What song did the "Mother of Folk" say her grandmother would often sing on Twelfth Night?
Brightest and Best "Brightest and Best" (occasionally rendered by its first line, "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning") is a Christian hymn written in 1811 by the Anglican bishop Reginald Heber to be sung at the feast of Epiphany. It appeared in Heber's widow's compilation of hymns entitled "Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Service of the Church Year" in 1827. It can be sung to a number of tunes, including "Morning Star" by James P. Harding, "Epiphany" by Joseph Thrupp, and "Star in the East" by William Walker. It appears in "The Lutheran Hymnal", and appeared in the 1966 Methodist hymnal. It has been recorded by a number of artists, including Glen Campbell, Joanne Hogg and Kathy Mattea (on her album "Good News"). The Kentucky traditional singer Jean Ritchie often sang this and told of her childhood memory of her grandmother sitting by the fire and singing it quietly to herself on Twelfth Night; the Library of Congress collected it from her in 1951.
Blacksmith (song) "Blacksmith" (Roud 816) is a traditional English folk song, also known as "A Blacksmith Courted Me". The song was noted down by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1909 from a Mrs Ellen Powell of Westhope near Weobley, Herefordshire. On that occasion it was sung to the tune "Monk's Gate", better known as the tune of "To be a pilgrim", the hymn by John Bunyan. The same tune is sometimes used for the song "Our Captain Cried". There is a setting by George Butterworth (a friend of Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp) in his 1912 collection "Folk Songs from Sussex" (recorded by Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside in the Naxos English Song Series 8.572426).