Articles about 'British Folk Songs'
November 17th, 2009
Dan wrote,
I went to school in Chilton (England) when I was six (1972), in California now, and my class sang this song, but that is the only line I can recall, I even recall the melody…
“And when the journey was all over /
The ship sailed for the /
White Cliffs of Dover.”
Anybody? Was it...
October 18th, 2008
I’ve talked in the past about how all the kids in my neighborhood loved The Hearse Song when I was growing up. (We called the song The Worms Crawl In the Worms Crawl Out.) Evidently, we weren’t the only ones who loved this song. I’ve gotten many people writing in about...
October 29th, 2006
I’ve been discussing the origin of the phrase “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out”.
Yesterday, I posted the old nursery rhyme “There Was a Woman All Skin and Bone”, which contains the phrase.
Here’s another version of There Was a Woman All Skin and Bone, this one a song, (sung by me!). ...
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October 28th, 2006
Since it’s the Halloween time of year, and I know that a lot of people out there are interested in the line, “The worms crawled in, the worms crawled out”, I’m going to talk a little more about the earliest sightings of this line in print.
In my last blog entry, I mentioned that a similar...
October 26th, 2006
Last year I posted a version of The Hearse Song that I sang as a kid. Many other people also remember this song. If you’re interested, you can read all the versions of The Worms Crawl in, The Worms Crawl Out that people sent me over the past year.
Meanwhile, I found one of...
December 22nd, 2005
The Wassail carol seems to originate in Gloucestershire, England and it’s been around at least since the 17th or 18th century. “Wassail!” is a toast, literally meaning “be in good health”. The reply to this is traditionally “Drink-hail!”
Wassailers are carolers who go from door to door carrying a wassail-bowl and singing carols. ...
November 2nd, 2005
Today is All Souls’ Day.
In parts of England it used to be customary, on this day, for children to go from door to door begging for pastries called soul-cakes. Sometimes they were given fruit or coins instead. Just like Halloween and The Day of the Dead, symbolically these were treats...
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