Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel Cover)

Small Northern Town (Fourteen Corners Cover)

Bold Nevison The Highwayman

Earl Scarslington's Seven Daughters

A fine song about beer, learnt by osmosis (then brushed up on later) from the unstoppable force that is The Wilsons at some very late nights in the bar of the Resolution Hotel at Whitby Folk Week a few years ago now.

Hey John Barleycorn (album version)

I found two sets of words for this song from the Yorkshire folk song collector Frank Kidson (1855 - 1926). One I found in 'Folk Songs of the North-Countrie' and the other in 'Traditional Tunes', I then heard some more verses for the song round and about. I’ve set these words to a variation of the tune from the song The Banks of Red Roses.

The Banks of Sweet Dundee (album version)

I found this song in Frank Kidson’s Traditional Tunes while looking in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. The song was ‘much thought of among the seafaring classes round about Hull’. The melody is from the song Young Waters that I’ve heard sung by June Tabor.

Young Susan on Board of a Man-of-War (album version)

I initially got this version of Hares in the Old Plantation from Wiggy Smith, though I’ve added a couple more verses from other versions of the song. The public house verse I learnt from Chris Wood & Andy Cutting’s album Knock John. The last verse I found in Frank Kidson’s Folk Songs of the North-Countrie while rifling for songs at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House when in London one day.

I'll Take My Dog And My Airgun Too (album version)

This is a beautiful song I learnt from the singing of Jeff Wesley. I’ve changed a few lines and things for my own benefit, and consulted the original ballad sheet sold by The Poet's Box of Dundee sometime between 1880 and 1900 for a further few lines.

Hatton Woods (album version)

Gold of Scar & Shale

I Was Once a Young Ploughboy

Fair Janet & Young James (Words: Trad./Rutter, Music: Trad. arr. Rutter) 
The cinematic story of this song leapt out at me from the page of my old and fairly battered copy of Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. From what I gather it’s never been recorded before really this particular ballad. The melody is from June Tabor’s version of The Old Garden Gate.

Fair Janet & Young James

The Lancashire Liar (Trad. arr. Rutter)
I spotted the words for this in Harry & Lesley Boardman's Folk Songs and Ballads of Lancashire and particularly liked the nonsense of it all, which they say is 'perhaps the survival of an earlier magical song'.

The Lancashire Liar

The Hills of Longdendale (Words: Ammon Wrigley, Music: Rutter)

'The Moorland Poet’ Ammon Wrigley (1861-1946) was a writer, historian, singer, song collector and artist from the hills above Saddleworth. Over the past few years I’ve been reading a great deal of his published works and he really does feel like such a proper friend to me -which I reckon is the mark of a truly great writer, especially seeing as that he died nearly eighty years ago. The setting of one of his poems here, from Songs of the Pennine Hills, is my attempt to do justice to his remarkable writings and character.

The Hills of Longdendale

Folk Singer, Guitarist and Multi-Instrumentalist.

‘Singular and compelling; one of the finest singers in folk today.’ - Songlines

‘An outstanding performer.’
- The Independent

Jack Rutter

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