John Spiers

This song is taken from Cecil Sharp’s English Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachians. The tune at the end, Ellen Smith, was found in unpublished extra notes from the collection, in the archive at Cecil Sharp House, London. Handwritten next to the notation was the comment, “played by two youths, the one playing the air on the fiddle (con-sordini, ie by hinging over clasp knife with partially opened blade on the bridge), accompanied by the other with arpeggios on the banjo. The thing was very skilfully played, plumb in tune, and its constant repetition had a quasi-hypnotic effect on me and apparently also on the players…” (Cecil Sharp, manuscript notes, July 30th, 1917).