The Truth to You I’ll Tell – “Little Glass of Wine”
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“Jealousy, it filled his mind…”
A few authentic folk performances collected on both sides of The Pond after World War II, during the earliest days of the Folk Revival, stand out as well. Merlin Mitchell recorded “Come, Let’s Get Married” as performed by Mrs. Dan McCracken in Springdale, Arkansas in April of 1950. Peter Kennedy and Sean O’Boyle recorded Mary Doran of County Waterford, Ireland performing “Oxford City” in July of 1952. Emily Sparkes, of Rattlesden in Suffolk, sang “The Jealous Lover“ in the late 1950’s for John Howsen. The list goes on into the post-modern age. In fact, as suggested above, recording of traditional performances in this ballad group were made in Britain well into the late 20th century. Though this is not unheard of with some of the songs we consider here, it’s not the norm at all – such staying power speaks to something we’ll get to in the Coda.
You can match up the details from Zierke’s page with my playlist to get the full musical picture. There is even more there as well. If you’re willing to just settle for my amateur opinion, here it is. Taken together, we see that these examples are remarkably consistent on most of the major points of the narrative. Further, though the plurality of the traditional recordings we can access come from the south of England, the list as a whole demonstrates the popularity of this ballad in a sizable portion of the Anglophone world. This is borne out by the collected textual examples cited by Waltz and Engle in the TBI. They find it throughout the eastern United States, the Canadian Maritimes, as well as England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Williams, Ralph Vaughan et al. “Songs Collected from Essex.”
Journal of the Folk-Song Society 2.8 (1906): 157
Professional folk musicians reflect the same consistent narrative of the traditional versions in their recordings. They tend to shy away from creative lyrical revision on this one, though musically they’re diverse. The most prominent American example is the bluegrass innovation of the Stanleys that we’ve covered already, and suffice it to say that later American examples from the Folk Revival forward follow their lead. These can be sampled in the playlist as well. However, Britain provides some solid performances in this category we have yet to hear, and with which we’ll close this section.
Nic Jones cut a version in 1978 called “Newport Street” that exhibits the typical excellence of any ‘trad. arr. Jones’ recording. He doesn’t mess with the traditional narrative, though at first glance it appears he does truncate the song’s lyrics, paring it down to essentials without omitting key details. In fact, this was not done by him. His source, as reported by Zierke, is verifiable online – a version collected by Cecil Sharp and Vaughn Williams, from one Mr. Punt somewhere in Essex in 1904, and published in 1906 in the venerable Journal of Folk Song. Jones barely changed the lyrics from this version at all. Since his music is hard to come by online and in print, we’ll have to settle for the second half of a basic YouTube video – “Newport Street” starts at 5:01.
Lyrics for Jones’s “Newport Street”
Eliza Carthy drew her inspiration for her 2002 recording of “Worcester City” from Joseph Taylor’s 1908 performance, linked above. She tinkers little with his century-old lyrics, and you can compare both sets side by side if you scroll to the bottom of Zierke’s page for the ballad. Musically she brings a traditional fiddle to a powerful and haunting post-modern vocal and percussion arrangement. If Jones’s tamer approach doesn’t get you there, I bet this one will. If there is any version in this post which can compete with and maybe even beat the Stanley Brothers, this is it. You have to check it out!
YouTube version – Live (lacking the studio percussion, but not Eliza’s raw energy. Wow!)
Finally, up and coming musicians The Dovetail Trio cut a fresh and compelling version of “Poison in a Glass of Wine” for their 2015 album Wing of Evening. Zierke cites their source as a version collected by Alfred Williams in Crudwell, Wiltshire in 1916. Indeed, we can find the citation for this source as “Around the Grove as I Went Walking”, performed for Williams by one Mrs. Russell. Again, there is little messing about with the lyrics of the original source, though the musical arrangement is innovative and ear-catching.
YouTube version – Live Lyrics for The Dovetail Trio’s version
You might notice that the narrative here is slightly different than our other examples, in that it starts from the point of view of some disinterested listener eavesdropping on two young women. Williams assigned it no significance in his notes, and dismissed it as “tedious.” However, he bade others to judge it not too harshly with the caveat “…we must remember the nature of the materials we are dealing with, and not lose sight of the simplicity of those who sang the pieces.” You’ll immediately note the class-based bias but, despite that, his advice will in fact be helpful as we move into our Coda and consider just why this song is so compelling even though it tells a horrid story.