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UPCOMING GIGS
Sunday 26th July 2–4.30 p.m. Community Bandstand Meadowbank Park, Dorking Sunday 23rd August 2–4.30 p.m. Leith Hill Place, Surrey (National Trust)
Sunday 6th September 2–4.30 p.m. Leith Hill Place, Surrey (National Trust)
“Oh, slack your horse” cries George. How about that for the opening line of a song? It’s the first line of the ballad ‘The Prickle-Holly Bush’ and I came upon it completely by accident when a documentary about Martin Carthy came up on on my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago. The documentary included an ancient clip of him singing this song with the Watersons and I imagine it surfaced because Martin Carthy has just celebrated his 85th birthday. God bless you, sir! I stood beside him in the gents at a folk club once. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to performing with the great man.
Anyway, back to the song: “Oh, slack your horse” cries George. Straight away we know his name is George and he wants whoever is in charge of the horse to hold on for a while, possibly so he can sing to us a bit more. As the story unfolds we learn that poor George is about to be hanged and we must assume the person in charge of the horse is the hangman. We are not given a recognised crime he has committed apart from the chorus telling of him being tangled up in a ‘prickle-holly bush’ which he regrets ever getting involved with. I recognise an allegorical metaphor when it waves its prickles about. This is obviously not a gardening problem.
Anyway, George is asking for the horse to be held back as he sees his father coming over the stile. George dispenses with any pleasantries and cuts to the chase asking his father “Have you brought gold?” Apparently, in ages past, it wasn’t uncommon to be able to buy your freedom from the gallows. All right for some! Unfortunately for George, his father hasn’t brought gold or silver and has only come to see George hang!
The song continues in the usual repetitive folk song format of dragging things out with the following two sets of 3 verses + chorus repeating the first set word for word apart from, this time, George’s mother and then his sister coming over the stile with the same outcome of no gold or silver and only coming to see George hang. That’s families for you! Luckily for the listener he doesn’t have an extensive family. It seems to me that George has had a falling-out with his family as they haven’t even had a whip-round in the pub and they’ve only turned up to witness his demise. Also, why didn’t they all come together? It only drags out the hope/despair cycle for poor old George. In the final set of 3 verses + chorus, and the hangman must have been getting really impatient by now, George sees his sweetheart coming over the stile. I’ll leave it there – one can only hope for the best; no spoilers.
I was taken by the opening line and the slightly odd verse structure, so, for my own enjoyment I thought I’d set myself the challenge of working it out and recording it for the website. Checking it out on the excellent website ‘Mainly Norfolk’ I learnt that the ballad (Roud 144/Child 95) has a story that is well known across the English-speaking world, is known under various titles, also has a female variant, has been performed by most of the usual suspects and has numerous sets of words and melodies. I decided to base my effort on the Watersons’ version. If you would like to hear it, here is the link.
All text, images and music samples on this site are copyright © Childe Rolande.
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Poster for Lucy Anna Martin
(click to watch the video)