A quick song and to check in because I have been slightly absent from making new videos. Plenty in my drafts folder here on Substack though!
The Lincolnshire poacher is one of the very first folk songs I learnt. If ever the full moon is in sight, it just has to be sung:
“Oh ‘tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year”.
This song was actually filmed up Derbyshire, rather than in the correct location of Lincolnshire, during December’s full moon. Since then I’ve had a good walk at the January super-moon too, up the pit tops in my old village with my trusty hound, Luna. All throughout lockdown I used to swim in these lakes, though never at night.
There really is nothing like night-walking. John Lewis-Stempel has written a marvellous book about this by the way. Can highly recommend it.
I ADORE the following version of The Lincolnshire Poacher which is where I first learnt it many moons ago:
Always fancied doing a spot of poaching myself really. I just love these old songs - the evocative nature of the past hardships that our forebears had to endure not all that long ago at all and in the name of survival. It wasn’t such a romantic past really.
The other best songs I know about poaching are here:
While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping
Rufford Park Poachers (the following is a very old and special recording indeed)
And three out of these 4 songs are local to me :)
More on these next time….
Thanks for reading.
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