Seldom Scene: "Boots of Spanish Leather"

Oh, I'm sailing away, my own true love
I'm sailing away in the morning
Is there something I can send you
From across the sea
From the place where I'll be landing?

There's nothing you can send me, my own true love
There is nothing I'm wishing to be owning
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean

Ah, but I just thought you might want something fine
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona

If I had the stars of the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss
That's all I wish to be owning

I might be gone a long old time
And it's only this I'm asking
Is there something I can send you
To remember me by
To make your time more easy passing?

How can, how can you ask me again?
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I would want today
I would want again tomorrow

Oh, I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from a ship a-sailing
Saying I don't know when
I'll be coming back again
It depends on how I'm feeling

If you, my love, must think that way
I'm sure your mind is a-roaming
I'm sure your thoughts are not with me
But with the country where you're going

So take heed, take heed of the western wind
Take heed of stormy weather
And, yes, there is something you can send back to me
Spanish boots of Spanish leather

--Bob Dylan

Kerfuffle

some high-stepping from Hannah James
with help from Jamie Roberts and Tom and Sam Sweeney
2008 Otley Black Sheep Folk Festival

Karan Casey/Aoife O'Donovan

with Caoimhín Vallely (piano), Kate Ellis (cello), and Robbie Overson (guitar and backing vocals) at The Burren pub in Somerville, MA.
March 21, 2007

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread.
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

--William Butler Yeats ("The Song of the Wandering Aengus")

Pentangle: "Cruel Sister"

Royal Festival Hall, London, England
6/29/08

There lived a lady by the North Sea shore
Two daughters were the babes she bore
One grew as fair as in the sun
So cold, dark grew the elder one

A knight came riding to the ladies' door
He travelled far to be their wooer
He courted one with gloves and rings
But the other he loved above all things

"Oh, sister, sister won't you walk with me
To see the ships sail o'er sea"
And as they walked the windy shore
The dark girl pushed her sister o'er

Sometimes she sank, sometimes she swam
Crying "Sister, reach to me your hand
Oh sister, sister please let me live
And all that's mine I'll surely give

"It's your own true love I want, and more
That thou shalt never come ashore"
And as she floated like a swan
The salt sea bore her body on

Two minstrels walked by the windy strand
They saw her body float to land
They made a harp of her breast bone
Whose sound would melt a heart of stone

They took three strands of her yellow hair
And with them strung this harp so rare
They took this harp to her father's hall
There to play before them all

But when they set the harp upon a stone
It began to play alone
The first song sang a doleful sound
"The bride her younger sister drowned"

The second string, when this they tried
"In terror sits the black haired bride"
The third string sang beneath their bow
"And now her tears will surely flow"

--Child Ballad #10

Kathy Mattea: "Dark As A Dungeon"

2008 Philadelphia Folk Festival

The midnight, the morning, or the middle of day,
Is the same to the miner who labors away.
Where the demons of death often come by surprise,
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive.
It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines,
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
--Merle Travis

Joni Mitchell: BBC Television (1970)

30 minutes
BBC Television
September 1970

Bruce Springsteen: "Follow That Dream"

Bridge School Benefit Concert,
Mountain View, Ca.
10/13/86
with Nils Lofgrin and Danny Federici

John Prine: "Paradise"

then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

Tom Paxton: "George W. Told The Nation"

2008 Philadelphia Folk Festival

Dougie MacLean: "Marching Mystery"

The Fringe By The Sea Festival,
North Berwick, Scotland
August 2008