Showing posts with label Mishaped Pearls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mishaped Pearls. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 November 2015

Six Dukes Went a-Fishing

Just lately I've been mildly obsessed with the stark 17th Century traditional ballad, 'Six Dukes Went a-Fishing'. The song, which was collected in 1906 by Percy Grainger, tells of the discovery of the Duke of Grantham's drowned body by a group of his peers. The later verses detail the preparation of the corpse for burial ('they took out his bowels and stretched out his feet') before describing the funeral and the Duke's widow in mourning ('the Royal Queen of Grantham went weeping away...')

Here are three distinct versions of 'Six Dukes', drawn from the many available. From 1960, leading folk revival figure, A.L Lloyd's second recording of the song, Shirley & Dolly Collins' unsettling reading from their 1970 LP 'Love, Death and the Lady' and an interesting contemporary approach by Mishaped Pearls from 2014.



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