Who Killed Cock Robin? British Folk Songs Of Crime And Punishment

★★★★ Stephen Sedley & Martin Carthy REAKTION/EFDSS. £14.99

High Court judge and top folk singer provide context to lurid tradition.

The folk tradition is famously awash with songs of despicable deeds and this pleasingly non-academic anthology engages with some of the goriest and most brutal tales of homicide, incest, piracy, infanticide, thievery, poaching and miscarriages of justice among them. Yet it’s far more than that. Carthy and Sedley – who in 1967 compiled The Seeds Of Love anthology before a glittering legal career consumed him – offer insights into the background of these infamous ballads, the mores and social conditions which provoked them, the shifting laws of the times and, crucially, the characters and attitudes of the old singers who preserved them. Many classics feature, from Little Musgrave and Polly Vaughan to Sheath And Knife, Lizzie Wan and one of Carthy’s crowning glories, The Famous Flower Of Serving Men. The great achievement of Sedley and Carthy is to give them all a proper setting and renewed relevance.