About the Show
Foolkiller Folk
The Foolkiller Folk collective explores the storytelling, cultural, and protest power of folk music from as far back as the Child Ballads through as current as released today.
"When one becomes enlightened one kills the fool within" -Jack Conroy
It’s been a good long time since we’ve done an English folk song, so we’re going to do one for you this week. And instead of telling you who you’re going to hear, we’re going to tell you what you’re going to hear (and in some very interesting renditions). So get ready for all of the following that we can fit into the show: ‘Walk this World With Music’ (Chris Wood), ‘Spencer the Rover’ (Trad), ‘Prickle Eye Bush’ (Trad), ‘Our Captain Calls’ (Trad), Rosario (Trad/anchor shanty), ‘Canon’ (Nancy Kerr), Bold Riley (Trad), ‘The Streams of Lovely Nancy’ (Trad), ‘My Donald’ (Trad), ‘Blood Red Roses/ShallowBrownn’ (Trad), ‘Courting Too Slow’ (Trad/broadside), ‘New York Girls’ (Trad), ‘Lord Bateman’ (Trad), The Flower of Northumberland’ (Trad/**Roud 25/*Child 9), ‘Rambleaway'(Trad/**Roud 172), ‘I Wish’ (Trad), ‘The Coachman’ (Trad), ‘Sir Eglamore’ (Trad/*Child 18), ‘While Shepherds Watched’ (Trad), ‘Diadem’, ‘Dives and Lazarus’ (Trad/*Child 56), and ‘Time to Remember the Poor’ (Trad/**Roud 1121).
*Child Ballads: The Child Ballads is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child and originally published in ten volumes between 1882 and 1898 under the title The English and Scottish Popular Ballad.
**Roud Folk Song Index: The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of nearly 200,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud, a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. Roud’s Index is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before 1900) and a “field-recording index” compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous well-known printed sources known to Francis James Child (the Child Ballads) and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006 the index was available only by a CD subscription; it can now be found online on a website maintained by the English Folk Dance Song Society (EFDSS).
