Steeleye Span are a Parcel of Rogues Quiz

Answer: Will

This song tells of an impetuous fellow. He strolls out one morning and meets two people. The second one is a milkmaid. After sitting with her an hour, he proposes marriage and she accepts.

Then we get the verse containing the answer.
"Her parents then consented, all parties were agreed
Her portion thirty shillings, we married were with speed
Then Will the piper he did play whilst others dance and sing"

There is a nursery rhyme about Tom, the piper's son. Little Sir Hugh is a song by Steeleye Span on the album "Commoners Crown". Ned Ludd is alleged to be the origin of the term Luddite, and is also the subject of a song cycle recorded by Steeleye Span.

Answer: Ugliest

Alison Gross, also known as Alison Cross, wanted for attempted bribery and malicious transformation. The plot of the song is that the witch entices a young man to her tower and makes various offerings to him if he will become her lover. He rejects all of these bribes and suffers the consequences. These being described at the end of the last verse:

"She's muttered such words till my strength it did fail
And she's turned me into an ugly worm."

Although it doesn't appear to have prevented him recording the details in verse.

The chorus consists of the repeated phrase:
"Alison Gross, she must be. The ugliest witch in the North Country."

This song does come from the Scottish traditional songs. An interesting comment coming from a gentleman named Rod Stradling. For the album notes of a totally different singer he said in relation to this song:
"...of those who practised the Black Arts in league with the Devil, and-as in this ballad-of those of the Scottish fairies, an amoral, unpredictable tribe of whom Stanley Robertson says, "We call them the Guid Folk-because they can dee you an awful lot of damage" Barrie's dangerously vicious Tinker Bell was a prime depiction."

(Quote sourced from Mainly Norfolk and ascribed to the notes provided with the album "In Memory of Lizzie Higgins".)

Answer: Murder

The verse of relevance here is:
"The poachers they were tired
And to leave they were desired
And at last young Parkins fired
And spilled one keeper's blood"

Then another gamekeeper gets shot.
"He on the ground lay crying
Just like some person dying"

For this, two poachers are transported and once is hung.
"Exiled in transportation
Two brothers they were taken
And the other one hung as a token"

This song is from a group of traditional songs described as "transportation ballads". According to Mainly Norfolk, the notes for this song they (Steeleye) noted:

"Transportation, usually to Australia or the Americas, was, to rustic people who rarely travelled further than the local market town, tantamount to a sentence of death.
In Norfolk, where this song was collected, there was a tradition whereby a bottle of the transported man's urine was hung up in his house. If it clouded it meant he was ill and if it wasted, he was believed to have died and his family went into mourning."

Answer: Dairy produce

The opening of the song describes the situation.
"As I was going to Aylesbury all on a market day,
A pretty little Aylesbury girl I met upon the way.
Her business was to market with butter, cheese and whey"

This gives the alternative title for this traditional song, The Aylesbury Girl. Other versions with other towns are noted though. The story then moves on to flirtation and not much of a seduction, since the girl shows no reluctance whatsoever. However, when they get to the market, she changes her tune.

"And when she got to Aylesbury, her butter was not sold,
And the losing of her maidenhead it made her blood run cold.
"He's gone, he's gone, he's gone," she said, "He's not the lad for me,
For he lives at the sign of the Ups and Downs, fol-der-o diddle-o-day."

Answer: Pure crystal

A story of meeting another one of the "little people". In folklore it is considered best not to annoy them. This gentleman is described as having a long beard, legs a finger long and being three inches between the shoulders.

Having met the wee man, the singer gets taken to his dwelling. Where we find it described as:
"Until we came to a bonny green hall.
The roof was made of the beaten gold
And purest crystal was the floor."

However, the viewing does not last long. The last verse tells us that;
"He clapped his hands, down came the mist,
And the man and the hall no more were seen."

Answer: Young women

The opening verse here is:

"Young women, they run like hares on the mountain.
And if I was a young man, I'd soon go a-hunting"

This song, also known as "Blackbirds and Thrushes", is widely known around the folk tradition. Some sources believe that it is related to the even older song "The Two Magicians". That song was recorded by Steeleye on their album "Now We Are Six".

Answer: Bodkin and shears

This version of the song opens with the lines:

"When I was a tailor I carried my bodkin and shears;
When I was a weaver I carried my roods and my gear.
My temples also, my small clothes and reed in my hand,
And wherever I go, "Here's the jolly bold weaver again."

This verse is repeated at the end of the song. Now to what the song is about. It is an old song, but is based in part on an even older song which has names including "The Weaver in Love".

On a posthumous Bert Lloyd album, his notes about this song are:
"The earliest weavers' songs are from the time when handloom weavers went from village to village, setting up in farmhouse and cottage kitchens. Amorous chances were plenty. The invention of the power loom and the establishment of textile factories brought a great change in the handloom weavers' lives. This song, lyrical and wry, curiously illuminates this moment in history when the hand workers were finding themselves obliged to follow the girls into the factories and weave by steam, and when country song was changing to town song."

So in some ways it is a commentary on the loss of a specialised cottage industry to the machines in the factories, but it is also observing that women were entering the workforce en-masse.

Answer: Robert Burns

The original words were written as political criticism of the Scottish leaders who signed the Act of Union with England. As far as I can tell this was a quid pro quo for being bailed out from a disastrous investment they had made via the Company of Scotland. This in turn had been set up by an act of the Scottish Parliament. It failed in a big way.

The original poem describes these as selling Scotland out to avoid going bankrupt. The last lines of both the poem and the song are:

"We were bought and sold for English gold
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation"

This is also the source of the album title.

Answer: Lunnon (London)

This song, along with "Rogues in a Nation" is political satire from Scotland. This one is aimed at the Hanoverian king George the first. The house of Hanover had replaced the House of Stuart after the death in Queen Anne in 1714. The Jacobites weren't very happy about this, they preferred a different order of succession to the throne.

The first two lines of the song are:
Cam ye o'er frae France? Cam ye down by Lunnon?
Saw ye Geordie Whelps and his bonny woman?

There are various references to King George and his court in the song. The only one relevant here is Geordie Whelps referring to King George himself. The first two lines shown above can be translated as:

Have you come from France? Did you come by way of London?
Did you see King George and his mistress?

Answer: Robbery with Violins

The title is a pun on the term robbery with violence. According to various online sites, this traditional tune is also known as "Bank of Ireland". If that is truly an alternative old name for the reel then it shows distrust of a specific bank, predating the financial crises in the twenty-first century. Plenty of distrust of banks generally exists in history, but rarely as specific as this title.

I personally think that this is a fairly recent alternative title for the tune. For a start my LP cover doesn't mention anything about alternative names. Secondly although I can find "Bank of Ireland" as another name for the reel "Robbery with Violins", there are also two other names, "The Banks of Ireland" and "Follow Me Down to Carlow". I think that the change from banks to bank is a more recent naming than the other three.