So Sound You Sleep: David Harley: Words & Music, #2

By David Harley

This is one of a series of books based on the music of David Harley. This one is based on the album 'Tears of Morning', which comprises songs and settings of poetry with a sometimes tenuous connection to Shropshire and the Welsh Marches. One such connection is that several (not all) of the poetry settings are from Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'. The book contains a wealth of commentary information on the historical, traditional, musical and/or biographical background to the songs and poems.

An updated version of the album called "So Sound You Sleep - More Tears of Morning" features many more tracks in order to reflect the content of the book. 

Another collection of musical settings to verse by other poets will appear in due course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wheal Alice Music
• Release date: Aug 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223705376

David Harley

David Harley has been researching and writing about malicious software and other security issues since the end of the 1980s. From 2001 to 2006 he worked in the UK's National Health Service as a National Infrastructure Security Manager, where he specialized in the management of malicious software and all forms of email abuse, as well as running the Threat Assessment Centre, and has worked since as an independent author and consultant for Small Blue-Green World. He joined ESET's Research team in January 2008. He was co-author of Viruses Revealed (McGraw-Hill) and lead author and technical editor of The AVIEN Malware Defense Guide for the Enterprise (Syngress), as well as a contributor to Botnets: the Killer Web App (Syngress). He has contributed chapters to many other books on security and education for publishers such as Wiley, Pearson and Vieweg, as well as a multitude of specialist articles and conference papers. In his copious free time he is Chief Operations Officer for AVIEN (the Anti-Virus Information Exchange Network) and administers the MAC Virus web site.

Book preview

Contents

So Sound You Sleep

My Shropshire Songs and their Stories

Copyright

Quoted Verse and Prose

Introduction

Back to the Future

Why Shropshire?

Chapter 1: Rain

Rain Lyrics

Chapter 2: Young Hunting

Parroting the Tradition

Young Hunting Lyrics

Chapter 3: The Nightingale

The Nightingale Lyric

I Care Not For These Ladies

My Love Hath Vowed He Will Forsake Me

Chapter 4: Thomas Anderson

Start of a Journey

Folk Baroque vs. Singer-Songwriters

Writing The Song

Thomas Anderson Lyric

Thomas Anderson –Historical Detail

A Load of Cobblers (and Tanners and Leatherworkers)

From the Guilds to the Flower Show

From House of Industry to Shrewsbury School

The Arbour and the Old Show

Rebellion and Repression

Death of a Rebel

St. Mary’s Church

Shrewsbury: Church Street and St. Alkmund’s

Sources and References

Chapter 5: The Goose And Common

The Inclosure Acts

Kingsland

Harley’s Stone

Goose And Common lyric

Another version of the lyric

Goosed by The Commons

Chapter 6: After Anderson

Shropshire Laddishness

Chapter 7: Housman Settings

Serious Composers

Jazzing It Up

Settings by Michael Raven

Personal reminiscence alert

Reading Housman

Chapter 8: Breathe, My Lute

Breathe, My Lute Lyric

Chapter 9: The Carpenter’s Son

The Carpenter’s Son Lyric

Chapter 10: When I was

When I Was Lyric

The Salley Gardens (Yeats) – another brief diversion

Chapter 11: On Bredon Hill

Bredon Hill Lyric

Chapter 12: Tears of Morning

Tears of Morning Lyric

The Background to the Poem

They say my verse is sad

Additional Poems XVIII

More Poems XXXI

Chapter 13: Severn Shore

Severn Shore Lyric

Chapter 14: An Assertion Revisited

Excelsior (Longfellow)

The shades of night were falling fast

Chapter 15: Demo Settings From Housman

Chapter 16: Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries Lyric

XLVIII. Parta Quies

The Wheel (For Sarah)

Hosanna in Extremis

Chapter 17: Far In A Western Brookland

Far In A Western Brookland Lyric

Chapter 18: O Fair Enough are Sky and Plain

O Fair Enough Are Sky And Plain - Lyric

Chapter 19: Blue Remembered Hills

Blue Remembered Hills Lyric

Chapter 20: Requiem / R.L.S.

Chapter 21: The Lent Lily

The Lent Lily lyric

Chapter 22: Loveliest of trees

Loveliest Of Trees Lyric

Chapter 23: Ballad of the Arbor Tree (W.H.B.)

Ballad of the Arbor Tree Lyric

Chapter 24: Mine All Mine

Chapter 25: Sea Fret

Sea Fret Lyric

Chapter 26: Song of Chivalry

Song Of Chivalry - Lyric

Chapter 27: Moonflow

Chapter 28: Carpentry

Chapter 29: Castles and Kings

Vestapol

Castles And Kings Lyric

Chapter 30: Wrekin (The Marches Line)

Wrekin Lyric

Orphaned verses

Geographical and Historical Notes

The Abbey

The Wrekin

The South Shropshire Hills

Stokesay

Ludlow

The Recruit

Chapter 31 – Sound of the 70s

Chapter 32: Twm Siôn Cati

Twm Siôn Cati Lyric

Borrow’s Account

Meyrick’s Account

The Heiress of Ystradffin

Peaceful Pursuits

Twm Siôn Cati the Legend

Hawkmoor, not Hawksmoor

Chapter 33: The Prestwich Treasure

The Prestwich Treasure Lyric

The Hulme Hall Treasure

The Prestwich Baronetcy and Hulme Hall

Chapter 34: Lyrics based on Ida Gandy’s writing

Chapter 35: Jack in the Box

Jack in the Box – the Lyric

A Bastille Soupçon

Ida Gandy

Chapter 36: Llanfair Wakes

Llanfair Wakes – the lyric

Llanfair Wakes – the Background

Appendix 1: Maypolar Express and Dancing in the Street

Come Lasses and Lads

Staines Morris

Fancy’s Knell (Last Poems XL!)

Appendix 2 – Shrosebury versus Shoesbree

Shrewsbury, Etymology and Mob Rule

Shrewsbury’s Coat of Arms

Taming of the Shrews

At Loggerheads

Glossary

Bowdlerization

Child Ballads

Floor Singing

Funambulist

Initcapping

Jongleur

Mudcat

Oracle

Osier

Roud

Salley (Sally, Sallow)

Harley Revealed – The Biography

The Music

Not the Music

Other Books By David Harley

Links

Music by David Harley

The Next Book

Long Stand

Sting in the Tale

Long Stand - Lyric

So Sound You Sleep

My Shropshire Songs and their Stories

David Harley

Wheal Alice Music

Copyright

So Sound You Sleep © 2022 David Harley

The moral right of David Harley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder.

SECOND EDITION

Based on the album Tears of Morning, featuring songs and verse settings by David (A.) Harley

Cover illustration © Kate Morley

Photograph of Granny Hughes reproduced by kind permission of Denise Lewis

Quoted Verse and Prose

Some of the lyrics included here are to songs for which I wrote both words and music, while for some I wrote the words but used a traditional tune. All applicable rights are reserved.

I’ve also included a number of poems by A.E. Housman, one by Robert Louis Stevenson, and one by ‘W.H.B.’, all of which I’ve set to music. These poems are all in the public domain due to expiration of copyright. The traditional lyrics to Young Hunting and Goose And Common are in the public domain, the original authors (if there ever was a single original author) being unknown. I’ve arranged and adapted both sets of lyrics, but I claim copyright only on the derived lyric Goosed by The Commons.

The lyric to Thomas Anderson was based on an article by the late Ron Nurse, with his approval and permission. The tune used for The Nightingale (Á La Claire Fontaine) is traditional – at any rate, the identity of the original composer is lost in the mists of history. The lyric is based on several traditional sources but translated and heavily re-engineered by me.

Tunes referenced here as settings for verse by others are also mine (all applicable rights reserved), unless I’ve noted that they’re traditional.

For narrative reasons I’ve also included annotated examples of other verse that I don’t intend to set to music. All poems by these writers are in the public domain due to the expiration of copyright.

All artwork is by me, apart from the cover illustration by Kate Morley (thanks, Kate!) and the photograph of Granny Hughes. All rights of the copyright holders are reserved.

By the very nature of the subject matter, most of the other quotations and citations are too old to be still in copyright: others come under the ‘fair use’ umbrella, and are, of course, credited appropriately with links, where available, to the original source.

And just to avoid confusion, David Harley (the author) and David A. Harley (the musician) are the same person. When I started recording again, I was hoping that using my middle initial would reduce the confusion caused by music stores and streaming and other media services that seem to believe that all David Harleys are the same person. Unfortunately, that confusion is, if anything, accelerating.

Introduction

This is by no means my first book, but it is quite different to the security writing with which I’d usually been associated before 2022, when I published three books: The Vanes Of Shrewsbury,the poetry collection Suite in Four Flats, and the guitar textbook Introduction to Nashville Tuning.

Security books: https://geekpeninsula.wordpress.com/security-books/

Other books:

https://geekpeninsula.wordpress.com/books-not-security/

Most of the happy few who have some faint idea of who I am will only be acquainted with older security books like Viruses Revealed. So how did this book come about?

In the early 1970s, long before I knew anything about computing (let alone IT security), my short career as a professional musician proved several things to me.

As a martyr to stage fright, I wasn’t really best-suited temperamentally to living most of my professional life onstage. (That hasn’t changed much, in spite of thirty years speaking at conferences and many more publicly making what I like to think of as music. Your mileage may vary.)

In any case, I was far more interested in writing and composing than in playing lead and/or bass with covers bands and dance bands, such as those that were providing most of my income at that time. At the same time, I was resigned to being in no imminent danger of making serious money as a songwriter. That hasn’t changed…

Furthermore, I felt much happier when I could afford to eat, so I got a proper job – OK, a whole series of proper jobs, ranging from nursing to various aspects of the building trade– and was happy enough doing the occasional gig, more often than not in folk clubs.

In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, having moved to Berkshire and then to London, I started to spend more time in the studio and released a couple of cassette albums as well as occasionally odd-jobbing on recordings by other people. Much of that content of mine is now available across several (and quite possibly far too many) albums released since 2020. While parenthood and some demanding jobs (particularly in healthcare, medical research, and the IT industry) restricted the amount of time I could devote over the next few decades to music, or to writing that wasn’t job-related, that didn’t stop me playing altogether. Sorry about that.

Back to the Future

Fast forward to 2019. After more than 30 years pursuing a career largely devoted to IT and IT security, I planned to spend my retirement years catching up with a huge backlog of part-written or part-learned songs and verse (and the occasional story), doing some recording, and playing live if anyone wanted me to (and as long as I was physically capable).

Then came 2020 and Covid, and it seemed a good time to leave hunting for live gigs to more committed (and almost invariably younger) artists. After all, there are all too many talented people trying to make a living from music even when there are no pandemics around, whereas I don’t need to compete with them nowadays. But there were all these songs…

The voice and hearing are not what they were, the fingers are less agile, health issues and finances enforce home-studio recording, but hopefully, the songs are still worth hearing. After some false starts experiments, I released the album Tears of Morning. This was a collection of songs related (sometimes tenuously) to Shropshire, and including some settings of verse, most of it by A.E. Housman. This book is mostly about that album, and some of the steps along the long, long road that led to it, with copious background historical notes that just didn’t fit into the virtual sleeve notes.

The original album: https://davidaharley.bandcamp.com/album/tears-of-morning-2

There is now a much-expanded version of that album called So Sound You Sleep with lots more music but sparser textual content.

The new album: https://davidaharley.bandcamp.com/album/so-sound-you-sleep-more-tears-of-morning

Why Shropshire?

As a genuine 'Shropshire Lad' I spent the first 20 years or so of my life in Shrewsbury (apart from time away at college in North Wales). And I've lived there from time to time since, most recently just a block away from Ludlow Castle, once the home of the Council of Wales and the Marches. Perhaps it was inevitable that Shropshire would influence my music. After all, I first fell in love with folk music there, though it wasn't till I went to university that I started to play guitar reasonably well, insofar as I ever did.

Not all the songs and tunes on Tears of Morning are directly related to the county – in fact, the very title, though taken from A.E. Housman’s verse, has no thematic connection with A Shropshire Lad – but perhaps the time spent living amid all that history made it easier to write a song like the Song of Chivalry, which looks at the never-ending class divide filtered through the social impact of the Hundred Years War. (But we’ll get to that one much later.)

The snag was that I couldn’t get everything I wanted to say into the songs and the album notes. Many people don’t buy albums at all nowadays, and those who do buy them don’t expect more than brief notes and maybe a lyric sheet. They definitely don’t expect a whole book. When I resolved to write the first of my (non-security) books to be written completely on my own, it seemed like an opportunity to share more of the research that lay behind many of the songs. I also saw an opportunity to expand it to include other writing. Namely, details of the Housman settings that hadn’t been recorded at the time the album was released; some of my own lyrics (with links to the songs, where possible); and perhaps some settings of verse by other poets. (No fiction, on this occasion – well, no intentional fiction.)

For those who do still consider buying albums, however, there is a refurbished and much-expanded version of the Tears of Morning album that better reflects the content of this book. At least, the music does, as there are no less than 34 tracks: there isn’t much textual information in this album, as it’s meant to be an adjunct to this book rather than a new album in its own right. The album is called So Sound You Sleep – More Tears of Morning.

Links to songs in this book are usually to that album, not the original Tears of Morning. Some songs included here can be found on other albums such as Cold Iron, but recordings referenced here are not necessarily the same recordings as featured on earlier albums, and even those that are have usually been remixed and/or remastered.

This book was intended to include some attractive artwork by