Catch Me If You Can 

Songs from Cornish Travellers - Charlotte Renals Betsy Renals & Sophie Legg 

Betsy Renals, Charlotte Renals and Sophie Legg were born into one of the best-known West Country travelling families, the Orchards. They were 78, 77 and 60 years old respectively in 1978 when these recordings were made. Their early life was spent travelling the lanes of North Cornwall hawking haberdashery from their horse-drawn wagon Their songs were passed down through their family or learnt at way-side meetings with other travelling families around the camp fire, which could also be the occasion for a step dance often just to mouth music, called ‘tuning’. This fine collection includes well known folk songs, sentimental and comic songs as well as some rarely recorded narrative ballads.

CD Listing

  1. Good for Nothing Man - Betsy (1.27)
  2. Down By the Old Riverside - Sophie (3.09)
  3. Ball of Yarn - Charlotte (1.52)
  4. Game of All Fours - Betsy (1.54)
  5. Young Billy Taylor - Sophie (0.56)
  6. The Dark-eyed Sailor - Charlotte (5.59)
  7. Stepdance tuning 1 - Cock a Doodle /Being a Chick /Navvie on the Line - Sophie (0.56)
  8. Thorneymore Woods - Sophie (3.01)
  9. The Farmer and the lady - Charlotte (2.50)
10. The Crabfish - Charlotte (1.33)
11. A Man from the North (Outlandish Knight) - Charlotte (4.52)
12. Just Beginning to Sprout - Betsy (2.07)
13. Sailor Cut Down in his Prime - Charlotte (4.40)
14. Van Dieman’s Land - Betsy (2.00)
15. Jim the Carter Lad - Sophie (1.44)
16. The Beggar - Charlotte (1.42)
17. The Lonely Widow - Betsy (1.50)
18. The Bonny Bunch of Roses - Charlotte (3.54)
19. Catch Me if you Can - Sophie (2.47)
20. The Farmer from Leicester - Betsy (1.55)
21. Stepdance tuning 2 - Betsy (1.14)
22. The Old Miser - Betsy (3.50)
23. Down By the Shannon Side - Charlotte (5.50)
24. Standard Bread - Charlotte (1.26)
25. More Trouble in Our Native Land - Sophie (2.58)
26. Lord Lovell - Charlotte (2.24)
27. Oh Where, oh Where - Charlotte (2.49)
28. Seventeen Come Sunday - Charlotte (2.31)