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SEPTEMBER 2026
The band has just completed one of this year’s two gigs at Leith Hill Place. These ‘action’ photos were taken by Sue mid song and it looks as if I am managing to peacefully sleep through it all!
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Harvest time was of the utmost importance in the agricultural year and many customs grew up round it. The last sheaf to be cut was decorated with flowers and ribbons used in the obscure custom of ‘crying the neck’, which was especially widespread in the West Country. The sheaf was tied round to form a neck. After a lot of shouting ‘My side, my side’ by one farmhand, another shouted, ’I have him, I have him.’ This was taken up by a third, ‘What have ye? What have ye? What have ye?’. A fourth answered, ‘A neck, a neck, a neck.’ Then the farming men and women retired for supper, singing and dancing.
An unusual custom that was celebrated in Surrey at a Kingston-upon-Thames church until the early nineteenth century involved the cracking of nuts during the service on the Sunday before Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 29 September. The cracking noise was often so loud that the minister was forced to stop his reading until things quietened down. The origin of this obscure custom is unknown. Obviously, a cracking time was had by one and all!
I have a deep-rooted aversion to folk song choruses that go ‘Right Fol a Diddle-O, Right Fol a Day’ or similar nonsense. It always sounds as if the singers have forgotten the words or the writer got bored! When looking for a new song to try I skip any, however good the tune and verses may be, if a ‘Fol a Diddle’ chorus follows. So having come across the traditional song ‘The White Hare’, which I had first heard on the 1971 album No Roses by Shirley Collins and the Albion Band (unfortunately with a ‘Fol a Diddle-O’ chorus), it was a relief to find, when researching the song on the ‘Mainly Norfolk’ website, that the words of the version by the Watersons had a proper chorus with proper words and a happy ending. However, the words of my effort are mainly taken from the Martin Carthy version with chorus and other odd bits from the Watersons’. Thankfully folk songs allow one to pick-n-mix from the countless versions that have been collected. My ‘Folk Song for the Month’ can be heard here.
(My thanks in research to the excellent book The English Year by the folklorist Steve Roud.)
—John
All text, images and music samples on this site are copyright © Childe Rolande.
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