#TradSongTues 27th November - Giving 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!
With Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the run up to Christmas all around take a minute to consider the implications of giving thanks, generosity and gratitude. What messages can we learn from #GivingSongs this #TradSongTues? pic.twitter.com/O6V9DuTAmI
— #TradSongTues (@TradSongTues) November 22, 2018
An easy one this week, though I'm using a tenous link. It's a short and sweet song, called Gift to be Simple.
I have no idea where I learned this. I've either picked it up from Simple Gifts, the album by the King's Singers or through a friend who sings it quite a lot. It's easy enough to pick up though, it's a whole 35 seconds long1!
You might think to yourself that this is the same tune as Lord of the Dance written by Syndey Carter, and you'd be right! However, this song is much older2; Syndey Carter used the tune when he wrote Lord of the Dance3.
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There are other verses that have been written by some other people but they're not particularly interesting in my opinion and I don't think the song needs much more. ↩︎
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Lord of the Dance was first published in 1963, this song was written in 1848. ↩︎
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Syndey Carter is responsible for a load of good songs. "Sing John Ball" is a constant earworm of mine, and "One More Step Along the World I Go" is now going to be stuck in my head forever. ↩︎