This is more difficult than I expected!

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Little One likes to sing, and sometimes when we’re on a car journey she’ll suggest that we sing a few songs, or even that we just listen to her singing. But then she’ll say ‘What shall I sing?’ and the big problem is that not one of us can remember more than a line or two or anything much – hopeless or what? We can at least remember ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘One Man Went to Mow’ and ‘Old McDonald’ but we wanted a change from those. Other than that I can manage ‘Scarborough Fair’ and that’s about it. When I was a student we often went on trips in a minibus and we would sing to pass the time, and since I always had a terrible memory I had written down many of those. So I dug out the folder to see if I could resurrect some of my favourites from there. Many are folk songs or other popular songs such as ‘The Sound of Silence’ or ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’. The problem was that so many of them were not suitable! Little One thought that ‘The Sound of Silence' and ‘(my favourite) ‘Lord Franklin’ were too slow and dreary. I tried to find some with a more upbeat tune but so many are about difficult subjects. ‘Whisky in the Jar’ and ‘I was a Wild Rover’ are about general drunkenness (obviously), then there’s ‘Matty Groves’ (infidelity and murder), ‘The Lark in the Morning’ (teenage pregnancy), ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’ (incest), ‘The Londonderry Air’ (too sad - always makes me cry!), ‘Where have all the Flowers Gone?’ (losses of war), ‘Waltzing Matilda’ (poaching and suicide) and many others about young girls and unfaithful lovers. We ended up with ‘The Big Rock Candy Mountain’ which is good fun even if not setting the best expectations, with its little streams of alcohol trickling down the rocks! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2024.