cmh blog 12 2004

For those keeping track at home, Barkworth Green ~~need to create a webpage~~ performed last week at the Flying Cloud christmas concert. The event consisted in being part of a chorus to help lead the audience in some carols as well as one song of our own.

At first we were going to do the ~~dead wren song~~ King, which is a traditional carol in England. However, we learned that it’s also an audience favorite and so we opted to pass on that as our own number.

Instead we did a Yorkshire Pub Carol from the Canadian Pub Caroler. The caroler was compiled by my friend Shelley Posen who is an excellent folklorist. The artist worked from photos on the cover, so the two featured people are myself and my friend Bob Ferguson. Anyway, having led Pub Caroling in Ottawa with Shelley this year I knew all the parts and taught them to May and Dan.

The song is a great contrast to all the happy positive major Christmas songs out there, as it is set in a minor key, and stems from a time when Christmas was (in Shelley’s words) a time for “repentance and moral re-dedication.”

Come all you worthy Christian men that dwell upon this land:
Don’t spend your time in rioting remember you’re but man.
Be watchful for your latter end, be ready for your call.
There are many changes in this world, some rise while others fall.

Now Job he was a patient man, the richest in the east.
When he was brought to poverty his sorrows soon increased.
He bore them all most patiently, from sin he did refrain;
He always trusted in the Lord, he soon got rich again.

Come all you worthy Christian men that are so very poor.
Remember how poor Lazarus lay at the rich man’s door
A-begging for the crumbs of bread that from his table fell
The scriptures do inform us that in heaven he do dwell.

The time, alas, it soon will come when parted we shall be
But all the difference it will make is in joy and misery;
And we must give a strict account of great as well as small,
Believe me now, dear Christian friends, that God will judge us all.

Though poor I am contented no riches do I crave,
For they are all but vanity on this side of the grave.
‘Though many roll in riches, their glass will soon run out;
No riches they brought in this world, nor none can they take out.

Anyway, we followed some morrismen who did an outrageous dance where they simulated a large brawl — in time! — with sticks. This gave us the opportunity to “teach them a lesson” with our song. It was fun.