An Aside: Night Visiting Songs: (Subgenre) Ghosts

About a year ago I started to have some interest in "night visiting songs." This was inspired by my growing admiration for the work of Jim Moray, an English folk-singer, and of course, my love for the saddest songs possible and songs of this genre are pretty uniformly very sad. Moray has recorded a couple of night visiting songs he wrote, "Nightvisiting" and "Nightvisitor," plus he covered Bella Hardy's beautiful "Three Black Feathers," along with a couple of other trad songs which I may or may not talk about in this post. (For links to performances of these songs, see the list at the bottom.)

Well then, a few weeks ago when Miriam and I were hosting a singing at my house, I sang the lovely really sad folk song, "She Moved Through the Fair." It had never occurred to me this was a night visiting song, but it hit Miriam and about the same second as I was singing that it was. I used to sing this song to the kids when they were little; even though I'm a librarian, I sang to them rather than read to them. Mike and I both thought they would see us reading enough (and sometimes ignoring them a bit while reading) and it would make them want to read. It worked! Anyway, by the time she was two, Maeve was totally my daughter, liking the saddest songs best. So here are the four verses I as I learned it and sing.

My young love said to me, “My mother won't mind,
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kind.”
As she stepped away from me and this she did say,
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”

As she stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there.
And then she turned homeward, with one star awake,
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake.

Well, the people are saying that no two were e'er wed,
For one had a sorrow that never was said.
And she smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in,
So softly she came that her feet made no din.
As she laid her hand on me and this she did say,
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”

I had also come to like a couple of Kate Rusby night visiting songs: one she wrote called "Ghost" and one trad song "Night Visiting Song" with music by John McCusker who sings the most beautiful harmony with her. This is on his CD Yella Hoose. She does another version of the same trad lyrics on a Mark Radcliffe Sessions CD with music by Tony Cuffe. It's also beautiful, but you can't beat the harmonized version. A friend says Rusby's voice is too 'wan' to be interesting, but I argue that especially on night visiting songs it seems like voices should be wan. How would you be feeling if every night your dead lover came and awakened you, then left at the first cock crow? Pretty wan, I bet. (Miriam and I are going to learn the McCusker version and I am going to learn "Ghost" for the next singing we have.) It's unclear in the trad song whether it is a ghost or not, but it seems sad enough to be, so I vote that it is.

About a week ago, I found a very interesting (and helpful to anyone new to the topic) podcast by Tim Van Eyken who plays with Waterson:Carthy, who of course do several night visiting songs. In the podcast on BBC, titled The Night Visiting, he discusses the history, literary forms, and psychology of these songs. Some of these go back to the Middle Ages. The summary of the podcast indicates, "There are many varieties of night visiting song: tales of seduction; stories of deception, when the visitor turns out not to be the expected lover; and songs of ghostly visitation." It's the ghost genre that I particularly like. This ghost genre, where it is the sympathetic lover who returns, is believed to have come in in the 18th century. In the podcast, Bella Hardy talks about the terrible sense of loss when the lover goes off to the war for 7 years; one might have no communication with the lover—perhaps they didn't even know how to write. They wouldn't have photographs, so some of these songs suggest the lovers don't even recognize each other. Chris French, a professor at Goldsmiths, remarked that 50% of people have some kind of experience of a dead loved one being with them. The lover alive may think they see the beloved, they may smell their usual smell—their perfume or pipe tobacco. 

One thing I do not like about a lot of these songs is that the lover sneaks up on his beloved to watch through the window to see if his beloved's "mind" is on him or if she has found another lover. What about trust? Miriam had some interesting insights about this: "It's as if their romantic value or their virtue is measured by how long they think of no one else. But even if the living lover's mind is on someone else, is that not understandable/forgivable after so many years? Can they not be thinking of someone else and still long desperately for the return of the dead beloved?" This "checking up on" seems like a minor misogynistic side to these songs. I have to forgive that somehow because of the beauty of these songs.

I'm starting a list of these songs, only the subgenre, Ghosts and a sub-subgenre, The Unquiet Grave. In the Unquiet Grave songs, usually the alive lover goes to visit the grave of the dead lover and the dead lover appears to them imploring the alive lover to quit their mourning, they are no longer the person they were.These can be very, very sad. I don't care so much about the other varieties of night visiting songs; they are not sad in the same way. If you know other Night Visiting songs of this variety, please let me know. I'll add them to the list! Please note I have done no serious scholarly research about this and hope to get to that before long.

UPDATE: Found another and now it is one of my all-time favorites. I had on Spotify Radio (I think False Lights Radio) and heard a fabulous tune--it was Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman singing their version of The Knight's Ghost. I really love it and Miriam and I have spent WAY too much time the past two days trying to figure out the time signatures and various things about the Child version on Sacred Texts and the version that Kathryn Roberts sings. It is very faithful but a few changes. All I can say is listen to it. I don't see how you couldn't love it. YouTube link is below.  

Nightvisiting--Jim Moray (see I Will Put My Ship in Order)

Nightvisitor--Jim Moray (much of this is from Trad: Night Visiting Song)

Night Visiting Song (Cuffe)--Kate Rusby

Night Visiting Song (McCusker)--Kate Rusby

Night Visiting Song (Trad)--Luke Kelly

She Moved through the Fair/Our Wedding Day (Trad)--Anne Briggs

Ghost--Kate Rusby

Three Black Feathers (Hardy)--Jim Moray, Bella Hardy

I Am Stretched on Your Grave (page 150)--Kate Rusby (ok, so the dead lover doesn't appear in this song but she should!)

Suffolk Miracle/The Holland Handkerchief (Trad)--Jim Moray

Bay of Biscay/Seven Long Years--Norma Waterson, Jim Moray

The Grey Cock--Eliza Carthy, Cecilia Costello (there's not this truly classic version on YouTube but an old recording exists and is played on the Tim Van Eyken podcast)

Fair Margaret and Sweet William--Jim Moray
The Knight's Ghost--(Trad; music by Roberts and Lakeman) Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman