Causes of death in Welsh folk songs?

Bit of fun with a pie chart here, but it’d be interesting to see and compare a Welsh version :slight_smile:

https://twitter.com/tizianaleone/status/885238829850005505

4 Likes

Loving the pie chart. Sorry that this won’t answer the question, but a friend of my daughter is in the S Wales duo, Barlow Cree, who sing a lot of sea shanties, etc. As you might expect, drowning figures fairly highly. Having said that, they do tend to tell a few jokes between songs, just so that the audience doesn’t go home totally depressed.

3 Likes

Must be a few folk who died of broken hearts, I would have thought.

2 Likes

I completely get mistaken for a swan all the time…
:laughing::laughing::laughing:

3 Likes

She missed out on the numerous ways people get murdered in British folk songs - often by people who know them; Matt Hyland (lover’s husband), The Cruel Mother (Mother), Banks of the Roses and The Red Barn (Lovers), Lord Randall (Brother), Lord Gregory (Turned away from her lover’s door - although suicide is implied here). All very jolly!

4 Likes

Better not start on “Incest ballads” then!

1 Like

Probably the first song I ever learned (at primary school ) was “Soldier soldier, won’t you marry me?”

Now there isn’t a death actually mentioned in the song, but if the soldier had been murdered by the “sweet maid” immediately after his last line, I don’t think a jury would have convicted her.

5 Likes

Out of interest, was Soldier solder taught in Wales? The only one of my 2nd childhood songs that is known around here is Bobble Shaftoe. Strangely, I now have outlaws with that surname.

As soon as I saw those words, the tune came flooding into my mind!

2 Likes

We recently stayed at Beamish Hall Hotel in Co Durham. Apparently, the staff told us, it was the seat of the Shaftoe family, and Bonny Bobby Shaftoe was an election campaign song.
I have been into folk song for most of my life, but I didn’t know this.
Lovely hotel too, by the way.

2 Likes