KDMHome

The mission of the KelticDead Music initiative is to find tunes and songs from around the world that have

Celtic, Folk, World, Americana, and Seafaring origins, and arrange them into simple sheet music formats for folk

musicians to use, as well as provide links for the music that follows the arrangements to help in hearing how it can

be played. In addition, other links are provided for the stories and possible lyrics about the selections within video-

based, KDM Broadsides for a music-education experience.

All the selections and sheet music content provided in the KelticDead Music initiative are from

traditional, made-public, made-public with credits, or cited credits where applicable. This material

content is given with permissions. Patrick O. Young, KelticDead Music.

The Rising Sun

Musicologists say that the popular tune and song, “House of the Rising Sun,” is based

in the traditions of broadside ballads that thematically resemble a 16th-century ballad

called, “The Unfortunate Rake” about a man who is dying of syphilis. There have been

many musical variants since that time that relate to someone dying or about to die.

In an eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century broadside in the Madden

Collection there is one song variant having the same theme called "The Buck's Elegy".

Like “The Unfortunate Rake” ballad a young man goes to a place called Covent Garden

in London, which was a well-known haunt of prostitutes. He picks up syphilis from one of

them, and in the tale, the dying man bewails the fact that he did not know what was

wrong with him until it was too late. In those days he could have taken mercury to treat

the ailment, but being too late in discovering his malady he can only make requests

about his funeral.

While the Covent Garden district in

London was a notable place for finding

ladies who would cater to men, Alan

Lomax (a folklorist, musicologist and

collector) stated that there was really no

direct evidence that the ballad called the

“House of the Rising Sun” was

connected to “The Buck’s Elegy.” Alan

suggested that the melody may be related

to a 17^thCentury folk song called “Lord

Barnard and Little Musgrave.”

“The Unfortunate Rake” ballad

migrated to America in the 1800s, which

Made public painting image by Hogarth. A

was first recorded in America by two

Rake’s Progress.

KelticDead Music