If the lockdown has any positive side effects, it is that it has brought some excellent performers into our living room. These are folk that we might not otherwise have encountered. Such a act are GreenMatthews who via several lockdown shows including the inventive ‘Keeping It Local’ tour, during which they went on tour in their own home – finding 14 different venues within their house and garden.
GreenMatthews (Chris Green and Sophie Matthews) are firm believers in the age-old power of narrative song to delight contemporary audiences. Taking their cue from ancient troubadour tradition, they are 21st-century wandering players – touring their self-created shows extensively throughout the UK and Europe. Although their music and tales are rooted in the past, the performance is entirely of the 21st century, immediate and accessible to modern audiences.
Here they play ‘Mirie it is’, the second oldest song in the English language dating from c.1350, performed on shawm and mandocello. This is taken from their show ‘A Brief History of Music’,
Moving forward into the 1600’s our next selection is ‘The Boys of Bedlam’. This much covered song is based on the poem ‘Tom o’ Bedlam’ written in the voice of a homeless ‘Bedlamite’. The terms “Tom o’ Bedlam” and “Bedlam begger” were used in Early Modern Britain and later to describe beggars who had mental illness. They claimed, or were assumed, to have been former inmates at the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam). It was commonly thought that inmates were released with authority to make their way by begging, though this is probably untrue. If it happened at all the numbers were certainly small, though there were probably large numbers of mentally ill travellers who turned to begging, but had never been near Bedlam. It was adopted as a technique of begging, or a character. For example, Edgar in King Lear disguises himself as mad “Tom o’ Bedlam”.
Finally a song from the music halls. ‘When Father Papered the Parlour’ is a popular song, written and composed by R. P. Weston and Fred J. Barnes in 1910. It was performed by comedian Billy Williams, and was one of his most successful hits.
