These bawdy songs don't even pretend to be subtle!

This classic collection from Topic Records was first released on vinyl in 1966. Thirty years later, the original material was reissued on CD with a fair number of additional tracks. Now, another dozen years have passed and the recording is once again fairly hard to track down. More's the pity!

These simple, sparsely arranged recordings are utterly without artifice or pretense; they are boldly brazen, but never coarse. Rather, blunt puns and metaphors lay bare the true meaning of these songs. They show the plain-spoken delight that has made the saucier side of British folk music a treat for countless generations.

The singers captured here are A.L. Lloyd, Frankie Armstrong, Anne Briggs, Louis Killen and Norman Kennedy and, as the subtitle indicates, these are "Traditional Songs of Love & Lust." For the most part, the songs were ancient long before these were recorded; the notes on one track mention copies circulating in Shakespeare's time, when the piece in question was already old.

"The Two Magicians" tells a timeless tale of transformation, in which a maiden tries to escape her suitor by magic, but he matches her at every turn. "The Old Man from Over the Sea" demonstrates the difference of perspective between a young girl of marriageable age and her more practical, less romantic parents. "The Wanton Seed" puts to song a peasant ritual from the fields that taught the plants how to properly, um, propagate. And that's just the first three tracks; there are 16 more to go. Some are brief, others are longer narrative tales, but they all get to the point fairly swiftly.

If you enjoy folk music at its purest level and aren't too puritanical in your attitudes toward sexual congress, this is a collection well worth tracking down.