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Silly Sisters: The Barring of the Door
Get Up and Bar the Door / The Barring of the Door / John Blunt
[
Roud 115
; Master title: Get Up and Bar the Door
; Child 275
; G/D 2:321
; Ballad Index C275
; Bodleian
Roud 115
; Mudcat 3602
; trad.]
Ewan MacColl sang the comical domestic tale with a ring of Aesop, Get Up and Bar the Door, in 1956 on his and A.L. Lloyd's Riverside album The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume I. This and 28 other ballads from this series were reissued in 2009 on MacColl's Topic CD Ballads: Murder·Intrigue·Love·Discord. Kenneth S. Goldstein commented in the album's notes:
This amusing domestic comedy has numerous analogues in the tales and literature of Europe and Asia (See Child's headnote).
The generally ribald nature of the ballad has encouraged the creation of additional bawdy stanzas, and versions so embellished are in vogue as a college student song. The origin of this new oral tradition, however, is based on printed texts to which the bawdy stanzas have been added.
The ballad has been collected from tradition several times since Child, most of these texts being reported in America.
MacColl's version, learned from his father, follows the Greig and Keith [Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs] text very closely.
Tony Rose sang this song as John Blunt on his 1971 album Under the Greenwood Tree. He commented in his sleeve notes:
John Blunt has this same wry sense of humour [as Basket of Eggs on the same album -ed]. The song occurs frequently in Scots' versions as The Barring of the Door. It is one of the very few songs to acknowledge the social significance of black puddings—usually goes down well in Bury!
Martin Carthy sang John Blunt on his 1972 album Shearwater and a few years later live at the Folkfestival '76 Dranouter. He commented in the original album's sleeve notes:
Lord Randall and John Blunt must be among the more widespread story-ideas in the folk consciousness, the stories remaining more or less the same and varying according to locale and-or the individual imagination of whoever sings them. Variations on the idea of John Blunt range from the Arabian tale where the new husband wins the argument with his bride when she pleads for his life as he is about to be executed for insolence in refusing to answer police questions, to another which has hemp-eating tomb robbers arguing over who shall shut the gate of the vault in which they habitually gorge themselves. Nothing quite so extreme here, but would-be rapists and burglars might take note.
The Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor) sang this in 1988 as The Barring of the Door on their second album, No More to the Dance. They were accompanied by Dan Ar Braz, guitar, Huw Warren, keyboards, and Patsy Seddon & Mary Macmaster (a.k.a. Sìleas), clarsachs.
And Frankie Armstrong sang John Blunt accompanied by John Kirkpatrick in 1996 on her ballads album Till the Grass O'ergrew the Corn. The sleeve notes commented:
The characters who inhabit ballads are a notably wilful lot. In this “domestic” ballad, we are a world away from castle and greenwood, from heroines with milk-white skin and heroes on berry-brown steeds. Yet still the protagonists are involved in a titanic struggle of wills on that most unforgiving battle field of all: married life. Sung by Mrs Seale in Dorchester Union in December 1906, where maybe she had little but her songs to keep her warm. Those who see folksongs as pretty relics from a vanished rural Arcadia should be sobered by how many were collected in workhouses.
Jon Boden learnt John Blunt from the singing of Martin Carthy and sang it as the 12 April 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.
Lyrics
Ewan MacColl sings Get Up and Bar the Door | Silly Sisters sing The Barring of the Door |
---|---|
It fell aboot a Martinmas time, |
It fell about the Martinmas time |
Chorus (after each verse): | |
The wind it blew fae East to West, |
The wind blew cold from East and North |
“Ma hand is in my hissy-skip, |
“My hand is in my hussyfskap, |
They made a paction 'tween themselves |
They made the pact between the two |
Twa gentlemen had lost their road, |
Then by and came two gentlemen |
“Noo whether is this a rich man's hoose, |
“Oh, have we here a rich man's house |
Well, first they ate the white pudden, |
So first they ate the white puddings |
The young man tae the auld man said, |
Then one unto the other did say, |
“There is nae water in the hoose, |
“But there's no water in the house |
Then oot it spak the auld gudeman, |
Oh, up then started our good man |
Then up it raise the auld gudewife, |
Oh up then started our good wife, Note: hussyfskap (Scottish) = household chores |
Tony Rose sings John Blunt | Martin Carthy sings John Blunt |
There was an old couple lived under a hill, |
There was an old couple lived under the hill, |
John Blunt and his wife drank free of this ale |
John Blunt and his wife they drank of the drink |
So they a bargain, bargain made, |
So they a bargain, bargain made, |
And there came travellers, travellers three, |
So there came travellers, travellers three, |
They came straightway to John Blunt's house | |
They went to his cellar and drank up his drink |
They went to his cellar, they drank up his drink |
It's first they'd eaten the white puddings |
They went to his larder, they ate up his food |
Then quickly they procured a light |
They went upstairs, they went to his room, |
They hauled his wife all out of the bed, | |
Up spoke John Blunt, “You've eaten my meat, |
Said, “You've eaten my food and drunk all my drink, |
Acknowledgements
Martin Carthy's version was transcribed by Garry Gillard.