Eddie Butcher – I Once Was A Daysman

He’s an Ulster singer, and it’s just lovely stuff. He was a fairly old man but he could really sing. The first track is, I think, ‘Heather Down The Moor’, which is a corking little song. I came across him first on a recording of songs from Northern Ireland, because of a fellow called Peter Bellamy who was a hungry bugger. Anything that was new and that he liked, he’d pounce on it and he’d sing it around the clubs. Several years later I sang a version of it with Waterson:Carthy. It was in the 1990s at some point. We did a nice version. I used to sing it at my solo gigs too. The song would just take you off somewhere, it had this beautiful melody.