“If you can’t appreciate June Tabor, you should just stop listening to music.”—Elvis Costello

When I asked for suggestions from readers a little while ago, Neil Ball reminded me that I’m way, way behind in my plan to review more June Tabor albums and eventually honor her by giving her a coveted spot on the menu bar.

I will not need another reminder. In truth, if I hadn’t expanded my boundaries to cover a century of music, I might have reviewed all eighteen solo albums and all of her many collaborations. After my parents got me hooked on June Tabor, I bought her albums the moment they hit the shelves without bothering to sample the wares, and she has never disappointed me. Listening to June Tabor’s interpretations of folk and modern compositions is always an aesthetic experience of the highest order. Whenever I hear her voice, I stop what I’m doing to listen.

The hangup had to do with a lack of interest in June Tabor from my readers. When I updated my Top 20/Bottom 10 review list last month, I was shocked to find that one of my reviews of June Tabor was the least-read review of all time. The balance between effort and reward had gone cockeyed.

While I appreciate Mr. Costello’s sentiments, the truth is that people have different tastes in music and should not be condemned to musical purgatory simply because they can’t see the value in a certain artist’s musical offerings. Some like it dark, some like it light and most people would identify with Amy Macdonald’s plea in the song “Poison Prince”: “And what we all want/And what we all crave/Is an upbeat song/So we can dance the night away.”

Ironically, that song is about a guy in the process of ruining his musical career through drug and alcohol addiction.

It’s likely that some folks shy away from June Tabor because she has the courage to deal with the more difficult aspects of human nature that most people would rather not think about: war, death, sexual abuse, the Holocaust, betrayal, poverty and indifference to human suffering. While the songs that address inhumanity make up a minority of her lengthy discography, her interpretations of those songs are uniquely powerful and unforgettable, shining a bright light on problems we would prefer to ignore.

I accept but abhor the truth that most human beings are ostriches in disguise, but henceforth, I will no longer let the ostriches influence my choices in selecting albums to review. I will review as many June Tabor albums as I want, popularity be damned.

*****

Abyssinians was June’s third solo album, released in 1983. The title has nothing to do with the country now named Ethiopia, but the Abyssinian cats sitting on the lady’s lap—and the cats do not appear in any of the songs. Nearly all of June’s solo album titles begin with the letter “A,” a curiosity she explained to  Phillip Ward on Brush on Drum: “It gives you somewhere to start when you’re looking for a title, which is not an easy thing to do.” Sometimes the titles sync with the content (particularly in her later work), and sometimes not at all.

Abyssinians is particularly compelling for several reasons. The arrangements are consistently minimalist to give June ample room to display her mastery of a cappella. The content presents a mix of traditional and modern folk songs, most of which explore the darker aspects of human nature. That description may lead you to conclude that Abyssinians might trigger a bout of depression, but I would remind you that Shakespeare’s reputation rests more on his tragedies than his comedies, because well-written tragedies remind us that we all have flaws similar to those besetting the tragic hero. Tragedies help us confront and purge the dark emotions within and allow us to experience catharsis, thereby cleansing the soul. Facing the truth is healthy and strengthening; avoiding the truth leads to messes like the ones we’re in now.

*****

All tracks trad. arr. June Tabor, except where noted.

“The Month of January” (Roud 175):  Mainly Norfolk notes that this song about a young woman with an “illegitimate child” who is thrown out of her father’s house and into the cold dark days of winter “is not a particularly well-known song, with only 33 Roud entries; it goes by many titles, but none is more prevalent than the others. It has been sung all over these islands, and North America, but is most common in Ireland . . .”

Gee, I wonder why.

There are some stories so horrifying that their details embed themselves in your flesh and haunt you for the rest of your days. The suffering of the women and babies – an estimated 170,000 of them – who were incarcerated and abused in the Magdalene laundries and mother-and-baby homes that housed “fallen women” is one such story. It is a scandal that is difficult to read about without experiencing an overwhelming feeling of disgust, from the testimonies of abuse and forced adoption, to the mass grave at the former St Mary’s mother-and-baby home near Tuam, County Galway, which contained 796 bodies of babies and children. The nuns put many of them in a septic tank. There were no burial records.” (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett via The Guardian.)

The mothers also labored without pay and were used as guinea pigs to test new vaccines. So much for “pro-life” Catholics.

The song’s popularity in Ireland tells us that sex before marriage was fairly common in the country despite warnings from the church. June learned the song from revered Irish folksinger Sarah Makem, who performed the song as far back as 1955. As the scandal would not see the light of day until the 90s, neither Sarah nor June would have known about it when they recorded their versions, so their “protest” is directed at the man who impregnated the poor lass and abandoned her.

June sings the first three verses a cappella, immediately grabbing the listener’s attention and holding it throughout the passage. This musical art form has been around for centuries, but packs even more power today, according to Serenade Magazine: “A cappella’s appeal today is partly due to its human-centric nature. In an age of electronic music and synthetic sounds, a cappella brings listeners back to the raw beauty of the human voice. Each sound, every rhythm, and each harmony is created organically, which captivates audiences looking for authentic musical experiences.”

And one of the many things I admire about June Tabor is her authenticity.

In the first verse, we meet the narrator, a young woman in search of her beau, who is somewhere “over hills and valley.” As she makes her way through snowy grounds, she happens upon another young woman with a sad tale to tell:

It was then I met a pretty young girl with a salt tear in her eye
She had a baby in her arms and bitter she did cry

“Oh cruel was my father that he barred the door to me
And cruel was my mother that dreadful crime to see
Cruel was my own true love that he changed his mind for gold
And cruel was that winter’s night that pierced my heart with cold

For the taller that the palm tree grows the sweeter is the bark
And the fairer that a young man speaks, the falser is his heart
For he’ll kiss you and embrace you till he thinks he has you won
Then he’ll go away and leave you all for some other one”

At the start of the closing verse, Ric Sanders provides June with a mournful background on the baritone violin (the credits say, “violin,” but there’s no way in hell a violin can plumb those musical depths). June’s voice rises in intensity as she conveys the fallen angel’s dire warning to all women, a message that should strike alarm bells in the heart of her new companion:

“So come all you pretty fair maidens and a warning take by me
Never try and build your nest at the top of a high tree
For the green leaves they will wither and the branches all decay
And the beauty of a young man it soon will fade away . . . “

I only hope that the narrator got the message, because it’s likely that her beau is over hills and valley whispering sweet nothings in another wench’s ear. In the appropriately lengthy fade, Dave Bristow backs Ric with a semi-orchestral continuous sound from the keyboard, allowing listeners some time to consider the tragedy of parental abuse.

“The Scarecrow” (Lal and Mike Waterson): You’ll need some background information to appreciate what I consider to be one of June’s most compelling performances.  From the liner notes on Nick Dow’s album Burd Margaret, courtesy of Mainly Norfolk.

A song written by Mike Waterson which describes the legendary origin of the scarecrow. It relates to a religious cult existing in some communities, which chose a traveller to be treated like a king for a year. At the end of this time, during which the traveller was allowed to sleep with the high priestess, he was sacrificed to the corn god and his body left on a pole in the cornfield. The offspring of his union with the priestess later suffered the same fate in the spring.

Yes, you heard that right—our ancestors were fucking morons. But as Shirley Jackson attempted to point out in “The Lottery,” humans are still susceptible to superstition to this day. The superstitious are perpetually in denial, and after the story was published, Shirley had to defend herself against thousands of angry readers who found the tale disturbing and unbelievable. “Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”

Both Mike and Lal Waterson released versions of the song in the early ’70s. Mike’s version feels a bit odd because the narrator is clearly a woman, and Mike doesn’t try to fool anyone by going falsetto. But who is this woman? Fortunately, June left a clue in the liner notes: “The strength of visual image is worthy of Ingmar Bergman, as is the story; the Earth Mother is all-powerful here.”

The entity we know as Mother Nature wasn’t always a benevolent entity in human mythology. In many cultures, she demanded some form of sacrifice before agreeing to lend a hand with the crops, and some of those rites involved human victims. Here’s one example from ThoughtCo:

Thus in Mexica mythology, Tlaltecuhtli represents the surface of the earth; however, she was said to be angry, and she was the first of the gods to demand the hearts and blood of humans for her unwilling sacrifice. Some versions of the myth say Tlaltecuhtli would not stop crying and bear fruit (plants and other growing things) unless she was moistened with the blood of men.

Let me correct myself. Our ancestors were morons with vivid imaginations.

The most logical explanation is that the woman in the song is the high priestess herself, serving in the role of Earth Mother. We know from the background information that her libido knew no bounds, and the first line in every chorus features a variation on the phrase, “lay me down and love me.”

The song opens with the ultra-talented Martin Simpson plucking minor key arpeggios on his acoustic guitar, supported by a complementary, high-pitched stream of notes emanating from Bristow’s keyboard. The effect is strangely beautiful and slightly eerie, creating a sense of mystery. June enters as high priestess, with her flawless voice free of emotional content, simply observing the cornfield, and betraying no signs of what is to come.

As I walked out one summer’s morn
Saw a scarecrow tied to a pole in a field of corn
His coat was black, and his head was bare
When the wind shook him the crows took up into the air

Suddenly, Martin shifts gears and pounds out chords on his guitar, cueing June to attenuate her tone into something resembling mild disgust.

Ah, but you’d lay me down and love me
Ah, but you’d lay me down and love me if you could
But you’re only a bag of rags in an overall
That the wind sways and the crows fly away and the corn grows tall

The high priestess isn’t particularly moved by this poor substitute for a lustful encounter and isn’t impressed by the display crafted by stupid humans to honor her with a symbol of her benevolence.

Fast forward six months to winter, where we find that the priestess has completed the first part of the ritual that will allegedly lead to an abundant harvest. Ric Sanders adds his baritone violin to the mix, reflecting the bleakness of a dark winter’s day:

As I walked out one winter’s day
Saw an old man hanging from a pole in a field of clay
His coat was gone, and his head hung low
Till the wind flung it up to look, wrung its neck and let it go

How could you lay me down and love me?
How could you lay me down and love me now?
For you’re only a bag of bones in an overall
That the wind blows and the kids throw stones at the thing on the pole

June’s voice gradually becomes stronger in the verse and thoroughly disgusted in the chorus. The contempt she shows for her former lover is palpable; he has served his purpose and no longer holds her interest. The introduction of children throwing stones at “the thing on the pole” speaks to the cult’s success in indoctrinating their offspring in the art of dehumanization, in the belief that these hateful acts are necessary to their survival. Similar beliefs are held to this day, manifested in the hatred for others who are “not like us” and stealing our jobs, a stance that often leads to violence against immigrants or indifference to their struggle to be recognized as human beings.

The arrangement allows the listener some time to reflect on that horrific scene as the three musicians band together in a restatement of verse and chorus. We now move to springtime and the gruesome last step of the ritual:

As I walked out one fine spring day
Saw twelve jolly dons decked out in the blue and the gold so gay
And to a stake they tied a child newborn
Then the bells were rung and the songs were sung and they sowed their corn

Now you can lay me down and love me,
Now you can lay me down and love me if you will.
But you’re only a bag of rags in an overall
But the wind blew and the sun shone too and the corn grew tall.

June demonstrates the power of the Earth Mother in her strongest voice, thrilled about the murder of a child and savoring the prospect of inviting another suitable traveler to share her bed—an invitation that will eventually earn him a spot on the pole. The repetition of the first two lines in the song tells us that the cycle will repeat itself again and again—until humans evolve and rid themselves of sadistic urges.

“One Night As I Lay on My Bed” (Roud 672): June takes the male role for most of this song, but her range allows her to pull it off. The a cappella approach works well in this song because the conversation that takes place is hush-hush. 

According to Mainly Norfolk, “This seems to be a straightforward night-visit piece, of the kind the Germans call Fensterlieder—’window songs’.” The most common form involves a late-night tryst between the male on the outside and the woman on the inside, as they try to figure out how she can let him in to give her a stiff one while her hubby snores away. I’ve always wondered if the Fensterlieder’s origins could be traced back to  Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale,” where Absolom begs for a kiss from Alison, and after repeated refusals, the lady decides to play a trick on the annoying little bastard. (Translation from the original Middle English):

“Have done,” said she, “come on, and do it fast,
Before we’re seen by any neighbour’s eye.”
This Absalom did wipe his mouth all dry;
Dark was the night as pitch, aye dark as coal,
And through the window she put out her hole.
And Absalom no better felt nor worse,
But with his mouth he kissed her naked arse
Right greedily, before he knew of this.
Aback he leapt—it seemed somehow amiss,
For well he knew a woman has no beard;
He’d felt a thing all rough and longish-haired,
And said, “Oh fie, alas! What did I do?”
“Teehee!” she laughed, and closed the window too;
And Absalom went forth a sorry pace.

Our tale neither begins nor ends with a mouthful of pubic hair, but opens with the male half struggling to get some sleep as images of his love interest fill his brain and tickle his libido:

One night as I lay on my bed
I thought about a pretty maid
I was so distressed
I could take no rest;
Love did torment me so
So along to my true love’s I’d go

The guy is so horny that he heads through “bitter frost and snow” to connect with the pretty maid, obviously not having seen the Seinfeld episode where George suffers shrinkage after a dip in a cold pool. He pleads with her to let him in, but the lass fears that Mum and Dad will wake up and subject her to “sore abuse.” Determined to get inside (ahem), he manages to convince her that “they sleep so sound on their bed of down,” and the maid finally allows him to enter:

My lover rose and she opened the door
Like an angel she stood on the floor
Her eyes did shine so bright
Like the stars at night
No diamonds could shine so
And it’s in with my true love I did go . . .

As the song ends with a double entendre, the listener is left to choose the ending—either the heat generated by the lass solved his shrinkage problem and they went all the way, or the couple settled down to a round or two of kissy-kissy. The only version of the song that supplies a scarcely disguised resolution came from British folksinger Shirley Collins:

To the green bed I and my love did go.
What we did there
I’ll not declare;
No mortal man shall know
Not so long as I this breath can draw.

In Shirley’s version, Dad wakes up to the “a-rattling” and demands an explanation, but the plucky lass manages to convince him that it’s just the wind. As I’m quite comfortable with ambiguity, I prefer June’s version, but I may be swayed by the purity of her voice when she sings a cappella.

“She Moves Among Men (The Bar Maid’s Song)” (Bill Caddick): June has been recognized as a champion of Bill Caddick’s songwriting talent, having recorded several of his songs over the years. As a woman who has worked as a volunteer in domestic violence shelters in several countries and knows far too well the connection between alcohol and abuse, the tale Bill spun certainly piqued my interest, but I needed to understand the social milieu in which the scenes might have taken place.

Much to my surprise, I found the answer on the beer blog Boak & Bailey, which featured an article about Eliza Orme’s comprehensive study of the lives of Victorian barmaids. “Part of the reason for the particular interest in the lives of barmaids was a moral panic then underway about the supposed connection between this job and sexual exploitation . . . as well as a series of stories about young British women being lured to the continent with offers of barmaid jobs before being pressed into prostitution.”

Whether the woman in question volunteered to provide the service or was forced into it hardly matters. The barmaid accepts her role but wishes that the men would show her a touch of human kindness and affection as recompense, but to them, she’s nothing but a whore, a receptacle for their sperm designed for use and abuse.

“Speak to me gently before we begin”
She pleads but they laugh and pull her down
And after they’ve used her briefly and roughly
They leave her to face the dawn alone

When they have gone she moves on her side
Thinks of the men that with her have lain
And none of them gave her a kind-worded loving
And after they’d done not one of them stayed

As the cycle soon becomes never-ending, any trace of self-esteem is lost in the process, and only death can save her from the brutality.

Once she was wary, chose but a few
To roll in her arms at the end of the day
But the flower so proud begins now to wither
That any may pluck at the petals so gay

Alone in the night she muses a while
And thinks of the days and how they will pass
She cries for the lonely years that awaiting
Till death takes her hand and weds her at last

Up to this point, the only accompaniment comes in the form of brief transitions and counterpoints from Dave Bristow’s piano. At the end of the deathwish verse, Bristow takes charge with a run of dissonant notes followed by a melancholy arpeggio and a slow, sad return to the story. What I hear in his piano is the barmaid’s dread of another night of abuse, her yearning to be recognized as a human being, and her deep regret for the circumstances that brought her to such a state. In the closing verse, she returns to the bar, where the men drink away any remaining inhibitions and launch their assaults on the poor wench. The closing line echoes her wish for fleeting intimacy, a wish that now feels like a cruel joke.

Down in the barroom she moves among me
Who watch her and touch her whenever they can
And she notices hands and mouths as they drink
And over the tankards the eyes of each man

“Speak to me gently before we begin.”

Although the song presents a perfect opportunity to protest toxic masculinity, June never raises her voice in anger, restraining any such impulses to focus on the sheer sadness of the barmaid’s lot in life.

“Lay This Body Down” (Roud 11839): According to the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library, this song was part of a collection titled Slave Songs of the United States, compiled by Northern abolitionists shortly after the slaves gained their freedom. It was the first collection of African-American music in any form. The volume also contains many songs still remembered today, such as “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” “Hallelujah,” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”

You might assume that June had no business singing this song, given her status as a white, non-American (lucky girl!) woman from Warwick, but she has always expressed deep empathy for the suffering, no matter what their origins.

Given their dire circumstances and the difficulties of escape, the primary avenue of hope that slaves could cling to was their belief in a better afterlife as promised in the Holy Bible. The song depicts the deep weariness of a slave at the end of another grueling workday, walking through a graveyard at night while pleading for Judgment Day, when the broken body gives way to the eternal soul:

My soul and your soul
Will meet on that day
Lay this body down

Oh graveyard, oh graveyard
I’m walking through that graveyard
Lay this body down

Backed only by a faint, ethereal sound from the keyboard, June captures both the earthly weariness of the slave and the fervent hope for redemption.

“A Smiling Shore “ (Andrew Cronshaw): Better known as a producer (as on this album and Aqaba), multi-instrumentalist, and folk music champion, Andrew Cronshaw wrote exactly one song in his entire life: “A Smiling Shore.” Cronshaw said that the song “draws partly on my impressions and imagined story of someone I only slightly knew.”

All I can say in response is that Andrew Cronshaw is an extraordinarily perceptive human being.

The combination of Cronshaw’s sensitive and searing lyrics and June Tabor’s empathy makes this story of a Holocaust survivor one of the most moving songs I’ve ever heard. Dave Bristow’s arrangement of baritone violin and piano deepens the sadness to the point where it seems bottomless and unresolvable, reflecting the pain of those who witnessed the atrocities and somehow managed to survive, leaving them with a lifetime of survivor’s guilt.

The man at the heart of the story is depicted as a father, but Cronshaw made it clear that the character was not his father. That denial allows us to conclude that the narrator is the son of a Holocaust survivor who does his best to try to ease the everlasting pain of the horrors his father witnessed and comfort him when dreams turn into nightmares. In the first verse, we learn that the survivor made his way to a neutral country (“a smiling shore”), an arduous experience in itself in terms of distance, finding safe places to sleep and the need to come up with plausible stories to make it past the border guards:

So he found his way to a smiling shore
A year or two from a strange war
Gentle lies to dying eyes
A thousand miles of walking 

He finally arrives at the home of his offspring, but it would be inappropriate to claim he is now “safe at home.” The war may be over, the death camps may be museums, but his memories will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Old man talking
Last night I heard him shouting in his sleep
He doesn’t need a Sunday in November
Every night for forty years my father still remembers

For this is his kingdom
His home and his story
Were lost in a struggle for power
And glorious ideals 

The tone in June’s voice when she sings the word “glorious” is tinged with irony and disbelief, foreshadowing the horrible experience depicted in the subsequent verse:

The final solution to no one’s problem
Friends and lovers in stinking rows
Avoiding their eyes, checking their numbers
Burning their clothes 

June spits out the word “stinking” with sheer disgust—not for the helpless victims, but for the brutes who put them there. The song ends with a sad portrait of an innocent soul condemned to relive the memories of man’s inhumanity to man.

Sole survivor
You wouldn’t even see him in a crowd
A family man waits in a queue to draw his pension
Nursing memories of a life he can’t bring himself to mention 

As we have seen in the decades following World War II, genocides and mass murders remain a gruesome fact of life on Earth. It’s important to remember that while the Jewish people were the primary targets of Hitler’s bloodlust, millions of other human beings were murdered by the Nazis: 1.8 million Poles, half a million Romani, 3.3 million Russian POWs, over a quarter million disabled people and an unknown number of other undesirables like Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, dissidents and political opponents. As hatred of others “not like us” is once again fanned by right-wing leaders all over the world, it would be foolish to believe that it won’t happen again—and it could happen to any group identified as enemies of the state.

“The Bonny Boy” (Roud 293): It’s always a treat to listen to June sing a cappella, but I find the end of this story rather disappointing. In verse one, the lass proclaims her love for her “bonny, bonny boy” and has even “built him a bower in my breast.” Okay. In verse two, she searches high and low for her bonny boy and even “hollered, whooped and I played upon my flute” to no avail. Hmm. I’ve never used my flute to entrap men, but since it didn’t work for her, I think I’ll put that idea on the back burner (my arms would cover my tits anyway). In verse three, she plants herself “on a green mossy bank” and lo and behold, she espies her bonny boy “fast locked in some other girl’s arms.” I fully expected her to forget about that philanderer in ten seconds, but nope . . . she’s willing to share him with her enemy!

Now, the girl who’s the joy of my own bonny boy
Let her make of him all that she can.
Or whether he loved me or whether he don’t,
I’ll walk with that boy now and then.

I’ll admit I’m looking through a lens of gender equality, but I find her reaction desperate and more than a little pathetic. Oh, well.

“I Never Thought My Love Would Leave Me” (Roud 1049): The background information on this song includes a quotation from Edward Tatnall Candy in the liner notes from Jean Ritchie’s album Singing the Traditional Songs of Her Traditional Kentucky Mountain Family: “The laws of folk music propagation are flexible. Jean Ritchie picked this tune up from an Irish girl in New York—it is of the vast body of English-Scottish-Irish song and a good representation of those songs in every language lamenting the coldness of old love, after the warmth of the new.” That observation interested me because the closing verse of “I Never Thought My Love Would Leave Me” finds the betrayed woman wishing for death:

I wish my father had never whistled,
I wish my mother had never sung;
I wish the cradle had never rocked me,
I wish I’d died, love, when I was young.

I have a playlist full of melodic music that I sing along to when I’m doing the chores. It’s loaded with songs by the Beatles, Hollies, XTC, and (most importantly) the Everly Brothers. One day I found myself singing along to “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” when it struck me as rather odd that I raised my voice in song to lines like “I wish that I could die” and “I need you so that I could die.” I’ve had plenty of breakups over the years, and not once did I experience a death wish. It was always, “Oh, well, things didn’t work out, thanks for the fucks, bye bye!”

As I was pondering this conundrum, Alicia walked into the room, and I thought, “Oh my, if I ever lost Alicia, I would feel like I could die.” When you bring your heart and soul into a relationship, the loss of your loved one would shake you to the core and could trigger a death wish.

Though I will continue to stand by my belief expressed in my review of OK Computer that Romeo and Juliet were idiots for offing themselves when they could have easily slipped out of town in disguise and searched for a less demanding place to live, June is so effective in capturing the deep sense of loss felt by the young woman that I can accept the death wish as a valid expression of existential emotional pain. In this case, the angst is magnified by the intensely vertical melody that allows June to imbue the tale with genuine agony and forlornness.

“The Bonny Hind” (Roud 205; Child 50): Before we begin, you’ll need a brief lesson in the ever-drifting language we know as English. When read through the lens of today’s vernacular, you might think that a bonny hind is a beautiful ass, and though you would be wrong, there is a kinda-sorta connection: the word “hind” was once used to describe a red female deer, but by extension, it was also employed as a term of affection for a young lass (not necessarily one with a beautiful ass). 

Here’s the story: “Down by the Holland green,” a lass espies a “brisk young squire, as brisk as ev’r she seen.” Without a proper introduction, he asks for her maidenhead, and the lass happily complies. Once all passion is spent, it occurs to her that she knows nothing of her new lover and that lust often leads to certain consequences.

“Perhaps there my be bairns, kind sir,
Perhaps there may be none,
But if you be a courtier
Pray tell to me your name.”

“Oh I am no courtier,” he says,
“But new come from sea;
“Oh I am no courtier,” he said,
“But when I courted thee.”

His pun fails to land, so he provides her with additional information:

They call me Jack when I’m abroad,
Sometimes they call me John;
But when I’m in my father’s bower,
Oh, Jock Randall is my name.”

This information lands like a rabbit punch and leaves the maid in understandable distress:

“You lie, you lie, you bonny lad,
So loud I hear you lie.
For I am Lord Randall’s only daughter,
He has no more than me.”

Her new lover asserts his claim as Lord Randall’s only son boldly and firmly, and only then does she realize that she has broken the strictest taboo of all, and in ancient times, there was only one way out for a woman:

She’s put her hand down by her side
And out she’s taken a knife;
And she’s put it in her own heart’s blood
And taken away her life.

“With a big tear in his eye,” Jock buries his sister “beneath the Holland tree” and heads for his father’s place. His first words convey his distress (“It’s oh and oh for my bonny hind/Beneath the Holland tree”), but his father thinks he’s talking about deer and tries to quiet his son’s anxiety by explaining there are plenty of those bonny hinds around and about.

What care you for your bonny hind
Four score of them are silver shod,
Of these you may have three.

Dad senses that his offer has failed to break through the gloom, so he tries again, offering the worst possible solution for his son’s obvious distress: he suggests that he go to the Holland tree, where his sister was known to pass the time.

Finis.

You might find the narrative dissatisfying if you were hoping for “what happened next,” but while the creators neglected to spell things out, they assumed that listeners were smart enough to piece it all together. The basic message is that incest destroys families. The girl is dead, the son will live with deep remorse for the rest of his life, and will likely head for the open seas, leaving his father alone and childless.

June’s storytelling capabilities are on full display in her a cappella rendering, playing all the parts in this tragedy to perfection—the shock and denial of the daughter, the overwhelming grief of the son, and the sheer innocence of the father, who was lucky to know as little as possible about a turn of events he would consider unbelievable anyway.

“The Fiddle and the Drum” (Joni Mitchell): I almost skipped Abyssinians because of this song. I’m sick and tired of dealing with never-ending American bullying bullshit, so to spare me the agony of having to deal with that crap, I’ll just copy my thoughts on the song from my review of Clouds and make a few comments regarding June’s take.

“The Fiddle and the Drum” is Joni’s message to an America that at the time chose to embroil itself in the absurd conflict we know as the Vietnam War. I don’t think Americans fully appreciate how frightening their country seems to many people all over the world. Americans accept violence as one of the inevitable prices one pays for living in a so-called “free society,” and because they view the rest of the world with deep suspicion and distrust, they tend to be closed to any foreign feedback. One of the primary reasons I chose to leave America had to do with its culture of violence—the stockpiling of guns, the mass shootings, the frequently violent films and television shows and its veneration of the military. In “The Fiddle and the Drum,” our Canadian friend mourns the choice that Americans have made “to trade the handshake for the fist,” something that may be even more relevant today in the era of “The American Empire” as opposed to the Cold War years of Vietnam when at least the evil Russians were around to take some of the heat. The dynamic is still the same, though: fuck the world, we’ll do whatever the fuck we want because we’re Americans and we’re the best fucking country in the world, so fuck you. Such a tragic perspective! Such a waste of human potential and human life!

June recorded the song during the Reagan era, when Dutch was determined to frighten the whole world by launching a massive nuclear buildup program. June follows Joni’s lead by singing the first two verses a cappella, but when you have a virtuoso fiddler like Ric Sanders nearby, you simply have to capitalize on the opportunity to strengthen the song’s innate sense of tragedy.

Unfortunately for the currently living, the song will remain relevant for years to come.

*****

In a BBC review of June’s 2011 release Ashore, subtitled “Tabor’s a colossus, and this is one of her finest hours,” Colin Irwin reflected on her unique standing in the field of music:

June Tabor has always resolutely pursued her own heart without recourse to the conformities of genre, expectations of audiences and especially not the pressures of orthodox commercial appeal.

Her hard-headed attitude may not have won her great riches and she sometimes makes challenging demands on even her most devoted followers, but it gives her a unique aura. Richard Thompson and Elvis Costello are among those who’ve written songs specifically for her, and marginalising her in the ‘folk’ category seems woefully limiting.

In addition to her willingness to tackle difficult subject matter, June’s commercial appeal has likely suffered from the profound lack of interest in human history, particularly in the generations that followed the Baby Boomers. I find such ignorance appalling and self-destructive because by studying history, we can learn from mistakes made in the past and avoid the dire consequences fueled by those mistakes. As we are presently living in a re-enactment of the 1930s*, when appeasement led to the most destructive war in human history, I’m thoroughly disgusted with world “leaders” who lack the guts to stand up to Trump and do all they can to avoid his mad wrath.

Despite our technological advances—which more than any other factor explains the arrogant belief that we are superior to the humans of yesteryear—there isn’t much difference between ourselves and our ancestors. The folk songs of the past tell us that our ancestors loved to fuck and get drunk, were given to prejudice and superstition, wary of outsiders, and more willing to address problems via threats and violence than engaging in dialogue. Some of those old farts were responsible for significant advances in art and science, and some were responsible for unthinkable horrors that led to the deaths of millions.

The truth is that June Tabor’s music is exceptionally relevant today and will likely be relevant for centuries. Abyssinians and her other contributions to music may lack commercial appeal, but Grammys and sales figures only measure present-day trends, not the timelessness of a true artist.

*You can find many parallels between our era and the 1930s in William L Shirer’s The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940. You’ll want to pay special attention to Chapter 8, ‘The Men Around Hitler.”