And he could drive young women mad with the tune his wires would sing

Last night, in company of nineweaving, I saw Waterson:Carthy live for the first time. After a prolific book haul at the Strand and an opening set by John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee (of Pentangle).

That was massively cool.

Martin Carthy has the profile, the earrings, and the eyebrows of a Cloudish tinker; he sings ballads with his eyes closed, as though he's looking for the notes somewhere inside his eyelids or his breastbone or his hands, and he plays guitar concentrically. Norma Waterson is small and tough and silvering, with a Persian cat's pursed face and a cross-grained voice that swoops upward like a crow: she looks so remarkably like the photographs of Lal Waterson, her sister, that I can't imagine what it must have been like to see both of them on the same stage. Whether Eliza Carthy can actually juggle cats with her feet is anybody's guess, but she can certainly play the violin; her hair turned at least three different colors under the same lights. And I have blanked entirely on the name of the lanky young man with the melodeon, but I didn't even know you could do things like that with a bellows and some buttons.

I will definitely have to hear them again.