Salut! Live

Legend has it that Richard Thompson's beautiful lyrics were inspired by the supremely gifted but eccentric folk singer Annie Briggs, described thus at Wikipedia:

Briggs was notoriously wild at this time [end of the 1960s].

There are many stories from this period about her, such as pushing [Johnny] Moynihan and Andy Irvine out of a hay loft and, on another occasion, jumping into the sea at Malin Head, Donegal to chase seals. In an episode of Folk Britannia (a documentary history of UK folk music aired in 2006) Richard Thompson recalled that he only ever encountered Briggs twice and on both occasions she was drunk and unconscious.

It is often speculated that it was Briggs who inspired Thompson's song 'Beeswing'

There isn't a poor phrase or badly chosen word in Thompson's lyrics, each verse offering a poetic gem. The chorus runs:

She was a rare thing Fine as a beeswing So fine a breath of wind might blow her away She was a lost child She was running wild She said as long as there's no price on love I'll stay And you wouldn't want me any other way

But who sings it best? I am loathe to depart from the author. His version, or one of his versions, can be seen in the first of my clips ...

He delivers his own great song in gripping style. I love it.

But Christy!

The way he makes his voice rise and fall, the emphasis, the warm texture, the complete understanding of each character's thoughts ... it might have been written it for him. No contest for me.

But chapeau to Richard Thompson, a truly massive British songwriting (and guitar-playing) talent for songs that contains such magical verses as this ...

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat

White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet

And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown

But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down

And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze

But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

**** You can buy the Christy Moore album Burning Times, on which Beeswing appears, at this Salut! Live Amazon line

***** And Richard Thompson's album Acoustic Classics - buy it here - contains not only Beeswing but Galway to Graceland