MOON SHINES BRIGHT, THE
Created on 30/04/2020Latest update on 08/11/2025
Artist: Valley Folk
Author: traditional
Label: Topic
Year: 1968
Gypsy carol from Sussex and Surrey. On LP All Bells In Paradise - Carols for All Seasons.
Covers:
- 1974:
Jasper Smith [on album The Travelling Songster: An Anthology from Gypsy Singers and on Voice of the People series Vol 11]
- 1978:
Shirley Collins [with sister Dolly on flute organ]
- 1987:
- 1990:
- 1998:
- 2011:
- 2012:
Freda Black [Sam Lee's inspiration]
- 2020:
Sam Lee [with Elizabeth Fraser; see also: The Moon Shined On My Bed Last Night]
Peter Kennedy and Maud Karpeles recorded a version in the 1950s by Albert Beale in Kent, released on You Never Heard It So Sweet in the Voice of the People series in 2011. Cecil Sharp heard a version by Albert's sister Alice Harden in 1911 and by his dad James Beale in 1908, collected in Ralph Vaughan Williams' Twelve Traditional Carols From Herefordshire (1920) and in Steve Roud's folk compendium Still Growing - English Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection (2003). The song was first mentioned by Rev. John Broadwood in 1847.
