Steeleye Span – All Around My Hat

The Wombles Producer Hired To Save Them From Traditionalist Fury

Released in October 1975, Steeleye Span’s “All Around My Hat” transformed a nineteenth-century ballad about a Cockney costermonger mourning his transported fiancée into folk-rock gold. The single, edited down from over four minutes to just three minutes for radio, peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart in December 1975 and became their highest-charting single ever, the only time they’d crack the top ten. The parent album reached number seven and stayed on the UK Albums Chart for twenty weeks, earning the band their first gold disc and briefly making them a household name. Yet traditionalist critics accused them of selling out by hiring Mike Batt, the man behind The Wombles’ novelty hits, to produce the most commercial album of their career. Tim Hart defended the choice years later, noting he’d been impressed by the quality and imagination in the Wombles recordings, particularly Batt’s ability to work extremely fast and add strings tastefully for the first time in Steeleye’s discography.

The chart success marked a dramatic reversal of fortune for the electric folk pioneers. Their previous hit had been the a cappella medieval Christmas carol “Gaudete” in 1973, which reached number fourteen despite being entirely in Latin. The band formed in 1969 when Ashley Hutchings left Fairport Convention to create a new group with Maddy Prior and Tim Hart. By 1975, the lineup had stabilized with Prior, Hart, Bob Johnson, Peter Knight, Rick Kemp, and Nigel Pegrum. The album became their first to chart in the United States, reaching number 143 on the Billboard 200. In 1996, Status Quo recorded the song with Maddy Prior contributing guest vocals, and when the two bands toured England together that year, Prior joined Status Quo onstage to sing it as an encore. That collaboration reached number twenty-one on the UK Singles Chart, introducing the song to a new generation.

The song’s origins dated back to 1820s London street literature, where a Cockney costermonger vowed to wear green willow sprigs in his hatband for a twelve-month and a day, mourning his fiancée who’d been sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for theft. The willow symbolized mourning in traditional English culture, its weeping branches representing sorrow and lost love. Sabine Baring-Gould printed a version in his 1895 collection A Garland of Country Song that closely matched what Steeleye Span would later record. The band’s version combined the traditional chorus with verses from a different folk song called “Farewell He,” which reversed the gender roles, putting the woman in the position of mourning while wearing the green willow and waiting for her lover’s return. Irish republican Peadar Kearney adapted the song in 1921, replacing the green willow with a three-coloured ribbon referencing the Easter Rising, swearing to wear the Irish tricolour in remembrance.

Recording took place at Air Studios in London during July 1975, with mixing at Wessex Sound Studios. Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, who’d worked on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, co-engineered with Mike Stavrou. Batt brought professional polish that some folkies considered anathema but which undeniably worked commercially. The arrangement built around Maddy Prior’s distinctive vocals, Peter Knight’s fiddle work, and a rock rhythm section that gave the traditional melody contemporary urgency. The single version omitted the final verse to fit radio requirements, tightening the song’s structure. The album cover, designed by John O’Connor, a school friend of Tim Hart’s, featured an anamorphic projection that distorted the band members’ facial features. The package included a lyric insert with peepholes and instructions for viewing the band using anamorphic projection, a visual gimmick historically used for salacious material so people wouldn’t recognize subjects until standing a bottle of beer on the picture.

“All Around My Hat” served as both title track and lead single from the album, with “Black Jack Davy” as the B-side. The album also featured “Hard Times of Old England,” which was issued as a follow-up single in 1976 but failed to chart. Other tracks included “Dance with Me,” based on Scandinavian ballad “Herr Olof och Älvorna,” and “The Wife of Ushers Well,” using a tune derivative of “The Gardener” that Tim and Maddy had previously recorded. The album’s success created pressure to repeat the formula. Batt returned to produce 1976’s Rocket Cottage, which pushed even further toward mainstream rock but failed to capture the same magic. The band had been running out of steam creatively, and many felt All Around My Hat worked best as a synthesis of everything they’d accomplished up to that point rather than a new direction forward.

The song became a folk club lampoon subject, with parody versions including “I’m going to drown my cat” circulating through Britain’s folk scene. Jasper Carrott sang a parody titled “It’s my bloody ribbon and it’s my bloody hat” at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1976. In the Men Behaving Badly episode “Watching TV,” Gary and Dorothy repeatedly end up singing the Steeleye Span version while trying to remember the theme tune to Starsky and Hutch. Paul Whitehouse sang the first lines in an episode of The Fast Show, changing a key word in each line with “arse.” The song featured prominently in The Adventures of Robin Hood TV series episode “The Prisoner,” where it’s claimed as King Richard the Lionheart’s favorite song. A prison guard sings it at a tavern, alerting Robin Hood to a courier’s secret imprisonment. The tune proved so charismatic it transcended its folk origins into mainstream British culture.

The song continued appearing in Steeleye Span’s live repertoire throughout lineup changes and decades. The band toured extensively supporting the album during 1975 and 1976, often pairing “All Around My Hat” with traditional instrumental “The Devil’s Dream.” Performances appeared on German TV’s Rockpalast and British television’s Electric Folk series. An Australian tour recording from 1975 was released on the 2001 compilation Gone to Australia. By the Nineties, Steeleye Span with Maddy Prior still at the helm spent time touring on a double bill with Status Quo, leading to their collaboration. The band appeared at Glastonbury in 2019, proving the song’s enduring appeal across generations of folk and rock fans who’d discovered it through different channels.

Looking back, “All Around My Hat” represents both Steeleye Span’s commercial peak and the moment electric folk crossed from cult appreciation into mainstream success. The traditionalists who accused them of selling out missed the point that folk music had always evolved through reinterpretation, from 1820s London broadsides to Victorian music halls to twentieth-century recordings. The Cockney costermonger’s vow of fidelity to his transported fiancée resonated in 1975 because Steeleye Span understood that folk songs survive by adapting to each generation’s musical vocabulary. Mike Batt’s production, derided by purists, brought medieval and traditional melodies to audiences who’d never set foot in a folk club. The green willow of mourning became a symbol of commercial triumph, proving that respect for tradition and contemporary arrangement weren’t mutually exclusive. As the song concluded each concert, with audiences singing along to that ancient chorus, the boundary between folk revival and popular music dissolved. Steeleye Span had achieved what they’d set out to do in 1969: keep traditional songs alive by making them relevant to modern listeners, even if it meant hiring the Wombles’ producer to get there.

Steeleye Span
Maddy Prior – vocals
Tim Hart – guitar, vocals, dulcimer
Bob Johnson – guitar, vocals
Rick Kemp – bass guitar, vocals
Peter Knight – violin, vocals, mandolin
Nigel Pegrum – drums, flute

The official music video for ‘All Around My Hat’ from Steeleye Span
‘Good Times Of Old England: Steeleye Span 1972-1983’ 12CD box set

Lyrics:
All around my hat I will wear the green willow
And all around my hat for a twelve-month and a day
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I’m wearing it
It’s all for my true love who’s far, far away

Fare thee well cold winter and fare thee well cold frost
Nothing have I gained but my own true love I’ve lost
I’ll sing and I’ll be merry when occasion I do see
He’s a false deluding young man, let him go farewell he

The other night he brought me a fine diamond ring
But he thought to have deprived me of a far better thing
But I being careful like lovers ought to be
He’s a false deluding young man, let him go farewell he

And all around my hat I will wear the green willow
And all around my hat for a twelve-month and a day
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I’m wearing it
It’s all for my true love who’s far, far away

All around my hat I will wear the green willow
And all around my hat for a twelve-month and a day
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I’m wearing it
It’s all for my true love who’s far far away

All around my hat I will wear the green willow
And all around my hat for a twelve-month and a day
And if anyone should ask me the reason why I’m wearing it
It’s all for my true love who’s far, far away