Villain Songs | Forgotten Melodies #4
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Show notes
Cover your faces and wield your flintlocks with care, as on this month's Forgotten Melodies bonus episode we're talking all about Villain Songs - in particular, Van Diemen's Land, The Female Highwayman, and The Lincolnshire Poacher!
As ever, the episode contains new takes on all three of these songs from Eleanor and Ben, as well as plenty of chat about the history behind each song, and the English traditions of poaching and roadside robbery.
From the nation's 18th century penchant for sending people to what is today called Tasmania for even the most minor of crimes to quite possibly the worst girlfriend ever, and the folk of Lincolnshire's very proud tradition of pinching stuff from the landed gentry, it's a fun episode underpinned by some serious concepts.
After all, these songs do have dark underbellies - and how ought we feel about crime and punishment? Should we still be singing songs with misogyny baked into them from conception? And does our love of the 'English rebel' obscure an awkward fact: that we seem to often want to cheer on those who have clearly broken the law...
As always, we really hope you enjoy the episode, and what's that in your pretty coin purse there? Well, well - stand and deliver!
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Three Ravens is a completely independent English myth and folklore podcast where we share stories, celebrate folk culture, and fall backwards through the hedgerows of history.
Hosted by real-life couple Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, and mostly recorded at our home in rural Sussex in southern England, Three Ravens is rated 4.8/5 from over 500 reviews and has grown by word of mouth care of our lovely listener community ‘The Conspiracy of Ravens.’
We release three episodes a week, on Mondays, Thursday and Saturdays, through which we explore folktales, folkways, fairy stories, folk songs, mythology, local heritage, seasonal customs and traditional beliefs.
Our research inspires our retellings of stories from across history and culture, with episodes standing alone but connected together across over 500 chatty, mostly light-hearted, swear-free installments driven by passion, kindness and curiosity.
Now ranked as an all-time Top 5 podcast across several categories by Goodpods, charting in the Spotify, Apple and Rephonic UK Fiction Top 10 across 2024, 2025 and 2026, if you’re interested in ghosts, monsters, regional beliefs, and the things that unite us all, then join us round the campfire and listen in…
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