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Poor frozen out gardeners

Wassail track 15

Learned from Roy Palmer's book A Touch on the Times.

Roy Palmer sets this to a variant of the well-known Dives and Lazarus tune. For reasons which escape me now, I decided to fit the words to the tune of the Whitstable May Song, but changed from major to minor and - initially at least - from 6/8 to 4/4. In the 1980s I used to sing this accompanied by Chris Wood. Pete Acty's guitar part, which formed the basis of the Magpie Lane arrangement, was heavily influenced by Chris's arrangement, in particular the riff between verses.

You can hear a recording of Chris Wood and Andy Turner performing this song - and read a lot more about the background to the song - at A Folk Song A Week Week 73 – Poor Frozen-out Gardeners