Ah, the perils of being an heiress of £14,000 a year – well, for every Darcy there’s going to be at least a dozen Wickhams. And that’s what we find in this new song, that comes from an ongoing series of releases for which musicians are tasked with creating songs rooted in the work of 19th century Irish writers or events of that time. The Cruel Father by Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell with SJ McArdle is based on an 1860s ballad that recounts the tale of Richard Guinness Hill. He and his wife were travelling from Dublin to London when their son was born, and it is alleged that the birth would deprive Guinness Hill of part of his wife’s fortune. He attempted to get rid of the child a few days after its birth by leaving it with a woman in Drury Lane, London, but at the age of two he was ‘rescued from a loathsome den in the purlieus of Drury Lane, after having been suckled and fed from its birth among thieves, prostitutes and beggars’. Guinness Hill was charged with wilfully falsifying the register of the birth, but was never convicted.
The Cruel Father is out on Dimple Discs/Bring Your Own Hammer, and will form part of the 21 song compilation From The Tombs which will be released on Bring Your Own Hammer.
