Saturday, October 20, 2012

Broadside ballad entitled 'Sons of Levi, A New Masonic Song'

The late George Holmes gave me a recording of this song, I am pretty sure he played the lambeg drum on it but was too modest to admit that to me. I found it again recently here on The Word on the Street, a website by the National Library of Scotland which is a collection of nearly 1800 'broadsides'. The commentary on the song says that it is Jacobite in origin, became Masonic and then Orange. The lyrics from George's version are a little different than those shown below. The lyrics are full of quite esoteric scriptural references; I'll leave it for my more Biblically-literate readers to assess the claim from the chorus that a group of people can be 'the root and the branch of David, the bright and glorious morning star...'. George's recording of it is great.

#alttext#

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Mark,

My dad used to have a record with this on it, with atavistic drum belting out.

Powerful, and a little crazy!

It is lost and he asked me to track it down for him.

Could you somehow share it (perhaps on YouTube?).

Thanks,


Graham

Unknown said...

Found it!

Fire in the Soul
The Paul Brennan Band

https://youtu.be/IhucqExjf48