The song does not remain the same

Flora Day is like a magnet to anyone who's ever lived in the old Cornish town of Helston. Every year on May 8th (though it's May 5th this year to accommodate Sundays, Bank Holidays and a Coronation) we're all drawn back home like salmon to their spawning grounds or Mr Spock having to return to Vulcan for the Pon-Farr. Luckily we won't die if we don't get there. But we're always a little sadder if we can't. Like many folk festivals, Flora Day defines the town's identity and binds local people together, young and old.

Sadly, I can't be there today. I had planned to be. However, I sustained a very serious spinal injury some 25 years ago that resulted in cracked vertebrae, two prolapsed discs and nerve damage in my left leg. I was off work for nearly eight months but physio got me back on my feet. These days it causes me no more than a mild ache in my back, occasional sciatica, a 'frozen' left thigh and the odd stumble on stairs when the signals from my brain to my leg get muddled. It does mean that I have to avoid anything high impact and I shouldn't sit or stand for too long. So that's how I live my life and, generally, my back is not a problem. However, the day before yesterday I suffered a silly mishap with a stepladder and fell from the great height of three feet onto my left leg and jarred my back. The result is that I am now walking about bent over like a little old man who didn't quite make it to the loo in time. And it means that I couldn't drive to Cornwall to take part in Flora Day today. I'm gutted. I've also had to let down the mayor and the town's twinning committee as I was due to give a talk for them, dammit. 

I will have to watch the event on Youtube later while munching anti-inflammatories and feeling sorry for myself. 

Sigh. 

I wrote about Flora Day back in one of my earlier blogs (here) so if you want to know what the day is about, click on this link. 

In the meantime, I thought I'd talk about the music that accompanies the various dances that take place throughout the day. 

And why Helston's Furry Dance tune has very little in common with The Floral Dance made famous (infamous?) by Terry Wogan.

   

In 1911, a London composer called Katie Moss visited Helston on Flora Day and, on the train home, she wrote a song about her experience based on her remembrance of the tunes she’d heard. She also added quite a few original new passages and wrote some lyrics (traditional Furry Dances have no words). She called it The Floral Dance and had it published by Chappell & Co. And yes, she muddled up 'Furry Dance' with 'Flora Day' - the Helston tune and event has never been called 'The Floral Dance'. 

It has since been recorded by many artists. In 1976 the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band released it as a single and, by Christmas 1977, it had sold half a million copies and was only kept off the Number One position by Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre. Then, the following year, a vocal version was recorded by Terry Wogan and the Hanwell Band, which reached number 21 on the UK singles chart.

Suffice to say, Helston Town Band has never played the Katie Moss song, if for no other reason than it would be impossible to dance to using the traditional step pattern. If you compare the two, you'll see that they are quite different and share just a couple of musical phrases.

   

That said, they do both have a common ancestor - an old folk melody of unknown authorship that appears all over the UK, and not just for use in Furry Dances. For example, in Lancashire, many Morris sides dance to a collection of tunes called the Godley Hill Set and one of them is very similar to the Furry Dance. There’s also a folk tune from Derbyshire called the Winster Processional Morris March that is strikingly similar. Indeed, the great folk music and dance collector, Cecil Sharp, viewed the Furry Dance and the Derbyshire tunes as one and the same and called the tune The Long Morris. He suspected, but couldn’t prove, that Cornish miners had taken it with them when migrating north to work in the Peak District’s lead mines. 

Interestingly, a similar thing happened to that other great Flora Day tune, the Hal an Tow. The Hal an Tow is how Helston celebrates the coming of Summer. Taking place between two of the formal Furry Dances, the Hal an Tow is performed seven times around the town on Flora Day. It's part mumming play, part guising and all noisy fun. And the various dramatic tableaux that are acted out - St George defeating the dragon, Spaniards attempting to sack Newlyn, St Piran arriving from Ireland on a millstone, St Michael defeating the Fiend etc. - are accompanied by the Hal an Tow song. Here's one of last year's performances.

    

However, the version of the song that has been recorded by bands like The Watersons, Oysterband, Albion Band, Jon Boden etc. is quite different from the Helston original. 

To begin with, it features verses that have never appeared in the Helston song. There may be a simple explanation for this. 

In 1954 Reginald Nettel’s influential book Sing a Song of England was published. In a chapter on May Day and the Green Man, Nettel quotes from several songs and, on Page 55, the clumsy layout makes it look as if the ‘Take the scorn’ verse (which are more closely associated with the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance from Staffordshire) are attached to the start of the Hal An Tow reproduced below it. 

It seems to be the case that someone – probably one of the Waterson family - made the mistake of assuming the page showed all of one song. As Norman Waterson herself explained in the accompanying booklet to the band’s 2004 live concert CD, A River of Song: 

‘We never heard the song as it's sung in Helston. It isn't sung the same. We got the words from somewhere, [...] and we sort of remembered the tune as it was by these two old men who sung it on  “As I Roved Out” (note: A programme on the BBC World Service). We put this tune to these words and now people sing it and they think it's part of the Helston song. It's not! In fact we've had people from Helston say "Why do you sing it all wrong?" It was because we didn't know how it was sung, basically!' 

It’s an easy mistake to have made with mention of horns in one verse and chasing bucks and does in another. However, the mistake was made and, as time went on and people performed it, this version became the most commonly recorded by modern folk artists. And Mike Waterson also wrote a brand new intro verse, which has become part of the folk 'standard'. 

Oh, and as a point of order, in Helston the 'Tow' has always been pronounced to rhyme with 'cow' and not to rhyme with 'foe'. The Helston version has these lyrics:

Note: A new verse about St Piran was added in 2005.

What all of this means is that, just like The Floral Dance, the popular recorded version of Hal An Tow differs considerably from Helston’s traditional Hal An Tow. 

But that doesn’t necessarily make the other version, or any other variant, less valid – folk songs of indeterminate authorship belong to everyone. And, indeed, this version (below) popularised by the influential Boss Morris side (who performed at The Brits this year with Wet Leg), is different again as it incorporates the Watersons' version with a the traditional version and replaces Aunt Mary Moses with a character called Jacky O-Green:

Folk music and folk festivals are created by the people for the people and they mutate and adapt to fit with the attitudes and mores of the times in which they are performed. They don't 'belong' to anyone and if they stagnate, they lose their relevance and die. 

However, Helston’s long association with both songs - which does go back for hundreds of years -  means that the town can lay claim to owning the oldest living versions of both and, therefore, the 'originals'.

Now, back to the anti-inflammatories and painkillers.

Next year, Helston. 

Next year I'll be there.