#TradSongTues 15th January - Tradition Bearer Songs

This is a series of posts about the #TradSongTues project, run by various people at the University of Sheffield. Every week I've been recording a song for the theme, sharing it and talking about it. Come and play on Twitter!

Next week's #SpecialGuest is the inimitible @samleesong who will be sharing #TraditionBearerSongs from the wonderful @SongCollectors project. He'll focus on living Irish travellers but you can share any tradition bearers you love for #TradSongTues pic.twitter.com/RWBvJY0PIt
— #TradSongTues (@TradSongTues) January 11, 2019

I wasn't sure what to sing this week. Part of me was tempted to sing a May Day song, or something like that as a tradition song, but I think a "calling on" song¹ is a good choice, so here's one sung by a Sheffield sword team:

I've actually never seen this sung by a dance team - I originally learned it from the singing of Crucible - but it's a nice little song. I really like the line "And at last I caught a fall", because it makes absolutely no sense.

These are usually sung by a morris team just before they begin the dance display. ↩︎