English Folk Dance & Song Magazine, Spring 2013
Sheath and Knife
By making this album and a subsequent one that will follow shortly, Rosaleen Gregory fulfils a dream that developed while at Keele University during the 1960s folk revival. Greatly interested in the Child ballads, she wanted to sing them and to bring them to a wider audience. Sometimes dreams benefit from maturity, and this is certainly one of them. Living in Canada, and bringing up a family, her knowledge of folk music as well as the Child ballads broadened. Consequently, the arrangements, instrumentation and performance have a depth that is often lacking in renditions of ballads.
The 305 ballads compiled by Professor F.J. Child, in the nineteenth century, cover the full range of life’s ‘great’ subjects: toil, love, youth, old age, death, murder, incest, the supernatural, abduction and seduction. Contemporary generations become engrossed in the latest soap operas or read the latest real-life stories in tabloid newspapers. In the nineteenth century they were enthralled by the ballads.
Performing twelve such songs in a row is a masterful skill, one difficult to achieve while retaining the attention of the listener. Rosaleen does just that. True to the genre, she tells the story so that the audience understands and hears the narrative, at the same time as providing musical variety. From the dramatic opening bars of the border pipes on the first track ‘Burning of Auchindoon’, through to the gentler final track, ‘The Well Below the Valley’ with vocals, guitar, octave mandolin and flute, the full gamut of subjects visited in the Child ballads are brought to life. Dark topics are interspersed with lighter ones; the rich powerful sounds of the hurdy-gurdy and various pipes are complemented by the soothing sounds of the guitar, flute and mandolin, plus two a cappella tracks.
Jacqueline Patten
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The 305 ballads compiled by Professor F.J. Child, in the nineteenth century, cover the full range of life’s ‘great’ subjects: toil, love, youth, old age, death, murder, incest, the supernatural, abduction and seduction. Contemporary generations become engrossed in the latest soap operas or read the latest real-life stories in tabloid newspapers. In the nineteenth century they were enthralled by the ballads.
Performing twelve such songs in a row is a masterful skill, one difficult to achieve while retaining the attention of the listener. Rosaleen does just that. True to the genre, she tells the story so that the audience understands and hears the narrative, at the same time as providing musical variety. From the dramatic opening bars of the border pipes on the first track ‘Burning of Auchindoon’, through to the gentler final track, ‘The Well Below the Valley’ with vocals, guitar, octave mandolin and flute, the full gamut of subjects visited in the Child ballads are brought to life. Dark topics are interspersed with lighter ones; the rich powerful sounds of the hurdy-gurdy and various pipes are complemented by the soothing sounds of the guitar, flute and mandolin, plus two a cappella tracks.
Jacqueline Patten
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