I've long been a fan of Wellman's Silver John and other "Weird Tales" type stories. They are not great literature, but good fun reads rooted in the rural culture of the Appalachian mountains. Some overlaps that of rural NE, other parts don't but Wellman was true to the other ways in his stories, with people who were neither good old boys nor the mindless drones of the fly-over set. That said, Wellman wrote and quoted a ton of folk music into his books. John, whose silver strung guitar gave the series its informal name, is a wandering performer who knows a bit more than seems likely. So when I tripped over Joe Bethancourt's the Songs of Silver John, I was thrilled to see someone had decided to collect them up. Sadly it wasn't the Bethancourt I knew - a very good Orthodox priest in Santa Fe  - but a fairly well-known filk singer. When I ordered that, I got another of his CDs, Celtic Circle Dance, as well as Leslie Fish's Kipling cycle.

Well, the Silver John album is well done and has some nice old stuff. A little light on the Christian stuff, which is disappointing as the John story had a strong faith in the cross as part of them, but I guess that's not surprising as the album has the "American Gods" neopagan rip-off of Sydney Carter's Lord of the Dance. Bethancourt at least used a version of the melody not based on Simple Gifts. It's not a bad album although I had hoped he knew the full version of the Last Judgment Song that appears in Wellman's novels. I suspect Wellman created it from a prayer/spell from A Long Lost Friend as I haven't found it elsewhere. Any ideas? What Wellman wrote or quoted goes:

Three holy kings, four holy saints,
At heaven's high gate that stand,
Speak out to bid all evil wait
And stir no foot or hand.

The fire from heaven will fall at last
On wealth and pride and power
We will not know the minute, and
We will not know the hour

Anyway, the songs he does are fun and it's a nice piece of folk music on its own. Very singable as that kind of music should be. The music on his other CD was pretty decent too. The boys and I like "My thoughts are free" a lot.

Sadly, the Fish-Kipling albums weren't anywhere as good. I remember several filks of Kipling's poems, especially a lovely two voice version of the War of the Gods Joyce used sing the soprano part of. These had maybe three melodies on the tow albums. As much as some of the Kipling filks approached folk music in back then, these were just repetitive. And that's from someone who wanders around the house at 2 am reading Kipling out loud to the dog when he can't sleep...