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Newlyn Town

from Bring Me Home by Peggy Seeger

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NOTE BY ELISABETH HIGGINS NULL:


Newlyn Town is a song Peggy says she learned in her Radcliffe days from the singing of Bob Kepple, an MIT student "who was the folksong nerd of our group." She believes it is an English version:

Bob got his songs from all over the place and he adored English versions. Bob whistled the last line after each verse, which is what I normally do in concert.

Other English and Irish versions of the song are variously known as " A Wild and Wicked Youth," "In Newry Town," "The Robber's Song," "The Roving Blade," or "The Flash Lad," and the American variants go by "The Rambling Boy" or "The Wild and Rambling Boy." This is an archetypical eighteenth-century English broadside of the bold highwayman familiar to anyone who has seen The Beggar's Opera. As the century progressed, a severe penal code resulted in an increasing number of people hanged for crimes, petty or violent, at public spectacles. The condemned person's purported last words were captured in song and sold on broadsides during and after the event. "Tyburn ballads," as these were sometimes called, ordinarily focused on the events of a robber's life, narrated impartially with emotional display reserved for parents and sweethearts. At a time when criminal corpses were frequently claimed for medical research or allowed to rot on gibbets for all to see, these songs often expressed the criminal's wish for a decent funeral.

Peggy's version is faithful to all these elements and closely resembles the version sung by the Norfolk singer, Harry Cox. The song also names places and people that evoke the flash life of eighteenth-century London: "Ned Fielding's crew" refers to the Bow Street Runners, a proto-police force founded by author Henry Fielding, a magistrate whose office was at 4 Bow Street. We know Fielding yielded this position to his brother John in 1754, and this helps us date the ballad historically. The condemned highwayman also takes his wife to the theatre in Covent Garden, an urban playground where, in the eighteenth century, high life and low life intermingled. In this rich evocation of place, Stephens Green seems an anomaly as it is associated with Dublin. Newlyn itself, where the robber was born, is a fishing port along Cornwall's coast near Penzance.

In most versions, the "wild and wicked youth" started off in the saddling trade, but in Peggy's, he "served his turn at the weaving trade." He was probably an apprentice and no doubt violated the terms of his apprenticeship by marrying at age seventeen. Peggy is thus singing about an unemployed youth who blew off his future prospects and then resorted to crime. At the end, he envisions a gangland-style funeral attended by his posse of armed highwaymen still at liberty and accompanied by a group of blooming virgins. The scene is as timely now as it was then.

lyrics

NEWLYN TOWN

words, music: traditional USA
arrangement: Peggy Seeger and Neill MacColl

In Newlyn Town I was bred and born
On Stephen's Green I die in scorn
I served my turn at the weaving trade
But I always was a roving blade.

At seventeen I took a wife
I loved her dearly as I did my life
All for to keep her fine and gay
I went a-robbing on the King's highway.

I robbed Lord Gould and I do declare
I robbed Lady Mansfield in Grosvenor Square
I robbed them all of their gold so bright
And I took it home to my heart's delight.

To Coving Garden we went straightaway
Me and my wife went to the play
Ned Fielding's gang there did me pursue
Taken I was by that cursed crew.

My father cried, I am undone!
My mother wept for her only son
My darlin' screamed and tore her hair
What shall I do? I'm in deep despair.

When I am dead and go to my grave
A decent funereal let me have
Six highwaymen for the carry me
Give them broadswords and sweet liberty.

Six blooming virgins to carry my pall
Give them white gloves and sweet ribbons all
When I am gone they will tell the truth
Here lies a wild and a wicked youth.

credits

from Bring Me Home, released January 22, 2008

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Peggy Seeger Oxford, UK

Peggy is one of the most influential folk singers on either side of the Atlantic. She is Pete Seeger’s half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s daughter; her first life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her. She has made more than 22 solo recordings to date. Please check ewanmaccoll.bandcamp.com for other albums featuring Peggy. ... more

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