What is your favourite folk song?

[TheYearOfSmallThings]

I've just accidentally listened to Dougie McLean singing Green Grow The Rashes (Scots), and realised pretty much all the folk music I know is Irish.

What is your favourite folk song of any nation but sung in a normal voice (no fonny nonny no and I don't want to be picturing morris dancers).

Anais Mitchell's version of Tam Lin is amazing.

And Beeswing - the first time I heard it I had to play it about four times in a row, I just think it's incredible.

Broadside Hacks' Barbry Allen is just beautiful too.

Karine Polwart’s The Sun’s Coming Over the Hill is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and has helped me come to terms with similarly sad events to those in the song. She has said that she’s had many people contact her to tell her that.
I love that song, the whole album is amazing - Waterlilly is just heart wrenching. Also love Show of Hands, Phil Beer is a fantastic musician, his rendition of Crow on the Cradle is stunning, and Cousin Jack is good for a sing along.

I'd really recommend Faustus - they are fantastic. I'm a bit biased as I knew one of the band from my university days (though he died suddenly last year ). They are kind of trad folk but very much not at the twee, morris dancing end of the spectrum!

I don’t think anyone has recommended them
yet but anything by the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin. They sing a lot in Irish including the amazing Dulaman and Mo Ghile Mear. Their Gartan Mother’s Lullaby is beautiful and Orphan Girl would take tears from a stone.

Also love Cara Dillon singing the Maid of Culmore and Caitlin Grey singing She Moved Through the Fair.

Is ‘She’s Like the Swallow’ not English?

Victoria bridge on a Saturday night by Edward the Second.

Though also love Skerryvore (Scottish), Banter (English) and this amazing duo from Yorkshire Bryony Griffiths and Alice Jones. Have tickets to see Seth Lakeman

Actually I think it’s Canadian.

Oh and forgot Magpie Arc saw them at Sidmouth, check them out

I stumbled on that too, it’s beautiful.

@BoreOfWhabylon . Look up Eight Bells as a sea shantie, written unusually from the wife's perspective

Fotheringay by Fairport Convention and an honourable mention for Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull.

My favourite traditional song is Renardine.

I love a sea shanty as most are utter filth eg

We Shall Wear Midnight

She Moves Through the Fair - Sinead O'Connor version

She Moved Through The Fair
Peggy Gordon
Butcher Boy

I love the Spinnersz (the Liverpool ones)

Yma O Hyd - Dafydd Iwan
Lliwiau - 9Bach

and

Seth Lakeman and Alex Hart. Both amazing live performers and Alex has the most beautiful, haunting voice.

Coulters Candy 🩷 my Mum sung this to me 🩷

For me it's a lot of songs by The Corries - Mingulay Boat Song, Loch Nagar, and for fun - The Bricklayer's Song 😁

You can't get far in Penzance without tripping over a bunch of red faced 60 something blokes bawling out "Little Eyes", complete with outrageous innuendo 😆.

"Black Trade" by the Unthanks.

I can't get the Pogues version of "And the band played Waltzing Matilda" out of my head.

I loved this as a child

Oh and The House Carpenter - beautiful melancholy lyrics

When the ship comes in by Bob Dylan. I think a lot of his (especially early) stuff is folk.

I didn't try hard enough by Kris Drever

Laura Marling's Semper Femina album

Beeswing is beautiful even though Richard Thompson gives me the creeps.

But my favourites are No Man's Land (Green Fields of France) by Eric Bogle and the traditional ones The False Bride (I Once Loved A Lass) and She Moved Through The Fair. No Man's Land makes me cry every time.

Another of my favourites , who has fallen out of fashion