Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Monday Smiles

One interesting aspect of the evolution of music from traditional to modern rock styles is that much of it crossed the Atlantic twice on its way. The Scots, Irish, and English settlers in America took their fiddle and pipe music with them, and then ran into the guitar (more often just diddley bows and cigar-box) based Blues music of the Black ex-slaves.

A good example is the centuries-old traditional English tune "The Prickly Bush" or "A Maid Saved from the Gallows", which turned into a Blues tune "Gallis Pole" recorded by Leadbelly and others, and was then re-adopted by Led Zeppelin and recorded as 'Gallows Pole'. There are dozens and dozens of versions and variations on this, I do an arrangement which combines the drop-D drone sound of the Willie Watson version (which itself is harking back to the drone sound of pipes) with some of the traditional lines from The Prickly Bush:

Did you bring some silver, maybe a little gold
To save my body from the cold hard ground
And my neck from the gallows pole

I haven't got a decent recording of me doing it, so you'll have to make do with Willie Watson