Performed by The Love Hall Tryst
Hurdy Gurdys: Rebecca Arkenberg & JWH
Recorded and Engineered by David Seitz
Assisted by Raeann Zschokke
(additional assistance by Rene Christensen & Kieran Rafferty)

Songs 12 & 13: Recorded at Chroma, Seattle, WA (4/18/05)
Performed by The Minstrel in the Galleries
Vocals, Guitar: John Wesley Harding
Electric Guitar: Kurt Bloch
Mandolin, Accordion: Jed Critter
Bass: Jim Sangster
Drums: Mike Musburger
Engineered by Kurt Bloch

Mixed by Wesley Stace and David Seitz
Assisted by Raeann Zschokke at Shelter Island Sound, NYC (5/8/05)
Mastered by Emily Lazar at The Lodge, NYC
Photography and Design by Abbey Tyson, Saltbox Studio
Press by Dawn Kamerling at The Press House
Booking by Mike Leahy at Concerted Efforts, NY

All vocals arranged by The Love Hall Tryst. All songs published by Plangent Visions Music, Inc., ASCAP, except Joan of Arc © Leonard Cohen (Sony/ATV Songs LLC, BMI)

These songs are found, in various forms, in Misfortune, the new novel by Wesley Stace. The relevant passages are quoted beneath the song titles. Misfortune is published, thus far, by Little, Brown (USA), Jonathan Cape (UK), Querido (Holland), Mondadori (Italy), Editions Flammarion (France), Modan (Israel), and Ten Points Publishing (Taiwan).

1. Do Not Fear The Dark
“I have two songs,” Pharaoh proclaimed. “One is new writ, though it has taken me some time to con, called Do Not Fear the Dark or The Seamstress of Bethnal Green.”
“No!” thundered Augustus. “We will not be sung at! Thrips, can we stop this now?”
Thrips attempted to answer, but Pharaoh, whose sole motivating force in life was to deliver a freshly minted song, would not be deflected. All Augustus’ power and money was no match for Pharaoh’s will to sing.
From: Voilà, Chapter Five
Words: Harding
Music: from a tune for Newgates, sung by Mrs. Russell at Upwey, February 1907, noted by H.E.D. Hammond in The Journal of The Folk-Song Society #11

2. Joan of Arc (The Ballad of La Pucelle)
There was a thick blue plank of a book called The Gallery of Heroick Women, which was meant to be inspirational to me. The stories told of the contributions of great women to history, most particularly, war – Boadicea, Artemisia, who had built the Mausoleum, and Joan Of Arc. My mother softly sang me The Ballad Of La Pucelle as I sucked my thumb.
From: I Am Reborn, Chapter Two
Words & Music: Leonard Cohen

3. Lord Bateman
I asked my father about Bateman, and surprisingly (since it is neither fragment of amphora nor ruined column – sometimes I forget he understands anything else…), he knew who he was: a character from one of what he calls the old songs, though he called him Young Bekie – Father had a very ‘singing’ aunt who raised him on these songs, the secret currency of all the people, she said, rich or poor. The ballad tells the story of Gilbert Beket (the father of St. Thomas), who went to the Holy Land and was taken prisoner by Saracens, whereby the daughter of his captor, Prince Admiraud, fell in love with him and, after helping his escape, followed him back to England.
This makes me Admiraud’s daughter! Which is a little better than being Franny, daughter of Owen Cooper, I think.
From: Land of Dreams, Chapter One
Words: Trad arr Harding
Music: sung by Mr. Joseph Taylor at Brigg, July 1906, noted by Percy Grainger in The Journal of The Folk-Song Society #12

4. Female Rambling Sailor
You dressed as a sailor?
In jacket blue and white trousers, just like a sailor neat and tight, the female rambling sailor. I went to sea to mourn his life. My hands were hard with pitch and tar, though once were velvet soft.
What happened to your hands?
My pretty little fingers, they were so neat and small.
And your wrists?
You soon shall hear of the overthrow of the female rambling sailor.
From: Land of Dreams, Chapter One
Words and Music: Trad arr Harding

5. Lord Lovel
Loveall recalled a previous Lord Loveall and the song that bore his name, and he sang it softly to the baby. This ancestor had deferred his marriage for seven years while he went travelling. He returned after only twelve months, but as he rode home, he heard the church bells ringing, “for Nancy Bell who died for a discourteous squire.” He died too of grief, as he gazed on her corpse lying in its coffin, and was buried next to her. From her heart grew a red rose and from his heart a briar… No one in the family doubted that this was an ancestor, particularly because the Loveall coat of arms featured the very same motif. It was a strange, unheraldic emblem, despite the official description of the rose in the Lex Pantophilensis as “gules, barbed and seeded proper,” but The Young Lord had always felt a deep spiritual attachment to the family insignia and used the entwined flowers, emblazoned on the very doors of the carriage in which he rode, as his signature. Others could keep their escutcheons of pretense, their water budgets and their compony counter-componies, he was happy with this simple sign and the motto beneath: Amor Vincit Omnia.
From: Anonymous, Chapter Two
Words: Trad arr Harding
Music: from various traditional versions, including a tune for Molly Bell sung by Ollie Gilbert, Spring 1963, noted by John Quincy Wolf Jr.

6. The Sanguinary Butcher
This murder took place in Rye, East Sussex, in March 1742. John Breads was hanged in a gibbet iron that can be seen today in Rye Town Hall.
Words: Harding (inspired by Murder In The Churchyard by John Ryan)
Music: adapted from three different versions of The Red Barn or Murder of Maria Martin, sung by Mr. J. Whitby at Tilney All Saints, January 1905, and Mr. and Mrs. Verrall at Monk’s Gate, October 1904, noted by Ralph Vaughan Williams in The Journal of The Folk-Song Society #7

7. Shallow Brown
I couldn’t leave the hold, and the stench smothered me like a blanket. I felt the razor-sharp pins on their chins cut me in pricks. I bled and the room became darker and lighter and then darker and lighter. I wrote on the wall. I counted days. I sang songs to myself.
What songs did you sing?
The story of my life. How I was born and brought up.
Can you sing me that song?
I am singing it.
From: Land of Dreams, Chapter One
Words: Trad arr Harding
Music: sung by Mr. John Perring at Dartmouth, January 1908, noted by H.E. Piggott and Percy Grainger in The Journal of The Folk-Song Society #12

8. Lambkin
It was one of the old songs, his favourite of the many she sang: the story of Lambkin the builder who tortures Lord Murray’s family when his note is refused. The purity of Annie’s voice contrasted starkly with the words of her song and the street below… She had sung it so many times as a lullaby that the horror of the story was somehow soothing. Pharaoh joined in, slowly remembered what he was about, and began to bang on the front door with all his might.
From: Anonymous, Chapter One
Words: Trad arr Harding
Music: Harding

9. The Lady Dressed In Green
And Annie showed him a door he’d never seen before just beyond the bloody girl. As he went towards it, he tried not to look around or notice the gurgling from her body like water spitting from a loose pipe. He opened the door (“Go and we don’t want to see you till night!” snarled after him) and the outside world shone in its brightness. He looked up at the sky and exhaled, biting his lower lip until it hurt. He breathed in as though he had been submerged for the last ten minutes, drowning in thick paste, and, as he did, he heard the front door banging and the cry: “In the name of the law and His Majesty King George!”
From: Anonymous, Chapter One
Words: Trad arr Harding
Music: from the singing of a little girl at Saunders St. Orphanage, Southport 1915, noted by A.G. Gilchrist in The Journal of The Folk-Song Society #22:
“Margaret piped up in a fresh little voice, and lilted through her ‘ballet’ without a pause till she arrived breathless at the end – the rest sitting thrilled and spellbound through her performance. (A ring-game. Two in the middle personate mother and baby, with more or less dramatic action. The three ‘bobbies’ rap at the door. The mother ducks under the arms of the circle and goes to let them in. They rush in, seize the mother and hale her off to prison, and the ring breaks up. The children in the ring dance gaily round the whole time, until the ‘bobbies’ rush in.)” p.81

10. The Abandoned Baby
It was one of the collection of ballads that, a lifetime ago, we had restored and catalogued in the library. What sort of information could a ballad have for me?
“Rose,” he said. “Please look.”
He was pointing to the publication date. It was the year after my birth.
“So?” I said.
“Look at the picture.”
The pictures never had anything to do with the text, I wanted to say, but I decided to humour him. I looked at the whole broadside for the first time. The banner at the top said simply: “THE ROSE AND THE BRIAR or THE ABANDONED BABY SAVED FROM THE HOUNDS – An excellent ballad to a merry old Tune, called The Old Wife She Sent to the Miller Her Daughter from the publisher of The Last Confession Of James Riley, Highwayman.” And below this, before the ballad proper began, there was a comparatively well executed woodcut of a coach in front of a castle, with details I was unable to quite take in.
From: Land of Dreams, Chapter Three
Words and Music: Harding

11. Jack In The Green
The jousting exhibition passed “without grave incident,” the dances of the local children “pleased young and old alike,” as did the singing of the Sunday school (the same children), and “even in a happy crowd of over 400, there were no arrests.”
From: I Am Reborn, Chapter One
Words: Harding
Music: Black, White, Yellow and Green (traditional), as heard on Shirley and Dolly Collins’ album, Anthems In Eden

12. Do Not Fear The Dark (electric)
Performed by: The Minstrel in the Galleries

13. Lord Bateman (electric)
Performed by: The Minstrel in the Galleries