I am a keen musician with my interests spread across many genres. One such is folk music with a slight leaning towards Irish content. One outstanding voice (to me) was the late Ronnie Drew because his distinctive voice had feeling to it that very few achieve. One such song, Love Is Pleasing (below) is a particular favourite of mine which I often play and ‘sing’ along to, especially if my wife has accompanied me into my workshop and picked up her fiddle. Now to my question … does anyone know the origins of this song and who composed it?
[1967:] We have suggested the majority of English songs tell a story or at least purport to. But there are also songs that are simply expressions of mood and nothing more. They are not numerous but they are confusing in their variety because they make use of a stock of symbolic or epigrammatic verses that are combined and re-combined in song after song, so that often it is hard to tell one piece from another. This stock of common-place lyrical ‘floaters’ […] is relatively restricted, comprising perhaps not many more than fifty tropes in all […]. The verses are usually concerned with love, especially love betrayed or denied, and a repertory of such verses provides a handy kit for making countless songs almost at will. […] Fluid as the use of these floating stanzas may be, sets of them sometimes show signs of crystallizing into specific songs [e.g. Love Is Teasing]. […] Few of these floationg lyrics are datable. They are the product of some sentimental flowering of the spirit, but whether they were all produced at the same period or represent the accretion of centuries would be hard to say. (Lloyd, England 178ff)
[1972:] [This] has long been a standard in the folk clubs of Britain. The tune is almost certainly of Irish origin, varied over the years, but the words tend to be ‘zippers and floaters’, found in a multitude of other settings. (Notes Spinners, ‘Love Is Teasing’)
[1974:] This was the first song I ever heard the Dubliners sing back in 1959. (Notes Noel Murphy, ‘Murf’)
[1977:] Probably started out in the south of England but by now is a hybrid. (Notes Jean Redpath, ‘Ballad Folk’)
[1982:] [For instance, refrain and verse 1 of the Alex Campbell version are] typical floating verses. These are verses that occur in a number of songs without any apparent connection with the story. Old-time audiences tended to like a song with plenty of verses, partly because it gave them a better opportunity to learn the tune, and floating verses were a useful way of ‘padding’. (Pollard, Folksong 31f)
Love is pleasing, collected in the West Country and well known in Scotland, has some verses in common with Waly waly, of which two versions exist. It is possible that all these variants spring from one original ballad which has not been identified. (Pollard, Folksong 37)
The laws of folk music propagation are flexible. Jean Ritchie picked this tune up from an Irish girl in New York—it is of the vast body of English-Scottish-Irish song and a good representation of those songs in every language lamenting the coldness of old love, after the warmth of the new. The English “waly” songs also tell of this.
Shirley Collins learned Love Is Teasing from the singing of Jean Ritchie. She recorded it it 1958/59 for her Collector EP Shirley Sings Irish and in 1964 as Love Is Pleasin’ with Davy Graham for their album Folk Roots, New Routes.
June Tabor sang I Never Thought My Love Would Leave Me in 1983 on her Topic album Abyssinians. This track was also included in 2005 on her Topic anthology Always. She commented in the latter’s booklet:
Isabel Sutherland collected this song from one of the Stewarts at Blairgowrie. It felt right as soon as I heard it and I knew I wanted to sing it.
I can’t find this Blairgowrie version in the Roud index or on any of my Stewart Family albums and have tentatively sorted it here. It might be catalogued as There is a Tavern (Roud 60; Laws P25) too.
Norman Kennedy learned I Little Thocht My Love Wid Leave Me from Isla Cameron in the early 1960s. He sang it at a concert in Watertown near Boston on 23 October 1999 that was released in 2004 on his Autumn Harvest CD I Little Thocht My Love Wid Leave Me.
Ah, now considering The Dubliners did not exist in 1959, I’ll discount that.
The Dubliners came into exitance when The Ronnie Drew Ballard Group formed during 1962, consisting of Luke Kelly, Ciaran Bourke and Barney McKenna; later to be joined by John Sheahan on the fiddle, all changed their name to The Dubliners from the book of the same name by James Joyce. In 1959 Ronnie was in Spain as an English teacher and then returned to Dublin.
Thanks Omah, I’ll now see what I can glean from the rest of that info
I don’t know about the origins, I expect it is older and than when those people first sang it
But what caught my attention was that I’m sure I can remember Bob Dylan using the line “love is pleasing, love is teasing in one of his songs, I’ll see if I can find it
Aw, thank you, I knew I’d heard it, thought it was an earlier song of his. His mother’s side of the family were Irish and he was influenced by Irish music, intriguing to hear it pop up
