David Harley Words & Music & Pictures &…

I learned this from Ewan MacColl’s album ‘The Manchester Angel’, though, hearing that version again recently, I see I’ve changed the words slightly. I think he collected it from the Dorset singer Caroline Hughes in the 60s, but Hammond also collected two very similar versions, also in Dorset, in the first decade of the 20th century. I noticed around then that the tune is clearly related to one associated with the rather more spiritual The Carnal and the Crane and The Holy Well, though Martin Carthy also used it for a version of the less-than-spiritual ballad of adultery and murder Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.

When I sang The Sheepstealer in the 70s, I always sang it unaccompanied, as did MacColl.

Much more recently, though, I started to play The Holy Well as an intro to my own Song of Chivalry (though not for the song itself, which uses a more-or-less original tune). Even more recently, when the Dorset song came up in conversation in a Facebook group frequented by Cornish songwriters, it occurred to me that a somewhat similar guitar part would work quite well with it. And I think it does: your mileage may vary, of course!

Same version, but tidied and remastered.

[backup]

If you’re familiar with my album So Sound You Sleep, you may notice that I used the same tune for my lyric about Twm Siôn Cati. (Which I also sang unaccompanied.) Fortunately, I also recorded a version using The Limerick Rake as an alternative tune: having rediscovered The Sheepstealer, I think I prefer to sing it as I learned it and use the Irish tune for the Welsh outlaw story.

You can find words to The Sheepstealer here on Mainly Norfolk.