Steeleye Span



A Folk Rock band that formed in England in 1969, and may have been the Trope Namer for the genre.


 * Bawdy Song: This is English folk song, don't forget. Take your pick... "The Two Magicians" is a good one.
 * Bedlam House: "Boys of Bedlam," an adaptaion of the song "Tom O'Bedlam."
 * Big Applesauce: The band's cover of the shanty "New York Girls." This featured guest performer Peter Sellers on ukelele and Goon Show voices.
 * Black Sheep Hit: When people think of Steeleye, they think of an electric folk/folk-rock band with a repertoire drawn from the British Isles' folk tradition. However, their first UK hit, in 1972 was an a capella Christmas song, "Gaudete," sung in Latin.
 * Conspiracy Theories: Little Sir Hugh is a seven hundred year old mediaeval ditty about the Blood Libel, the assertion that Jews stole away good Christian children for nefarious purposes.
 * Epic Rocking: "King Henry" from Below the Salt comes in at about 7 minutes. And it rocks out without drums.
 * Allison Gross is another example. If you never believed drumless, guitar-driven folk-rock could sound loud, harsh, and abrasive, you will now.
 * Exactly What It Says On the Tin: 1975's Now We Are Six was the first album to feature drummer Nigel Pegrum, the new sixth member of the band.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Drink Down The Moon, the sort of English folk song Puritans would not have appreciated at all, and which needed to have its principal theme slightly disguised. The same applies to slice of thinly disguised paganism like Seven Hundred Elves, and the occassional hint of Celtic dissidence, which the English state and church would not have appreciated. And you thought folk music was twee and safe?
 * Historical Domain Character: Bonnie Prince Charlie in "Prince Charles Stuart."
 * Intercourse With You: Drink Down The Moon, eight minutes of robust rural English sex circa 1400, disguised as ornithology. The Two Magicians, in which a wizard and a witch get it on. Spotted Cow and Bonny Black Hare, where finding animals leads to finding fun times (the latter with a gun/penis metaphor). King Henry, in which good old loving turns a monstrous hag into a beautiful woman. Royal Forester, who uses his (alleged) title to sleep with a woman he finds. The Ups and Downs and The Gentleman Soldier, both dealing with a woman sleeping with a soldier who then leaves her. And that's just songs where the main characters are actively getting it on.
 * Indeed, the song Spotted Cow's other appearance in English literature is in the early chapters of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, where it presages the later events of the novel.
 * Mood Whiplash: Jack Hall is a cheerful, rousing, upbeat song about...a murderer headed for the gallows.
 * Ode to Intoxication: "Four Nights Drunk"
 * Revolving Door Band: Maddy Prior compared Steeleye to a bus, with members getting on and off. Indeed, the band were aware of this; on Now We Are Six, there is a jokey rendition of The Camptown Races in the voice of a West Indian bus conductor that alludes to this.
 * Signature Song: "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat"
 * Sweet Polly Oliver: "Female Drummer"