HORKSTOW GRANGE

1. The Old Turf Fire

(3,53  'post traditional' song written by Johnny Patterson in the late 19th Century)
 
Album Notes: I used to hear this song when I was a child. “The hearth swept clean” - domestic bliss, my mother's pride and joy. I live near the boglands in the midlands of Ireland now and burn the stuff. There is a spirit and an art in the burning and storing of turf that warms and inspired:

“Confounds all reckoning by sun
Or star as turf-smoke drifts,
Blue bitterness at dusk, and cabins
Kneel in clusters to the dark.”
(Norman Dugdale, an Englishman who lived in Ireland for nearly 50 years).

2. The Tricks of London

(2.42 written by Bob Johnson)

Album notes -  They're coming to take me away, ha ha! But they won't find me—oh no!—because I've got a London Travel Information ‘Journey Planner’ (including a ‘places of interest’ list and ‘London's airport connections—made simple’); together with a one-day Family Travelcard for up to two adults travelling with between one and four children (‘groups do not need to be related, but must travel together all times’), valid in Zones 1 & 2. But I'm up to their tricks—oh yes!
Bob introduced it live as a 'neurotic song'. It worked much better live in my opinion. 

3. Horkstow Grange

(2.06 Traditional lyrics, melody and arrangement by Peter Knight)

Album notes - We are still asked where the name of the band comes from, so here it is: The Ballad of Horkstow Grange. Steeleye Span, a waggoner who ruined his life because of an incident with John Bowlin. Little did he know that his name would live on.

4. Lord Randall

(4.14 Traditional. Child 12. Arranged by Bob Johnson with added chorus and melody)

Album notes - The entire song consists of a tense dialogue between Lord Randall and his mother, during which dawns the awful realisation that he has been poisoned by his lover and is going to die. But why did she poison him? Why is his mother's questioning so quick and skilful at reaching the diagnosis? Did she collude with his girlfriend? Why is Lord Randall so ready to give up and die? Is it the knowledge of the betrayal that has removed his will to live? We don't know; Lord Randall doesn't know and he doesn't care. He is sick to the heart and he just wants to lie down.

5. Erin Gra Mo Chroi 

(6.13 Traditional. Introduced by Gay Woods)

Album notes - My brother Terry Corcoran taught me this song—he spent many years in the U.S.A. I then saw a TV thing on the lives of Irish women emigrants to America and how they navigated their lives when they reached there. Their loneliness for their families, sisters and mothers inspired me to sing this song from the feminist viewpoint.
When played live the instrumental at the end is played for an extended period

6. Queen Mary / Hunsden House

(3.05 Traditional)

Album notes (Bob) - This ring-game of little girls, in which the action is suited to the words sung, in a relic of Scottish ballad belonging to the close of the 18^th Century. The tune is a variant of The Band at a Distance.

The “music box” tune in between the verses is called Hunsden House. Peter used this tune to accompany the 1997 Steeleye live track 'Room For Company' which did you appear on any album

7. Bonny Birdy 

(6.15 Traditional. Child 82. Arranged by Peter Knight) 

Album notes -  The main part of this Scottish ballad is the same as 'The Little Musgrave'  (Child 81) In this story, the false knight gives his lover a bird, and instructs her to feed it, and play with it. She does neither, so the bird flies off to spill the beans. A box of chocolates would have been safer.

8. Bonny Irish Boy

(3.43 Traditional. Introduced by Gay Woods)

Gay - "His beauty so entangled me" and may it always be so.....

9. I Wish That I Never Was Wed

(2.53 Introduced by Gay Woods. Written in the 1940's)

Album notes - Again, thanks to my brother Terry Corcoran, who played me the wonderful late Delia Murphy singing this song one morning in his kitchen … I heard it as if from a scratchy, gravelly distance and thought how I'd like to sing the song, but imagined that I could never learn to remember all those ridiculously hilarious words …!

10. Australia

(3.36 Traditional. Introduced and arranged by Bob)

Album notes - Initially, people were sent there as a punishment. Later, in the 1950's, families were offered financial assistance to go there and settle. Now, it is a heavily advertised holiday destination, a mere day's flight from Luton airport to the Barrier Reef. This song is dedicated to Nigel Pegrum, our ex-drummer, who “fell in with a damsel” and now lives there.

11. One True Love 

(4.12 Traditional lyrics Based on Child 78 but arranged and introduced by Tim Harries using a new melody?)

More commonly known by its Child ballad name 'The Unquiet Grave' which was of course recorded by Steeleye later on the 'Cogs, Wheel's and Lovers' album using a more traditional arrangement. 
Album notes -  The sources are The Unquiet Grave, (spooky old English song), Lovely Joan and a small fragment of Lowlands of Holland. The inspiration came largely from Borrowed Time by Paul Monette, a book you may be familiar with.

12. The Parting Glass

(3.08 Traditional, Introduced by Gay Woods)

Album notes -  It was the picture of the Chinese teapot in Colm Ó Lochlainn's 'Irish Street Ballads' that attracted me to this song—then, of course, it took on another meaning in later life…