A plea for help!

Hi All,

Many apologies for using the forum this way but I need your collective wisdom,

I am a final year History of Student and for my major project I am hoping to make a short documentary about the Visual Culture of folk music from the 19th century to present day.The 19th century section is straight forward enough as many of the Pre-Raphaelites created illustrations and/or paintings based on songs that appear in the Child Ballads. For my reference only and not for use in the documentary I need audio of the songs I have chosen so that I have a better feel for them. Fortunately for me I have an album with June Tabor's exquisite version of Clerk Saunders/Sanders but I am struggling to find a recording of Fair Annie (Child 62) and Patrick Spens (Child 58).

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be eternally grateful. Plus if anyone has any knowledge of Breton folk songs I would love to hear from you.

Last but not least a plea to Jim...for my present day bit I would like to talk about your album covers in the documentary as I personally feel that their strong visual imagery grounded in contemporary popular culture differentiates them. Would you be willing to answer a couple of questions regarding your aesthetic vision for a couple of albums if I emailed you - there won't be loads, I promise.

There are many versions of (Sir) Patrick Spens bouncing about. I was all set to start listing those that I know, but someone has done a better job already...

Sir Patrick Spens on Wikipedia

It probably won't help that this ballad is set to many different tunes... Fairport's, June Tabor's and Martin Simpson's versions are very different from each other for example.

Cheers

Nick

Fair Annie is a Peter Bellamy classic! It's on his album of the same name and is available from Fellside. There is also a great version on "The Bramble Briar" by Martin Simpson. I think its on iTunes.

Sir Patrick Spens appears on Nic Jones' 'Ballads and Songs', but is a bit more easy to find on Martin Carthy's 'Signs of Life' - those are the versions I'd recommend. Theres also a June Tabor version on "An Echo Of Hooves" and a Fairport/Sandy Denny version on the re-issue of 'Liege and Lief". All of those are on iTunes.

and yes, by all means send me some questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

That's great info,

Many thanks to you both for your help I really appreciate it.