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Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Hair

[ Roud 3103 ; Ballad Index LxU016 ; trad.]

Peter Bellamy played on the whistle the tune Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Hair and a unnamed Irish slow air on June 22, 1971 live at the Folk Studio, Norwich. This performance was published on his LP with Louis Killen, Won't You Go My Way?. He intruduced the tune with these words:

The next one is a whistle tune which sounds very Irish. The reason for this is not surprising—I learnt it from an Irish whistle player by the name of Willie Clancy. And what fascinated me was that apart from the fact that it was a beautiful tune was the fact the title and the basic melody are the same as an Appalachian song which I have heard from Jean Ritchie, Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair.

It turns out that this is not in fact an Irish song that went to America without changing. It is an English song that went to America so long ago that everyone’s forgotten how it went. And the Americans changed it, the way they do, and it got into the Ritchie family repertoire and Jean Ritchie sang it to, I believe, Shirley Collins, who brought it back to England and sang it to Willie Clancy who thought, “There’s a lovely tune,” and he went home to Ireland playing it.

And then Folkways Records from America dropped in on Willie Clancy and said, “Play us an Irish tune, Mac,” and he played Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Hair. They shot back to the States and they issued it on an American label, it was imported to England and Muggins bought it.