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"William Taylor" (Roud 158, Laws N11) is a British folk song, often collected from traditional singers in England, less so in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the USA. It tells the story of a young woman who adopts male dress and becomes a sailor (or sometimes a soldier) in order to search for her lover.
"John Barleycorn" is an English and Scottish folk song. [1] The song's protagonist is John Barleycorn, a personification of barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it: beer and whisky. In the song, he suffers indignities, attacks, and death that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting.
This category contains folk songs which originated in England. For a comprehensive list of 25,000 traditional English language songs, see List of folk songs by Roud number . Contents
"Over the Hills and Far Away" is a traditional English song, dating back to at least the late 17th century. Two versions were published in the fifth volume of Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy; a version that is similar to the second Wit and Mirth one appears in George Farquhar's 1706 play The Recruiting Officer.
"All Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough" (Roud 346) [1] or The Ploughman's Song is an English folk song about the working life of horsemen on an English farm in the days before petrol-driven machinery. Variants have been collected from many traditional singers - Cecil Sharp observed that "almost every singer knows it: the bad singer
Francis James Child collected the words to over 300 British folk ballads. Illustration by Arthur Rackham of Child Ballad 26, "The Twa Corbies"Child's collection was not the first of its kind; there had been many less scholarly collections of English and Scottish ballads, particularly from Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) onwards. [4]
Despite being the centre of both folk revivals and the British folk rock movement, the songs of London were largely neglected in favour of regional and rural music until relatively recently. London, unsurprisingly, was the most common location mentioned in English folk songs, including 'London is a Fine Town', and the 'London Prentice' and it ...
"The Holly and the Ivy" is a traditional British folk Christmas carol, listed as number 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song can be traced only as far as the early nineteenth century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas dating at least as far as medieval times. The lyrics and melody varied significantly in ...