SOULCAKE, A

Created on 04/11/2009
Latest update on 10/01/2020

Artist: Martha Schlamme
Author: Paul Stookey/Tracey Batteast/Elena Mezzotti
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1954

Jewish girl from Vienna (born: Martha Haffel) on her lp Folk Songs Of Many Lands, with Tanya Gould on piano. Song about the round cakes baked to give away to so-called 'soulers', poor children begging from door to door around All Saints Day/All Souls Day (origin of Trick or Treat on Halloween night). Every offering represents a soul saved from purgatory. The custom originated in Britain or Ireland during the reign of Elisabeth I (as Heigh-ho, Nobody Home).

Covers:

1962:

John Langstaff [as Souling Song]

1963:

Peter, Paul & Mary [as A Soalin']

1965:

Watersons [as Souling Song on Frost And Fire]

1992:

Armstrong Family [as Soul Cake, recorded in the seventies]

2008:

Kate Burke & Ruth Hazelton [as A-Soulin']

2009:

Sting [idem, following the Peter, Paul & Mary arrangement; first single from If On A Winter's Night]

2012:

John Kirkpatrick [as Soul, Soul]

2020:

Sam Lee

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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