Jump to content

Elsie Marley


Henk van Aalten

Recommended Posts

Enough time spent on Dutch, Scam, Chocolate Rabbits (see the more popular Forums). Time for a very characteristic (south)-Northumbrian tune. You can find the ABC, PDF and Midi in the Tune-O-Tron

The tune was played on a Geuns-Wakker Anglo (G/C). A very good friend ;) plays on my 30 years old cheap DDR Autoharp. The MP3 file is 1.3 Mb and you can find it here!

 

Comments, questions and remarks are welcome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a lot more info on this tune at: http://www.folkinfo.org/songs/displaysong.asp?SongID=75

Nice story about Elsie herself as well!

 

Judging from further verses about her, however, which were current while she was still alive, it is evident that the way she served her ale was not the entire cause of her fame, and a contemporary writer confirms that she enjoyed a certain reputation.

 

In the meantime I discovered also a lot of variations on the tune. My playing is inspired by Andrew Cronshaw's version of Elsie Marley on the LP "Earthed in Cloud Valley".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting to hear this has spread so far. We were playing it at the "Royal " only last week although most of the honours go to Geoff Wright. He spends quite a bit of time in North East England whilst I used to live there.

 

I understand that sadly a lot of the Local North East tunes are now being forgotten by the younger players in the area, supplanted by Irish music. Seems a great shame since some great tunes have so far survived the passage of time.

 

Pete

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting to hear this has spread so far.

I've been singing it for many years now, having learned it when I still lived in the US.

 

In fact, I added a couple verses of it to my sound files page. Did I forget to mention that here? I did it specifically for Henk, but of course anyone else is welcome to listen to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...