As I roved out; 13; Jean Ritchie's concert

During the next 30 minutes songs tell some stories and some people want to join us. As I rolled out with one of the nation's outstanding folk artist is produced by Riverside radio WRVA are in New York City under a grant from the National Association of educational broadcast. For the past 12 weeks we've talked song and played tapes and records. Scotland and Ireland have goodbye in this last program of our series. I want to play for you a part of a concert I performed for the students of Indiana University at Bloomington Indiana on one of my singing tours. More people come out to hear me.

I never. Expected especially when you got to have a base that's around. I wonder whether anyone's going to come out. I was ready to be on the music at Cooper Union. From the last group I had for me. And I sang I'm a lonely traveler and you know modulation. First of all in the first six He's up and down again and I went off in all directions on real fancy harmony and I had this big band there thing so I was just about ready to throw in the towel already on the stage.

I am really all the audience some sort of explanation and so I said after seeing what the tears can do with a song I think the thing on thing for me to do is just to go back to my front porch and piece quilts and you know what for you all to come down and collect me was I and then they reacted the same way the only thing the only reason that they were laughing is because instead of saying after seeing what the terrorist can do with this witness it was I am. I and I got very red in the face and tried to change it around you know so that that made him laugh even harder after that I thought I was just a great comedian and would listen to anything I had hardly started out to say what I was going to say why did you sing this next song is that when people come

down to collect you then you can sing what you want to you know you can you can sing offbeat things and things that are being scoured in the first place that would've come along. That's a rare old jam you know they listen to you the great respect so I said when this happens I'll be able to sing a song like this so that I gave him a song that I thought was I wouldn't like to have that the audience gets a present they like it very much and I'll sing it to you tonight too on the same premises is that you write real folk songs and sometimes you like the ones you haven't heard before. This one is one that my father or my father songs come along. It's a version of the turtle that is very familiar. That is.

Sure. I.

Had a request before the program to believe one of the songs that was on one of my records. This is another I just described the song as this one is played. The other is just a simple little first circle circle right down the middle. Start all over again the next couple. Believe in the handling and. Treat girls as mean and.

As Green. As Romney. Uh

oh. Another song we use for special occasions at home was around Halloween time. We had a song we used to use to scare each other with. It was called there was no one else. It sure is not too scary. I can see. A heart specialist said. You know just be forewarned that's all. And I thought the second half year we'd devote to some songs that

I've learned and collected when I grew up and got a Fulbright went over to British Isles to look up the source of the family songs and found out whether people were still singing in the old songs and things anymore. But somebody just reminded me that I haven't yet sung one of my mother's hymns this under was an unusual one to start the second half with. This should be something a little more rousing but there is really it really wouldn't fit into the rest of the program so I'll do it now. It's one of my favorite favorite ones and I think no program on Kentucky Mountain folk music should be given without at least one verse of one of the old hymns. There are really interesting. As I've come to learn because they're usually motile whatever that means. And this one ask a particular Live is one of my favorite ones that is guide me O Thou Great Jehovah so I'm going to continue. Very old fashioned church I never use any instruments are any have any

harmonization there anything of the songs at all is sung never listen in them together in unison although some people like the head others and some people quiver of this quaver and so on so that you get up you get a sort of ragged sound close up but when you're far away you're sending a little bit out of the group. It's a wonderful sound like the Goshen waves going up and down and when you're in the middle of it you're so excited and emotional that you don't care anyway that sounds so this is a song as I remember it from the little girl when I was a break into tears when they started to sing the so lonesome song as my else did too though so your love that. It. Did.

We are. Oh. Read. Oh

yeah. Now the next song will in Congress want to sing after that as I said it wasn't planned this way. This is careless love. You may think that this is the only song by blues singers and people like Josh White but I've been a member before I ever heard just by saying it back home in the mountains we used to sing a very what we call straightforward in this version of Fearless Love the girl sitting on the front porch and singing very said love was. Love was a lot was.

Why. How do you know I

was. Picked out those verses. There are lots of other verses you know about sorrow at my heart and things like that pick out these particular verses because I want to sing you a version of the song. I always thought it was strictly American but I found the same verses in a song in Scotland sung by a tinker lady named Jeannie Roberson. Some of you may have heard the record that subsequently came out we were the first ones to collect her I'll have to just brag a little bit. She lives up in Aberdeen and had settled in the house because she's ever a poor hero but she used to travel around in the Tinkers caravans all the time and learned her songs. She said mostly from old people that she met traveling with her father and her family as a gypsy taker. This song she called proto voice but it had the verses in about the apron and is a

version I think of the same song. I just do the verses that go that match these. Now they're starting the first serious rival to threat dealing. Well I know you saw I. Only. Saw light one. I was. A Bally ball I. Thought it so on I hit.

I didn't know. That. Stones. Hit much. And he thought. About a. Why is my. Son. Or so. My.

Mouth. Is on. And the next one I want to say new. Sometimes the the tunes are alike and sometimes the words were a likeness next to that I want to give you. I'm being a little scholarly now. Elam says I mustn't be scholarly I should be silent. But I would have been looking around these buildings and things today and it seems like there's some intent here learning on the side. Of. These buildings Lisa people start running back and forth for some. So I be forgiven for making a few comparisons. I'm not really educating you you can

draw your own conclusions but this is this next one saying is that the tune that's the similar thing and I think that happened a lot in the mountains the words of the English and Irish and Scottish songs survived and the Irish tunes which are really I think superior where I'm sticking my neck out or not but there are students I think are just about the most beautiful things in the world by people in the Kentucky mountains who are after all combinations of all these people in the English Scottish and Irish just preserve the best of what they had to work with. They kept the our students in many cases and the added were the words of their own or they kept Scottish and English words. That said I'm a broad generalization and not to be taken literally sommat way I feel about it anyway. So a song with that we use in Kentucky that has this tune that I found in Ireland is called Old King Cole was a jolly old soul. And that's

not the one you're thinking about in the nursery rhyme. This is what my father call the getting up song. He met on the floor on the dance floor of the play party floor people were usually so bashful the beginning of the evening they couldn't just get couldn't get up nerve to ask him a dance even the girl sometimes or just couldn't get up enough nerve so one couple who were sort of responsible for the party or wanted to get people on the floor would get up and sing a song and march up and down and when it came to the part that said we'll open up a ring and choose a couple in they would hope that a couple by that time had some boy grabbed his girl and dragged across the floor and rigid joint in the basement that marched up and down and two couples would march up and down sing a song in three and then they got four or five or six couples I'd have enough to play. Good try to sneak into a suite or going to Boston or something like that. Anyway this is a song they used to get people on the floor. It's called As I said. OK Nicole.

Yes. Let's.

Hope you can remember that tune. Well. That was sort of shuffling rhythm you know over you discrepancy thing where you slide your feet across and your in Ireland I found that you have the same tune a little more of a little to it because in our environment they don't shuffle their feet across the floor but pick up their feet and that's been stepped up to me. As I rode in on a man I met on the way he sang knows me and then the new land.

Is mine and I never goes. And I own and I and I are airing. This and I'll open a bank when. She sang those mean. You're you've heard the final program in the

series says I rode out with Jean Ritchie one of the nation's outstanding folk artists. Many of the portions of the series were compiled from recordings made by Miss Ritchie and her husband while she was on a Fulbright scholarship in the British Isles series was produced by Stuart silver and directed by Isidore he as I rode out with Jean Ritchie as a recorded production of Riverside radio WRVA are in New York City produced under a grant from the National Association of education broadcasters. This is the NOAA be ready on network.