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The Jovial Hunter of Bromsgrove

from Up The Cut by Jon Wilks

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THE JOVIAL HUNTER OF BROMSGROVE [CHILD 18, ROUD 29]

Sometimes a title just catches you, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just me, but this one tickles me good and proper. Maybe it has to do with memories of friends from Bromsgrove when I was a teenager – good friends; a funny bunch – but the idea of there being a proud knight roaming Bromsgrove Town and plucking troubled ladies from trees… It’s all a bit Monty Python.

It’s a good song, though, and one that has survived for a lengthy time. This is possibly the oldest song I currently have in my repertoire. A Child Ballad [Child 18], it has been through countless names and changes, and is thought to date back to a poem called Sir Eglamour of Artois, probably written around 1350.

Much like the knight in the narrative, this wonderful old song has done plenty of roaming, largely up and down the M5 corridor here in the UK, before hopping over to North America. Take a look at the VWML website and you’ll see just how well-travelled the jovial hunter of Bromsgrove is.

He’s also changed his identity a number of times, too. You can look him up under the names Sir Lionel, Bold Sir Rylas, Bangum the Boar Slayer, Sir Egrabell, Sir Eglamore, Rackabello… the list goes on.

It has been recorded countless times. It’s one of those songs where you can listen to two different versions and not realise that you’re listening to something born of the same origin. Take the recording of ‘Bold Sir Rylas’ by Spiers & Boden, and stick it in a playlist alongside ‘Wild Hog in the Woods’, recorded by The Furrow Collective and see how many differences you spot. Search then for The Demon Barbers… and suddenly we’re into uptempo reggae. Very jovial.

By the time it reached the Midlands, Bold Sir Rylas had, for whatever reason, become ‘The Jovial Hunter of Bromsgrove’. The version that I’ve recorded here is my interpretation and arrangement of the song as it appears in Roy Palmer’s book, Songs of the Midlands. Roy notes that it was collected from Benjamin Brown in Upper Wick, Worcestershire, in around 1845. Not much is known about Benjamin, but Roy writes that he was an illiterate fellow who had learnt the song some 35 years previously. So we can say with reasonable confidence that Sir Rylas had been jovial in Bromsgrove since at least 1810.

lyrics

Sir Robert Bolton had three sons
Wind well thy horn good hunter
And one of them Sir Rylas
Well he was a jovial hunter

He ranged all round the woodside
Wind well thy horn good hunter
Till in a tree top a lady he spied
For he was a jovial hunter

What dost thou mean fair lady
Wind well thy horn good hunter
The wildest boar has killed my lord
As thou art a jovial hunter

So he put his horn into his mouth
Wind well thy horn good hunter
And he blowed north, east, west and south
For he was a jovial hunter

And the wild board heard him in his den
Wind well thy horn good hunter
And he's made the best of speed to him
To Rylas the jovial hunter

They fought four hours in a long summer's day
Wind well thy horn good hunter
Till the wild boar fain would have gotten away
From Rylas the jovial hunter

So Rylas drew his sword with might
Wind well thy horn good hunter
And he fairly cut his head off, quite,
For he was a jovial hunter

Then from the wood a wild woman flew
Wind well thy horn good hunter
Saying my pretty spotted pig thou has slew
As thou art a jovial hunter

If there's one thing I demand of thee
Wind well thy horn good hunter
It's that my sword and thy neck can agree
I am a jovial hunter

Then Rylas drew his sword again
Wind well thy horn good hunter
And he fairly split her head in twain
For he was a jovial hunter

In Bromsgrove Church they both do lie
Wind well thy horn good hunter
With the wild boar's head on a spike nearby
To Rylas the jovial hunter

credits

from Up The Cut, released February 12, 2021
Arranged, performed and recorded by Jon Wilks.

Mixed and mastered by Andi Lee, Kosi Studios.

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Jon Wilks Whitchurch, UK

'The sort of performer folk circles mean when they talk of the living tradition' - Mike Davies, Folking.com

“One of the best of the New Wave of Folk Blokes. As a guitar player and arranger of traditional songs, Jon Wilks already deserves speaking of in the same breath as your Simpsons and your Morays.” – Ian A. Anderson, fRoots Mag
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