Come Stranger, Come Friend

Here's a lovely new song introduced by Alan and Anne at our Zoom meeting on 7th April 2021 and it's called Come Stranger, Come Friend.

Lyrics download links

pdf file recommended if you just want to print the file
Word doc file recommended if you want to edit the file before printing

The full song

Melody

Harmony

Three Rounds

Supplied by Alan, with recordings.

Wassail

Wassail all your apple trees upon this winter's day,
They will bloom and fruit so well the bugs will fly away,
We'll have plenty, we'll have plenty,
Apple pies, what sweet surprise, we'll eat them every day.

Download mp3

Summer Is Near

Rambling rolling Downs in Spring,
Swifts will soar and harebells ring,
Soft blows the wind, bright shines the sun,
Summer's near and Winter’s done.

Download mp3

Stir Up

Stir up we beseech thee, the
Pudden's in the pot and
When we get home we'll
Eat it all hot.

Download mp3

Tommie

Use this link to download a pdf file containing the words for Tommie. We first sang Tommie at our monthly Worthing session on 4th September 2019 and it appears in the set list for our performance this month (September 2019) at the Southdowns Folk Festival.

Songs for the Big Sing 2019

Use this link to download a pdf file containing words for two of the songs we will be singing together at the Big Sing in Bognor (part of the Southdowns Folk Festival) on Saturday 21st September 2019.

Ole leloila

Ole leloila
Ole leloila
Ole leloila
Ole le loi le loila

Sing You Now After Me

Sing you now after me,
And as I sing sing ye,
So shall we well agree,
Five parts in unity,
Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, bell!

Three Songs for May

These three songs are added to our repertoire for singing at Michelham Priory on 5th May 2019. Use the links below to download the lyrics:
Hal an Tow
It Is The First Of May
May Day Carol

If you will be singing at Michelham Priory, please see the updates to the set lists.

Song of the Sussex Downsman

Here is a reformatted version of the score for Song of the Sussex Downsman, intended to be easier to read for singers who may not be accustomed to reading music. If you have never read music, with a little explanation (which we can cover when we next sing this together) there is useful information that you can pick up very quickly, to ease the learning process for this song. There's also a piano recording of all three verses. The words and notes are unchanged from those given in the previous post for this song.

Download score pdf

Download mp3 (pitch as on the score)

Download mp3 (lower pitch, as we may sing it)

The original score for this song is marked allegro, meaning fast and bright. The mp3 files here are recorded at 115bpm (beats per minute) which is about the bare minimum (or even a little too slow) to qualify as allegro.

Hares On The Mountain

Here you can download the lyrics for Hares On The Mountain (pdf file).

You can listen to the melody in this post.

Our Captain Cried All Hands

Alan introduced us to this song at our last Worthing session. Vaughan Williams collected this in the village of Monk's Gate, near Horsham, and then adapted the tune for the hymn To Be A Pilgrim, which many of us will have heard. Here's a short extract from Andrew Gant's book "O Sing Unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music":

But a fascinating detail emerges from comparing the hymn tune, which they called 'Monk's Gate', with the original folk-song. 'Monk's Gate' repeats its first line, like many hymn tunes. But in the original song it is the second line, not the first, which is repeated - more irregular, but more fun. Vaughan Williams has smoothed it out. He was perfectly unapologetic about this sort of thing: folk-song was a living, oral tradition, and tunes changed between versions, or 'variants', as he called them, from one village to the next. His version is just one more 'variant'.

Download mp3

Download lyrics pdf

The Three Moles Song

Here's a song written by Gordon S of our Chichester group, which comes from the time (not so long ago) when the Chichester Group met regularly in The Three Moles at Selham. Here are the files provided by Gordon:
ThreeMolesLyrics.pdf
ThreeMolesTune.pdf
ThreeMoles.mid

For anyone who is unable to play the midi file, here's an mp3 file:
ThreeMoles.mp3

The Fields Lie Silent: A New Song For Us

Update 23rd August 2018: A few small changes have been made to the lyrics. Use the link below to the pdf file to download these.
Q: How do I know I'm looking at the new version?
A: At the bottom of the lyrics page you will see "revised 23rd August 2018".

Here's a new song from Alan, The Fields Lie Silent, written by Colin Gates.

Use the links below to download mp3 and pdf files.

Recording with melody and harmony: Fields Lie Silent.mp3

Recording with melody only: Fields Lie Silent melody.mp3

Recording with harmony only: Fields Lie Silent harmony.mp3

Lyrics: Fields Lie Silent.pdf

Score - melody only: Fields_Lie_Silent score.pdf

Score - melody and harmony: Fields_Lie_Silent w harmony score.pdf

New Songs from Lewes

Update 24th March 2018: There has been a revision to the words in the first verse of Brighton Camp. The link below has been updated to the new file which is dated "24th March 2018".

As requested by our Lewes group, below are links to download pdf files for two songs: Brighton Camp (which is also one of the Secret Shore songs) and Caburn Hill, a song written by Lewes group singer David T.

Lyrics:	Brighton Camp Caburn Hill
Scores:	Caburn Hill 2 Parts Caburn Hill Tune 1 Caburn Hill Tune 2

Two New Songs

Here are two new songs that we may soon be using in our performances.

The Bee-Boy’s Song Download pdf file

The Lark in the Morning Download pdf file

Hares On The Mountain and more...

Here's a verse of Hares On The Mountain from Emily, for anyone who's not familiar with it.

Download mp3



Child of Light:

Download mp3



Hey ho winter snow:

Download mp3

Song of the Sussex Downsman

Update 19th October: Please note that the audio file has been revised, as indicated by "rev2" in the filename. (Apologies, in the previous update three days earlier an incorrect file was uploaded here.) One note has been changed, for the syllable "be" in "Wool-ston-be-ree". This is at 1m9s from the start. The score remains unchanged and corresponds to this revision.

For everybody who will be singing at Sullington in a few weeks' time (and of course anybody else who takes an interest in this!), here is a recording of Emily singing the first verse of Song of the Sussex Downsman.

Download mp3

Download score pdf

Brisk Young Ploughboy

The words for Brisk Young Ploughboy can be downloaded here.

Before printing this, please note that the pdf file contains the song in two versions and you may want to print only one of these. The version on the first page includes bar lines to show where the beat falls and thus help with scanning the words. The second page is the conventional 'lyrics only' version.

If the first version makes no sense to you then please see me (Keith) as it really is very straightforward and will only take a few seconds to explain.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It has not yet been decided whether this song is to be included in the SDFS repertoire and used in any of our public performances.

A Round for the Festive Season

Here are the two parts to a round that Emily may be teaching us on the 4th January at the Beechwood.

Child of light, star so bright,
Hear the angels singing,
On this dark night.

Hey ho winter snow,
Logs for the fire,
Home we go,
Hear the choir singing.

The tunes are simple and easily picked up. Some of us sang this last month in the Christmas Songs workshop.

Six Wassailing Songs

Revised lyrics for four wassailing songs have now been issued and can be downloaded using this link. These incorporate the changes to previously issued lyrics which were discussed at our last Beechwood singing session. Two new songs are also included.

Christmas Songs 2016

These are our new songs for the festive season. The words for these (pdf file) can be downloaded using this link. Also download the score for While Shepherds Watched (Pentonville) which includes the bass line as sung by Emily in the last two verses in the recording below (NB the score and recording are not in the same key).

You can download recordings of these songs using the links given below. NB If you have to pay to download data on a mobile device you should not play the songs directly from this web page, but instead download the mp3 files and play these.

The Coppers’ Christmas Song download mp3



Hark the Herald Angels Sing download mp3



Masters in this Hall download mp3



While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks (Pentonville) download mp3

Oak, Ash and Thorn Male Harmony

This is the male harmony for the chorus of Oak, Ash and Thorn as given by Emily.




You can download the mp3 file here.
NB If you have to pay to download data on a mobile device you should not play the songs directly from this web page, but instead download the mp3 files and play these.


This is how the melody and harmony look and sound together:




You can download the mp3 file here.

Pleasant and Delightful Lyrics Updated

The lyrics for Pleasant and Delightful were made available on our Lyrics and Recordings page a couple of weeks ago and they have now been updated to correspond to the lyrics read out by Emily at our last Beechwood singing session. There was in fact only one small change: in the last line of the last verse, "if ever I return to you" was changed to "if ever I return again".

The updated version (dated 12th May 2016 in the footer) is available from the Lyrics and Recordings page, or you can obtain it directly by using this link.