top of page
MAT WILLIAMS
MUSICIAN & SONGWRITER
![Throwback Thursday: The Lincolnshire Poacher
We’re taking a look back at Mat’s previous work, starting with his successful Traditional Folk Album: Full English. Today’s TBT: The Lincolnshire Poacher
This is an old song, first published in 1775 but much older than this in the oral tradition. The words are remarkably consistent throughout their geographical wanderings - Cecil Sharp collected it in Shropshire - but I think songs with a specific place-name tend to stay constant, as if the repetition of the name anchors them and gives them validity.
The tune is used as the regimental quick march for the Royal Lancashire Regiment and the Royal Anglian Regiment, who are known as “The Poachers” - what else? It’s a fine tune for the purpose, with a rousing beat which is much needed. Soldiers doing a ceremonial quick march are a sight to behold - they look like a very long centipede. The fingers (and toes) of the people watching must be crossed extra hard that no-one mis-times a step: the pile-up would be considerable.
Everyone would know the words to the first line:
“When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire.”
No false modesty for this regiment.
The words are fairly conventional for any folk song about lads up to no good. Whether it’s poaching or piracy they are mostly self-congratulatory, as they are here.
[Continued in Comments]](https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.75761-15/466935454_17882630085169159_7019455788333798184_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=18de74&_nc_ohc=qDTF2OyaL5AQ7kNvgH3z58c&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=AX2HT0qFHzr1y37my8pGzpc&oh=00_AYC8wxTd0iWASeOSp2muSzcjJXUcfn4H47Qvw0-L3EDROw&oe=67567162)
![Throwback Thursday: The Mermaid
We’re taking a look back at Mat’s previous work, starting with his successful Traditional Folk Album: Full English. Today’s TBT: The Mermaid
Many and varied are the versions of this song: some long, ballad-like and sorrowful, some like this - cheerful, short and not making a lot of sense. There is no real story to it at all. Maybe the narrative got lost in the pub where this version obviously belongs.
It does have a lot of the common features of most sea songs though - the ones that aren’t about pirates or battles, that is - in that very soon up pops a mermaid. There are lots of half-and-half creatures in folklore and travellers tales on land as well as at sea. Werewolves and the eerie “selkie” legends of the Scottish islands are shape-shifters rather than permanent, as the mermaid is, but half-and-half nonetheless.
So popular was the idea of the mermaid that it appears in all sorts of unrelated places, Elizabethan needlepoint for example, where she floats in mid-air with three blue wavy lines underneath her to indicate the sea. She is a vacant-faced creature, holding a comb and a glass at unnatural angles; not very alluring.
Being alluring was the mermaid’s job really. Whether she is a siren or Lorelei, singly or in multiples, she was there to lure ships on the rocks where they were wrecked. This is one of the explanations this version leaves out. Maybe you are just meant to know.
There is supposedly a real origin for the mermaid - the dugong or manatee, which does sometimes rear itself half out of the water. It is an unlovely creature and the sailors who reported it as a beautiful maiden must have been very drunk or blinded with sea-spray.
[Continued in Comments]](https://scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/465684468_1634964793748783_1922615546832829451_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=18de74&_nc_ohc=5avNqbmcv4oQ7kNvgH045jE&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=AX2HT0qFHzr1y37my8pGzpc&oh=00_AYC0yKdxZE2hO-Ta1_pSDMCNoJeCYUkACrQ4eulRFNzhpw&oe=67568E61)
![Throwback Thursday: King Henry
We’re taking a look back at Mat’s previous work, starting with his successful Traditional Folk Album: Full English. Today’s TBT: King Henry
There are many old songs about supernatural beasts, shape-shifting and miraculous conclusions, but this is one of the best. One of the themes is the old concept of “courtesy” which did not mean remembering to say “please” and “thank you” and helping old ladies across the road but “courtesy” as in “of the court,” kingly.
The king, or emperor or the local squire had a duty to treat those below him in the social system politely because that was the mark of the master. Also woven through the tale is the old law of taking in the stranger. When the roads were bad and the wild forests dangerous, when journeys were made on foot or horseback, any traveller in trouble - “benighted” in its literal sense, could ask for food and shelter and be given it. This rule applied anywhere that travel was difficult or dangerous, from scarcely populated desert regions to the old Wild West of America as many a Hollywood film testified. It was a good system on the whole: occasionally things turned out not so well but you never knew when you might be in dire need of hospitality yourself. Once accepted into the house, the guest was sacred.
So, the story begins. King Henry is feasting in a remote hall, said to be haunted, when ominous things start to happen - the howling gale, the earthquake, the sudden darkness. The breakdown of the physical world is often used to herald the supernatural. Think of all that thunder and lightning in the Dracula stories. In comes the monster and the huntsmen flee, their terror overcoming their loyalty.
[Continued in Comments]](https://scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/464875676_1188695192229699_1663856943692956069_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=18de74&_nc_ohc=s6zs70JpUOcQ7kNvgH0MfWP&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=AX2HT0qFHzr1y37my8pGzpc&oh=00_AYDN7DAkBigEgRJADAVkSrOgWNyMm0WwWqb0vEiYxPk6Dw&oe=675682EE)
![Throwback Thursday: The Derby Ram
We’re taking a look back at Mat’s previous work, starting with his successful Traditional Folk Album: Full English. Today’s TBT: The Derby Ram!
We don’t do things by halves in Derbyshire. If we decide to tell lies, they’re whoppers. This is an old, old song, one of many “boasting songs” where the bragging is so outrageous that it orbits out of any connection with reality. No-one could possibly believe one word of it, which all adds to the fun. So does being in a rowdy pub and having imbibed several alcoholic beverages before singing.
The ram has been associated with Derby for centuries - the northern part of the county is hill-farming sheep country. The song was part of a medieval mummers play, after which masked players would call at houses in small towns and villages and sing this song to bring luck the following year. This places it in midwinter - maybe on Twelfth Night with the Lord of Misrule? - and makes it a secular equivalent to carol singing. Very secular, in fact. Positively pagan. The last verse implies it was a visiting song - “if you give us more ale, we’ll go away and stop making this noise” which is the outdoor equivalent of the more domestic: “The cup and the bottle lie on the shelf, If you want any more you can sing it yourself”
which rounds off many rather more polite folk-songs.
“The Derby Ram” was made the regimental song of the Derbyshire Militia in 1855 and they adopted the ram as their mascot. Presumably the tune was played for public marching by the regimental band and the words sung inside the barracks so as not to offend those of a nervous disposition. The song is also the anthem of Derby Football Club, who are known, of course, as “The Rams.”
….
[Continues in Comment]](https://scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.75761-15/464300229_17879745354169159_6930008923721732371_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=18de74&_nc_ohc=s49u2IBw3KkQ7kNvgGPkBjh&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=AX2HT0qFHzr1y37my8pGzpc&oh=00_AYAyURxcNsKkqxjP8nl8AjtdWXUYBTJ-BMAKC9vG4SU7mg&oe=67569749)
LIVE RECORDING
Performing my original song 'In One Hundred Years'
Written for the First World War Centennial, it follows the soldiers of Belper, Derbyshire as they leave their hometown, having been told they will be home for Christmas
FULL ENGLISH
Full English is a compilation of early, mostly English folk songs, some as old as 500 years or more.
bottom of page