Dark Eyed Rovers (Child #200)

It looks like I will finally get to deliver my talk on the research I did for my album of Colin Dryden songs at Easter this year. The National Folklore conference has been delayed since 2020.

While putting the presentation together today, I found this album from the Newcastle Folk Festival in 1974:
http://australianfolk.blogspot.com/2017/01/various-artists-newcastle-folk-festival.html

Colin sings this song in a blues style on the album, but the lyrics he uses don't match any of the Mainly Norfolk references:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/shirley.collins/songs/sevenyellowgipsies.html

It is reasonably similar to the version that Davey Graham does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQzK9mgubwI

This site suggests some truth to the story:
http://www.greatscottishclans.com/clans/kennedy.php

Lots of other versions of this ballad here:
https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch200.htm

Picture by Rackham, from this book:
https://archive.org/details/somebritishballa00rack

#ColinDryden #RaggleTaggleGypsy #GypsyRover #BlackJackDavey

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