Irish quartet Lankum have unveiled a new song, ‘Newcastle’, lifted from their forthcoming album False Lankum – out this Friday (March 24) via Rough Trade. It follows previous offerings ‘Go Dig My Grave’ and ‘The New York Trader’. Take a listen below.
“We learned this song from Seán Fitzgerald of The Deadlians, whose mother Pauline sang it to him as a child,” the band said in a statement. “The tune was first published in ‘The English Dancing Master’ (1651) where it is simply entitled ‘Newcastle’, while the words may be related to a broadside ballad printed in 1620 and entitled ‘The contented Couckould, Or a pleasant new Songe of a New-Castle man whose wife being gon from him, shewing how he came to London to her, & when he found her carried her backe againe to New-Castle Towne.”