Knife In The Window / Blackbirds And Thrushes

Audio file
Date recorded: 1951
Contributor(s): Performer: List, Harry; Recordist: Lomax, Alan
Subject(s):
Genre: ballad, bawdy song
Culture: East Anglian, English
Instruments: voice
Setting: Unidentified pub
Location: Sweffling, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom
Physical form: Reel to Reel
Tape number: T3337
Track Number: 8
Archive ID: T3337R08
Note: Peter Kennedy has written that "Knife In The Window" and "Blackbirds and Thrushes" are occasionally combined. When Cecil Sharp published "O Sally, My Dear," a version of this song, he wrote that the words had "of necessity to be somewhat altered," and a completely rewritten text was published in his Somerset collection and also in the Select Edition of 1921. An unexpurgated "Knife in the Window" was not published until 1958 in James Reeves' Idiom of the People as "Hares on the Mountain."
Belongs to: Sweffling 1951
About the session: Ballads sung by Harry List and his nephew Alec Bloomfield. Recorded by Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy (at too fast a speed).
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