Songfacts®:

• "The Sangate Dandling Song" is a traditional song believed to have originated in the Northeast of England in the 18th or 19th century. It tells the conflicted story of the wife of a violent Northeast keelman, and the repercussions of domestic abuse on their son.
• The term "dandling" refers to the act of moving a child or infant up and down in a playful or soothing manner, typically by bouncing them gently on one's knee or in one's arms. The mother is dandling her son as she sings it.
• The song is a popular choice for folk singers to perform at ceilidhs and other traditional events. Rachel Unthank recorded "The Sangate Dandling Song" on Stick In The Wheel's 2019 album From Here: English Folk Field Recordings Volume 2. She also sang it with The Unthanks on their 2022 album Sorrows Away.
• The song has captivated Adrian McNally, the multi-instrumentalist and producer for The Unthanks, for quite some time. This fascination began when he first heard his ex-wife Rachel sing the tune when they first met. Borrowing a melody from Eastern Europe, which he first learned from a Polish accordionist, McNally steps up to the microphone and inserts the song with a fresh verse, told from the father's disturbed viewpoint.
  
  "I've sung it unaccompanied since I was a teenager and it's grown with me as I've got older," Rachel Unthank told Uncut magazine. "We thought many times about how we could present it, and we tried a few. Thankfully, we just seemed to find our path through it."
  
  "It's such a key text in the North East folk canon that I always hoped we'll do something with it," McNally added. "I've had all sorts of ideas with it, like possibly turning it into a folk opera and having Richard Dawson being Johnny. It's one of the strongest things we've had I've ever done."