WHITSUN SONG, THE

Created on 27/01/2023
Latest update on 03/04/2023

Artist: Shirley & Dolly Collins
Author: Austin John Marshall/trad.
Label: Harvest
Year: 1969

On lp Anthems In Eden as An Awakening (Whitsun Dance). The author was Shirley's husband, using the tune of The Week Before Easter, which makes it a little complicated since Whitsun falls seven Sundays after Easter. It was a good day for Morris dancing, but that tradition (reserved exclusively for men) was acutely in danger in many remote English village where the male population was more or less decimated following WW I. So when widows, daughters and fiancees spontaneously started filling up that gap on town squares where a war memorial had been erected where the Maytree once stood, scandal erupted when these women commemorated their husbands/fathers/lovers with dance steps! That's when Austin John Marshall wrote this song. Roud #3186.

Covers:

1971:

Tim Hart & Maddy Prior [as Dancing At Whitsun]

1975:

Jean Redpath [idem]

1975:

June Tabor [idem; John Peel session]

1980:

Paddy Reilly [idem]

1987:

Dublin City Ramblers [as Whitsun]

1998:

Martyn Wyndham-Read [as Ladies Go Dancing At Whitsun]

2012:

Dubliners [as Dancing At Whitsun]

2018:

Sound Tradition [as The Ladies Go Dancing At Whitsun]

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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