Steeleye Span don the Commoners Crown Quiz

Answer: Yellow

The answer here is found at the end of the last verse:
"She took him by the yellow hair and also by the feet.
She threw him in the old draw well fifty fathoms deep."

The storyline is that Hugh is playing ball with friends, kicks the ball over the wall of a castle and everyone is scared to go and retrieve it from the property. The boy, Little Sir Hugh, goes in to the garden anyway and is enticed into the castle, like Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" being tempted by the White Queen. Once inside he is killed.

At first glance this song appears to be a typical ballad about murder, about children avoiding certain places and not accepting sweets from strangers. But it is very old in its origins. The oldest versions are also heavily anti-Semitic. They date back to the time when Jews were blamed for anything and everything as an excuse to appropriate their property. The original versions of this song imply that the owner of the castle is Jewish and is guilty of child murder.

The title is also reminiscent of one of the blood libel saints, Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln. He, (along with several others), were children whose deaths were falsely blamed on Jews. Not that you would realise any of this in the sanitised version sung here. This particular version has no religious symbolism or references that I can identify.

Answer: Peter Sellers

All of the options were members of the Goons, but it was Peter Sellers who, for some reason unknown, appears on this song. The last words, spoken at the end of the song are from the lips of Mr Sellers; "I say, are you a matelote? Careful what you say, sir - we're onboard ship here."

The song itself is a typically sea-shanty. The story being of a sailor who reaches New York with money and thinks he is doing well with the women. Come the morning he is broke, no money, clothes or possessions. All he can do is wear a barrel and go sign up on a ship which sends him round Cape Horn.

Answer: Instrumental track

This one is a pure instrumental. On a different album of Steeleye's, Peter Knight described it thus; "I had wanted to write a tune that combined the qualities of two types of jigs, classical and Irish, and this was the result."

The album cover for this album simply describes it as traditional, arranged by Steeleye Span.

Answer: Bedroom

As with "Little Sir Hugh" this involves the murder of a child, a much younger one this time. The details here are in the final verse (although the first verse is then repeated).
"There was blood all in the kitchen, there was blood all in the hall.
There was blood all in the parlour where my lady she did fall."

This is another traditional song about murder, this one from the Anglo-Scottish border area. Looking into the history of this song, different versions paint Long Lankin as either an unpaid stone-mason or a rival of the local lord in some way. In either case he has broken in to the castle with the aid of a nursemaid, the false nurse of the song, and extracted a murderous vengeance.

Answer: Hare

The chorus is quite clear on this:
"I keep my dogs and I keep my ferrets,
I have them in my keeping
To catch those hares that run by night
While the gamekeepers lie sleeping."

Poaching songs have always been popular amongst the general populace. Apart from being a source of food, poaching was a way of getting back at the governing classes. The penalties for being caught were severe though. Transportation at least, and if gamekeepers were killed then someone being hung for murder was likely.

Answer: Horse

A word of caution contained in this song, directed at those who would buy a used horse. The farmer and son go to a market, in this version it is Enniscorthy in Wexford. The aim is to sell their old mare.
"The price of her is twenty guineas but look I'll take one pound."

The buyer then takes the old mare into a stable, trims her mane and sells her back to the farmer as a totally different horse.
"The price of her is fifty guineas but look I'll take five pounds."

Father and son then head back home thinking they've made a bargain but the farmer's daughter and wife immediately notice it is the same horse.
"Mamma, mamma, here comes the lads, but the mare they did not sell.
But they've hogged her mane and docked her tail, but you'd know her old jog well."

Since horses are no longer a major form of transport such swindles have moved on to used cars, but the term horse-trading remains.

Answer: Italy

There are many songs about lovers parted and then the man comes back to see if his sweetheart has proved true. She fails to recognise him until he pulls out a broken love token. Here we have one where the woman got tired of waiting and is now married with a child. Since her former beloved is dead that doesn't seem an unreasonable course of action.

Sadly, her late partner has other ideas, returning from hell to reclaim his unfaithful love.
"Yonder's the mountain of hell," he cried,
"Where you and I must go."

The chorus of this song provides the location of the white lilies.
"I'll show you where the white lilies grow
On the banks of Italy,
I'll show you where the white fishes swim
At the bottom of the sea."

Answer: Cow

The opening words of the song are "I heard a bonny cow-low". The version of the traditional song that appears on this album is too short for the underlying story to be revealed in any detail. But it is possible to look at other versions to find out more.

In song tradition, those that are called elves are said to steal away human children, the same claim has been made against gypsies and other groups, usually as an excuse to discriminate against them.

In this song it is the mother that the elves have taken, to be a wet-nurse for the elven child.

Answer: Press Gang

At first glance the answer here doesn't appear to be explicitly stated. But the first verse does clearly show that:
"Oh, the weary cutters have taken my laddie from me.
They've pressed him far away foreign with Nelson beyond the salt sea."

Of the four options given, only the press gang would have "pressed" a man to serve with Nelson.

Also of note in this song is that the singer is willing to pay a guinea to get her man back. This was a 1975 recording. Things seem cheaper now, the version sung by The Teacups on their 2020 album "In Which..." only offers a shilling.

Answer: Banjo

Who is Min and what has she got to do with a traditional sea shanty? As established earlier in the quiz, Peter Sellers of the Goons plays ukelele on this track and does a lot of ad-libbing. According to hearsay, the ad-libs heard on the track are just a small amount of the total supplied by Peter Sellers during the recording.

One of Peter Sellers characters on the Goon Show was Henry Crun. Henry's partner was Minnie Bannister played by Spike Milligan. So, in all probability this line is Peter speaking as Henry to Minnie (Min).