A few years ago, on a wet Wednesday in Basingstoke, Hampshire, The Imagined Village came to town. The collection of folk and world luminaries were dedicated to revitalising the English traditional songbook. One of them was the singer Billy Bragg, better known for DIY political punk. But now, dressed like East End royalty in a moleskin jacket frogged with pearl buttons, he mused about a song he first heard played at a school assembly in Barking, when he was 12, that had awakened in him “tangible feelings of place and belonging … Of the things that we refer to as Englishness.” A familiar guitar pattern rose underneath his words. How could this be, he asked, that “feelings of Englishness could be engendered in me by two Jewish geezers from Queens? How did that happen?”
The guitarist behind him could have answered that. Martin Carthywas not the first person to sing “Scarborough Fair”, not by a long chalk. The song dates back at least to the mid-17th century, and versions of its riddling quarrel between lovers setting each other impossible tasks feature prominently in the Child Ballads, songs anthologised in the 19th century by Francis James Child. Ewan MacColl recorded a dour version in 1957. Shirley Collinsand Marianne Faithfullhad a go.
But it was Carthy who arranged it in the form in which it is best known today, Carthy who played it in the folk clubs of London, and Carthy who scribbled down the chords for an expatriate American who, stung by the commercial failure of his album with a childhood friend, was briefly licking his wounds in England.
When Carthy heard a copy of Simon and Garfunkel’s comeback album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, he was irate. Convinced that Paul Simon had not only used his arrangement but copyrighted it, he nurtured a decades-long grudge — and shared it with his English folk colleagues, many of whom had never liked Simon in the first place. Simon would walk into wider controversies when he recorded Graceland in South Africa, but none more deeply felt.
Not that it mattered at the time. “Scarborough Fair”, interwoven with Art Garfunkel’s countermelody “Canticle”,was a hit in 1966 and a bigger one in 1968 when Mike Nichols threaded it throughout the soundtrack of The Graduate. Forget feelings of Englishness; the song engendered feelings of any nationality you can mention. The Brazilian star Sérgio Mendeswas quick off the mark with a funky bossa version, the female vocalists of Brasil ’66 audibly somewhere warmer than North Yorkshire. As “In den Gärten der Nacht”, it became a German-language easy-listening classic for Johannes Kalpers.But it was also plausibly Spanish (“La Feria de Scarborough”) or Czech (“Jarmark ve Scarborough”) or Italian (“La Fiera Del Perdone”).
Bobby Gentry and Glen Campbellwere one step up from schmaltz, as was Nana Mouskouri(whether in English or French). Hong Kong pop idol Danny Chanwhispered his way through it. Everyone from Harry Belafonteto Edward Woodward to Miss Piggy— duetting with a lute-strumming Simon — went to the fair.
Others repurposed the song in their own ways. Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country”is built on its repeated refrain. The Stone Roses lifted the melody for “Elizabeth My Dear”.In the version by Apologetix,the evangelist J. John Jackson substitutes the words “offer your prayer” and “tell Him to make you a candle on Earth”. In this company, the performance by dystopians Queensrÿcheis almost faithful, verses of what passes in heavy metal for tasteful acoustic filigree alternating with up-to-11 clangs.
What of Martin Carthy? Eventually he grew tired of, in his own words, the “trudge through the grudge”. It turned out that his own publisher had, without his knowledge, copyrighted his arrangement and had been receiving royalties from Simon all along (Carthy had somehow managed to sign away his own claim in the small print of a contract). Carthy and Simon, reconciled, joined forces to sing the song in London in 1998, closing that circle.
So by the time he stood on that Basingstoke stage, Carthy could play “Scarborough Fair” without wincing. It unspooled to an accompaniment of glorious, intricate clouds of sitar from Sheema Mukherjee (usually of Transglobal Underground), the ancient incantation still in restless motion.
What are your memories of ‘Scarborough Fair’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Topic; Milestones Records; Rarity Music; Columbia/Legacy; Concord Records; Ariola; Nashville Catalog; Universal Music Division Mercury Records; WM Hong Kong; RCA Records Label; Columbia; Sony Music UK; Parodudes; EMI Catalog (USA)
Picture credit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Image