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argonauticae:

im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever

scottish trad music genres:

• Everyone I Love Is Dead
• The English Have Stolen All My Sheep
• You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three
• The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep
• I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]
• The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English
• One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome
• The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep

We have of course the traditional Irish music genres to go with them:

* Everyone I Love Is An Allegorical Representation of Ireland

* The English Stole My Farm And Put Sheep On It

* You Were My Boyfriend But Now You Won’t Even Come To The Window To Look Upon Me And Our Dead Infant Child (In The Rain)

* Whack Fol Too La Roo Umptytiddly Good They’ve Stopped Listening Now Let’s Talk About Revolution

* Something In Irish, I Think It’s About Fairies, Or Maybe A Cow

oooo can I add to this? don’t forget Appalachian folk balladry, the American cousin of Scottish and Irish traditional music and just as uplifting as its Anglo-Saxon highland forbears!!!

genres include:

• I Left Everyone I Love Back Home In The Holler To Be With This Guy Who Doesn’t Wear Shoes Or Have Teeth But He Plays A Mean Jug

• The English Told Us Not To Move West Yet, We Ignored Them, My Entire Family Was Killed

• You Were My Boyfriend But You Tied A Sack Of Rocks To My Petticoats And Threw Me In The Creek (And My Baby Too)

• Mama Loves All 14 Of Us A Lot But She’s Weary Of Our Shit And Now She’s Dyin’ (Gather Round)

• The McCleans Stole A Firewood Log From Our Pile So We Won’t Rest Until The Last Of Their Male Kin Is Laid In The Cold Ground

• We Knew The River Would Rise But We Still Didn’t Fix The Levee 

• The River Rose, The Levee Broke, Everyone Died, It Was Just As We Reckoned (dulcimer twang-a-lang) 

• When The Rebels Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Southern Man And I Feed Their Horses My Best, When The Yankees Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Northern Man And I Feed Their Horses What The Rebels Left

• The Tennessee Valley Authority Killed All My Sheep Somehow

Don’t forget that old standby “The Mine Collapsed and Everyone Died”!

I think someone needs to put in a word for the English folk tradition though:

• I Met a Girl and We Went Hunting (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl and We Caught Some Birds (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl and We Found Her Lost Pet (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl By Staying At Her Parents’ House and She Made My Bed (It Was an Especially Thinly-Veiled Metaphor for Sex)
• I Am a Girl and I Regret Engaging In Metaphors for Sex Because Now I’m Pregnant
• I Met a Girl and Bribed Her Into Sex But She Stole My Horse and Ran Away With It
• I Met a Girl At an Inn and We Had Non-Metaphorical Sex But She Stole My Stuff The Next Morning and Now I Have Syphilis
• Your Fiance Died Either at Trafalgar or Waterloo, Let’s Get Married, I’m Glad You Said No Because I’m Really Him In Disguise
• Lord Nelson Sure Was Awesome
• The Press-Gang Dragged Off All the Important Men in My Life (And Now They Are Dead)
• Farm Laborers Are The Salt of the Earth And Are Never Grindingly Poor
• Begging Is a Completely Viable Career Option With Flexible Hours and Unlimited Access to Alcohol

OH GOD HELP ME I AM LAUGHING SO HARD I CANNOT BREATHE

(plus I know every variant of each and every one of these songs and I’ll send you the links if you want)

I once tried to write a folk song which was all folk songs. I see now I was not trying hard enough…

This list is missing important Australian contributions to the genre (notable for bastardising from all of the above):

• I met a girl and she framed me for theft and got me sent to Tasmania for it (technically Irish)
• I committed various crimes and got sent to NSW for it, and I am sad about losing my various criminal friends (English antecedent)

And the home-grown specials:

• Unlike the aforementioned convicts I am happy to be on this ship, because I was born in a free colony and am going back there. Nyah.
• We are shearing and the newly-arrived Englishmen suck at it.
• We are shearing and I am personally the best at it.
• We are shearing and this one guy is the acknowledged best at it but a skinny old guy with a skinny old sheep has mysteriously outdone him!
• Gundagai. People come from there (some of them are shearers), other people go there, it’s at the end of a long road.
• Droving cattle is very lonely, requires more whisky.
• Droving cattle is very lonely, you may hallucinate.
• Droving cattle is very lonely, but I wouldn’t give it up for city life.
• The death of a bushranger makes for a very stirring ballad.
• People in the city are miserable, criminals, or otherwise inferior to people in the country.

And let’s not forget:

• Man steals sheep, drowns self to avoid arrest, becomes national legend and pseudo-national-anthem.

My fellow Canadians, we must do our country proud!! Someone better than me at this, help please!!

Canadian Folk Songs

– I Came over to join the Fur Trade, and despite the language barrier, married a Native woman and she bore me three children, but now i must go back to England and my English Wife and my English Children, whoops

– I went up North to find some gold, and we are all freezing to death

-I went up North to find some gold and i am going mad from the never ending daylight and am hallucinating

-I went up North to find some gold and all i got was Gonorrhea from a prostitute 

Rebooting because these keep getting better 😀

A few more English contributions:

– The blacklegs came to take our jobs during the coal strike and we beat them to death 

– I’m a handweaver displaced by steam looms so the pretty factory maid is giving me lessons  (a metaphor for sex)

– It’s May Day, let’s dance and sing and be pagan (and have sex)

– I had sex with the lord of manor’s wife/daughter/mother/something and he killed me

– I’m Robin Hood and you’re not

And let’s not forget that wonderful Canadian genre:

– I joined Lord Franklin’s expedition and died of lead poisoning, here is my woeful tale in fifty-two verses as sung by Stan Rogers