There's no electricity on this album, the ISB didn't go electric until 1972 or 1974 or something like that but the album really "rocks" in the way it asserts it's distinct personality, jumping erratically from style to style. The album is "alive" at all moments, there is no boredom, no respect of fixed genre limits here: these two musicians want to go everywhere and at anytime they please.
You only have to look at the vast array of instruments played by the two main actors on this l.p., Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, to get an idea of the diversity of this music. I haven't even heard of some of them (ok., so this doesn't say much for me). Here goes: guitar, gimbri, whistle, percussion, pan pipe, piano, oud, mandolin, jew's harp, chahanai, water harp, harmonica, sitar, Hammond organ, hammer dulcimer, harpsichord.
Perhaps the album's title can shed light on the band's intention here. It's a great title. It both accepts and rejects the association of British folklore with a "country fayre" imagery. There's this thing with British folklore. It's influences predate those of rock'n'roll. A similar thing is true of the beginnings of Fairport Convention, for example. References to country folklore, a dash of the medieval here and there, open references to mother nature and the elements. It's probably got something to do with the British hippy scene. Folklore based around alternative visions of the community, "back to nature" tinged with an "art and crafts" "village fayre" thing.
The title shows a mixture of danger and desire. "Hangman" can be associated to all this "olde englande" medieval claptrap whereas the "beautiful daughter" part can be seen as an attempt to subvert this order of things. The "village fayre" thing is turned upside down by this title. On the other hand, perhaps this was just another example of the surreal poetry present in the album's lyrics.
There's a kind of happy hippy dippy elemental imagery in "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter". Pagan beliefs in sun, moon, air, wind, water, sky, stars, trees, etc.…
If this had been the limit of TISB's art, it probably wouldn't have stood up to the test of time. However, there is so much more to the songs than this. The songs usually have several parts, each one different in structure and melody. The progression through the different parts is a bit like the different stages of a journey. Each new section takes you one step further from whence you came. At the end of the journey you don't quite know where you've been, but you know you enjoyed yourself.
At least two of the songs have some part of them rooted in the particular perception of childhood. There is a fairy tale quality about them. Children's rhymes are integrated into the songs. They are happy, nostalgic and very evocative. It is almost as if the players were trying to regain their childhood visions, the way they saw the world before seriousness and reason were forced upon them by the adult world.
This is the case with Williamson's opening track, "Koeeaddi there". The bizarre, evocative poetry gives way to a central section where the singer evokes childhood memories. At the end of a song, a simple childhood rhyme is blended into the song "Ladybird, ladybird what is your wish?, Your wish is not granted unless it's a fish, Your wish is not granted unless it's a dish, a fish on a dish, is that what you wish?" It's both the ISB's impression of a children's rhyme as well as a surreal absurdist lyric. It's as if nothing is truly definable in ISB's work. Appearances can confuse. Multiple, contradictory meanings can be drawn from the same elements.
In Mike heron's "Swift as the Wind", a child is criticised by an adult for what is supposedly his wild imagination. The child imagines a fantasy, medieval-type world with a character named "Swift as the Wind" and the adult's voice echoes in the chorus "You must stop imagining all this for your own good, why don't you go with the rest and play downstairs?" The child is resolved not to relinquish his vision but is forced to play along with the authority of the adults around him and the closing verse is: "I may take some time on the way, and I may have to spend some time downstairs". The song is an attempt to recapture the wild imagination of childhood, it can equally be seen as a metaphor for the band's artistic process: a validation of their unbridled energy and wild fantasy in the face of the "straight" world.