I think that this beautiful ballad by the singer/songwriter Richard Thompson is one of the greatest of contemporary folksongs. It seems to me poetry for its substance, its detail, its turns of phrase and above all for the ache at its heart. Apparently it was inspired in part by the life of the remarkable a cappella folksinger Anne Briggs, though it should not be taken as autobiographical: Thompson met Anne on only two occasions, and the content is based more on conversations about her with fellow-singer Sandy Denny. It certainly captures her wild, free and somewhat wayward spirit: while much in demand in the folk scene of the sixties it seems that getting her to turn up for gigs was a nightmare, though this didn’t stop her from being highly influential on a whole raft of other singers. In a way the song seems like an elegy not just for one singer but for a whole decade when for a time the future offered hope to the young in a way scarcely thinkable now.

The song has been covered by numerous artists but I still think Richard’s own version is the best.

‘the summer of love’: 1968, the year of student protests, especially against the escalating war in Vietnam
‘steamie’: a Scots word for a public laundry
‘Caldrum Street’: a street in Dundee, Scotland
‘the Gower’: a coastal area in South Wales
‘White Horse’: a brand of whisky

Beeswing

I was nineteen when I came to town,
They called it the summer of love.
They were burning babies, burning flags,
The hawks against the doves.
I took a job in the steamie
Down on Caldrum Street,
I fell in love with a laundry girl
Who was working next to me.

She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing,
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.
She was a lost child,
O she was running wild,
She said ‘As long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay,
And you wouldn’t want me any other way.’

Brown hair zig-zag round her face,
And a look of half-surprise.
Like a fox caught in the headlights
There was animal in her eyes.
She said ‘Young man, oh can’t you see
I’m not the factory kind.
If you don’t take me out of here
I’ll surely lose my mind.’

She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing,
So fine that I might crush here where she lay.
She was a lost child,
O she was running wild,
She said ‘As long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay,
And you wouldn’t want me any other way.’

We busked around the market towns
And picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots
And knives wherever we went.
And I said that we might settle down,
Get a few acres dug,
Fire burning in the hearth
And babies on the rug.
She said ‘O man, you’re a foolish man,
It surely sounds like hell,
You might be lord of half the world
You’ll not own me as well.’

She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing,
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.
She was a lost child,
O she was running wild,
She said ‘As long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay,
And you wouldn’t want me any other way.’

We was camping down the Gower one time,
The work was pretty good.
She thought we shouldn’t wait for the frost
I thought maybe we should.
We was drinking more in those days
And tempers reached a pitch.
And like a fool I let her run
With a rambling itch.

Oh the last I hear she’s sleeping
Back on the Derby beat,
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet.
And they say she even married once
A man called Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan
Was too much settling down.
And they say her flower has faded now,
Hard weather and hard booze,
But maybe it’s just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse.

O she was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing,
And I miss her more than ever words can say.
If I could just taste
All of her wildness now,
If I could hold her in my arms again
And I wouldn’t want her any other way.

Richard Thompson