All Things Are Quite Silent: A Song History
“All Things Are Quite Silent” is an English song in which a woman grieves for the man a press gang has dragged from the bed they shared, though she refuses to give up hope that he will come back.[1] Ralph Vaughan Williams noted it down on 22 December 1904 from Ted Baines of Lower Beeding, West Sussex, and it carries the Roud number 2532.[2] His transcription appeared in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, volume 2 (1906), pages 202–203.[3]
Thomas Rowlandson, A Cribbage Party in St. Giles's Disturbed By A Press Gang, etching, October 26, 1787. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A comic print of a press gang at work, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
A. L. Lloyd believed the Baines version to be the only one known, though the Traditional Ballad Index notes that the song itself has broadside roots and cross-references it by theme with “The Lowlands of Holland.”[1] It stands first in the first edition of The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd, and later performers, Steeleye Span among them, name that book as their source.[4]
Louis Killen recorded it for Topic on Ballads & Broadsides (1965), and Shirley Collins sang it on The Sweet Primeroses (1967).[4] Steeleye Span, prompted by Ashley Hutchings, included it on their 1970 debut album Hark! The Village Wait and revisited it in 2016 on Dodgy Bastards.[4]
Find books with All Things Are Quite Silent for sale →