the Richards-Fried melody; these include versions by Steeleye Span, the Mediaeval Baebes (titled 'This Ay Nicht') and Alasdair Roberts. The annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco has adapted the song to a neopagan context, changing the refrain to "May earth receive thy soul". This version can be found on Let It Begin Now: Music from the Spiral Dance. Maddy Prior, writing in the liner notes to the Steeleye Span retrospective Spanning the Years, drily characterises the song's countercultural appeal, in describing one 1970s performance: 5 nights at the LA Forum with Jethro Tull. We were opening our set at the time with the Lyke Wake Dirge, a grim piece of music from Yorkshire concerning pergatory [sic] and we all dressed in dramatic mummers ribbons with tall hats. The effect was stunning. 5 gaunt figures in line across the front of the stage, lit from below casting huge shadows, intoning this insistent dirge alarmed some members of the audience whose reality was already tampered with by 1970s substances. It was most satisfying. In the 2013 BBC radio play Neverwhere, the angel Islington (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) sang it. In 2014 the dirge was recorded by Matt Berninger and Andrew Bird for the AMC TV series Turn and in 2016 a version was used as the theme for BBC's The Living and the Dead, performed by The Insects featuring Howlin' Lord. "Lyke-Wake Dirge" is sometimes considered a ballad, but unlike a ballad it is lyric rather than narrative. See also Dirge – church service (office) for the dead, later somber funeral song "Draumkvedet" – a similar Norwegian ballad Notes References John Aubrey, Remaines of gentilisme and judaisme 1686–87. Reprinted in: John Buchanan-Brown (ed), Three prose works, Centaur Press, 1972. F. W. Moorman, Yorkshire dialect poems: (1673–1915) and traditional poems, published for the Yorkshire Dialect Society by Sidgwick and Jackson, 1916. Richard Blakeborough, Wit, Character, Folklore, and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, Henry Frowde: London, 1898. Alasdair Clayre, 100 folk songs and new songs, Wolfe Publishing Ltd, 1968. This includes the version collected by Hans Fried. Arthur Quiller-Couch (ed.), The Oxford Book of English Verse, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900 First verse in 3-part harmony, based on the singing of The Young Tradition The Oxford English Dictionary includes fire and flet (corruptly fleet): 'fire and house-room'; an expression often occurring in wills, etc. and refers to an old northern song over a