Kate Rusby – “The Holly and the Ivy”.

   Hey dear people, and merry Christmas again to those who are only starting the celebrations today! 🙂 

   For this special occasion, I’d like to share with you a lovely arrangement of the popular British Christmas carol The Holly and the Ivy sung by Kate Rusby. Generally, if you like folk like this and you want some nice music to listen to this Christmas, and you are not familiar with Kate Rusby for some reason yet, I highly recommend looking at her entire discography because she has released lots of Christmas music. Personally, I have previously shared one of her Christmas songs before, my all-time favourite Little Jack Frost,  as well as a couple of other, non-Christmassy tunes by her. Kate Rusby is generally one of my favourite female folk singers from England, right next to Jackie Oates (whose beautiful “The Worthy Wood Carol”I have also featured on here a few Christmases ago). Kate lives close to Barnsley in Yorkshire and is also often referred to as the “Barnsley nightingale. And besides, I had an opportunity to listen to her online performance at Folk on Foot Festival and have watched a bit of her YouTube channel, and she seems like a really nice person. 

   This “The Holly and the Ivy” song, featured on her first ever Christmas album “Sweet Bells” is not to be confused with her other song – “The Ivy and the Holly” – from her 2017 album Angels and Men, which sounds very similar but is her original song, a sort of humourous variation on the traditional carol. 

Kate Rusby – “Little Jack Frost”.

Hi guys! 🙂

So it’s Advent, and Christmas is coming, so we can listen to our favourite Christmas music again! This is one of my personal absolute winter classics. And Jack Frost is one of my favourite characters in European folklore. He has arrived here for good as it seems, so I am welcoming his with this lovely little song, hoping you will like it too. Kate Rusby is also one of my most favourite English folk singers, she’s really amazing! I love her voice and her accent, most people who know her seem to love her accent haha, and she does this song so very well. It just makes my brain melt. 🙂

 

Kate Rusby – “Withered And Died”.

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s another song by Kate Rusby. It was written by Richard Thompson and the first version of this song that I’ve ever heard was by Linda Thompson, which I really liked a lot. But I think Kate’s version is even more beautiful. 🙂

Kate Rusby – “Let The Cold Wind Blow”.

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s another of my most favourite songs by Kate Rusby. I think it’s one of the most melancholic, at least musically, songs that I’ve ever heard, and the lyrics are also touching especially because of Kate’s expressiveness. The song is from the point of view of a ghost, who is witnessing that the love of his life no longer loves him and both she and the man she now loves live on his land. While I am not extremely fond of paranormal novels with ghosts or stuff like that, for some reason I find folk songs written from a ghost’s perspective very touching and interesting. I’ve shared another quite similar one in a way some time ago, it’s

“Nightvisitor” by Jim Moray.

I think they are both very evocative though in a bit different ways.

Kate Rusby – “Benjamin Bowmaneer”.

Kate Rusby is one of my most most most favourite English folk singers. I know her music for yers, practically ever since I’ve began immersing myself in celtic music and then even more when I delved deeper into English folk music as such. I love her crystal clear, light vocals and her very distinctive Yorkshire accent, and generally her approach to folk music suits my tastes I think. Here’s a song from one of her newest albums “Life On A Paper Boat”, it is a traditional English ballad.