to each otherAnd when they have danced it outThey presently call for another.
Ralph leading up with Sue in 's handAnd Bridget being by Robins sideYou'd laugh to see how they do standWith their heads together and feet so wide.
The dance being done the fiddler plays KissumWhich Dick and Harry soon did soAnd Randal the Taylor could not missumBut he must kiss his Partner too.
Then they sat down to their good cheerAnd pleasant were both Maids and MenAnd having dined and drank their beerThey rose and went to dance again.
Thus they did dance from noon till nightAnd were as merry as Cup and CanTill they had tyred the Fidfler quiteAnd the sweat down their buttocks ran.
Then they went to the little thatcht houseAnd plaid at Cards a game or twoAnd with the good Liquor did so carouseThat they made drunk both Tom and Hugh.
The rest unto Hot-cockles wentBut Neddy gave Nelly a blow too hardThat all together by the ears they wentAnd all their sporting soon was mar'd.
The Pots flew about the glasses were brokeDoll was scaring Mol by the QuifeRichard was pulling John by the throatAt which the Hostess drew her knife.
They took the Fidler and broke his pateAnd threw his fiddle into the fireAnd drunkenly went home so lateThat most of them fell in the mire.
The men went away and paid ne'r a groatBut left the Maids to pay for their cheerBetty was forced to pawn her last coatAnd Sary to leave her Garget there.
And so my merry ballad is EndedWhen the Maids come again to these wakesThey'll first see the young lads manners mendedAnd make them pay for ale and Cakes.
The St. Stephen’s Day Murders This song is from the Chieftains’ 1991 album The Bells of Dublin, which had famous guest stars on nearly every track. Elvis Costello collaborated with the Chieftains’ Paddy Maloney in writing this song, which plays on the relationship between the Irish luck-visit tradition of wren hunting on the day after Christmas and murderous fantasies caused by family gathering fatigue. I imagine that my parents may have felt this way after my having taken over their couch for that year’s Christmas season. The lyrics are available online here.
Sampler-making recollections
This year’s Sampler was the product of the first big technology change I had for this Christmas music project: I switched to putting my samplers onto CDs rather than on cassette tapes. Besides enabling 20 more minutes of music and saving on my mailing costs, it gave me a convenient format for enclosing liner notes that were less likely to become separated from the music. I had decided to make them a permanent part of my annual compilations. The CD format was also more suitable than cassettes for charitable fund-raising since they were clearly replacing tape as the favoured music medium.
The compilation process now involved hooking up my record player’s amplifier to my computer and using it to rip MP3 files from the source vinyl, tape or CD, and then using my computer and software called Nero to compile the album and burn it onto CDs. Since copies were now so much easier to make I began giving them to more acquaintances, such as my work colleagues, my doctor, dentist and auto mechanic, and adding a CD to my tip for servers in restaurants.
In that first year with the new media I was still planning and making selections by listening to the vinyls, tapes and CDs, but by the next year it had evolved into a process of screening new acquisition albums for candidate selections and then ripping, organizing and storing the promising tracks on my computer (and saving the source albums for future additional gleaning of goodies that I missed the first time around, and to have their liner notes for future reference.) The new technology brought another advantages – I could adjust volume levels more easily, seamlessly abridge songs when needed, and improve audio quality of some selections using sophisticated music-mixing software called Goldwave (which I still use.)
That transition was difficult for me, both because of the expanded scope of the annual project related to adding liner notes and the high learning curves with the new software. But it was aided by the fact that the planning and music selection for this 2001 sampler had begun even before the 2000 one was completed. That was the beginning of music selection, research and writing for my samplers becoming a hobby scattered throughout the year rather than just a pre-Christmas project.
I thought that the journey-through-time approach had worked well for the Millennium Sampler, enabling an interesting flow for the music as well as creating opportunities for putting more substance about the cultural context of the songs in my liner notes. So this 2001 Sampler was variation on that. It began with modern new-country style music, then went back to its musical roots via rural American and then British folk music. But instead of going back further, this temporal journey only went back to one Renaissance song. Then the selections come back forward in time via professionally composed courtly and then urban music and pop songs.
