folk quotes

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather!

-William Allingham
  'The Fairies'.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.

- Louis known as Satchmo Armstrong
Quoted in the NewYork Times,7  Jul1971.

When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors, neebors meet, As market-days are wearing late, An'folk begin to tak the gate.

- Robert Burns
  'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (So priketh hem nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

- Geoffrey Chaucer
  Canterbury  Tales,'General Prologue', l.9^12.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

- Bob pseudonym of  Robert Allen Zimmerman Dylan
Quoted in David Pickering Brewer's Twentieth Century Music (1994).

   For thof ye had as wise a snout on As Shakespeare or Sir Isaac Newton, Your judgement fouk wou'd hae a doubt on, I'll tak myaith, Till they cou'd see ye wi'a suit on O'gude Braid Claith.

- Robert Fergusson
  'Braid Claith', stanza 9.

To put it vulgarly, the whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder.

- Constant Lambert
  Music Ho!

Will yer stop yer tickling, Jock! Oh, stop yer tickling, Jock! Dinna mak'me laugh so hearty, or you'll mak'me choke. Oh! I wish you'd stop yer nonsensejust look at all the folk. Will yer stop yer ticklingtickle-ickle-ickle-ing Stop yer tickling, Jock!

- Sir Harry (Hugh MacLennan) Lauder
  'StopYer Tickling,  Jock!', chorus.

Readers of novels are strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture.

- E(dward) V(errell) Lucas
  Reading, Writing and Remembering, ch.1.

We are a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk.We are the original displaced personalities, concentrated gatherings of neurotics, egomaniacs, emotional misfits and precocious children.

- Herman Mankiewicz
  George Sanders as  Addison De Witt in  All  About Eve.

In the springtime of America's cultural life, its itinerant folk artiststook totheroad to record the life and times of a people.Perhaps never again will we have an artistic record created in such direct and unassuming terms.

-Winthrop Rockefeller
  On an exhibition of American folk art at the US Embassy, London. In news summaries, 31 Jan.

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, Though my own red roses there may blow; It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, Though the red roses crest the caps, I know. For the field is full of shades as I near theshadowy coast, And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost, And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, To and fro: O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

- Francis Thompson
  'At Lord's', poem dedicated to friends to explain why he could not attend a match at Lord's at their invitation for fear of the sadness it would cause him, remembering the long-dead friends who had played there (for Lancashire) back in1878.

   Hobbits are an unobtrusive but veryancient people, more numerous formerly than theyare today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well- ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt† Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of 'the Big Folk', as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find.

-J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel) Tolkien
  The Fellowship of the Ring, prologue.