Martin Carthy and Paul Simon’s ridiculous feud over ‘Scarborough Fair’: “It’s a fucking folk song”
While folk music has always been rooted in tradition, there were a number of artists throughout the 20th century who can be credited with having broadened the scope of the genre and inspired future generations to push it in broader directions.
Many people would look towards the likes of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Richard & Linda Thompson as prime examples of figures within the folk scene who have taken this bold creative leap, English songwriter Martin Carthy is an example of someone whose work managed to inspire all of the above acts. With his progressive approach and baroque-informed arrangements all having made an impression on the wider folk scene, Carthy is, despite all this, still one of the most unsung heroes of 20th century folk music.
Still going today, and recently having received his first Mercury Prize nomination for his 2025 album, Transform Me Then Into A Fish, becoming the oldest person to receive the nod at 84, you can hardly fault the London multi-instrumentalist’s dedication to his craft. However, with that comes a certain protectiveness around the genre’s traditions, and even though folk has survived for centuries through adaptations of traditional songs with dubious origins, there are still times when you’ve got to stand up for something you created and not let someone else steal your glory by claiming it as their own.
When Simon and Garfunkel chose to release their own interpretation of the traditional English folk song ‘Scarborough Fair’, which was first known to have been published in 1891 by folk song collector Frank Kidson, Simon chose to use an arrangement of the song that had been previously used by Carthy, when he released his own version a year prior in 1965. Simon had learned the song from Carthy in the first place, but Carthy would later argue that he stole the arrangement and ended up having a hit with the track.
Carthy was initially incensed by this, and revealed to Uncut that he felt a sense of frustration at the fact Simon had coasted along on the back of his own hard work. “First of all I told myself jokingly, ‘Cheeky sod, who’s he think he is, singing a traditional song,’” he claimed, “but I allowed myself to be sucked into that piece of nonsense. What a fool I was, eventually allowing the music industry to get control of ‘Scarborough Fair’, and me signing the ownership of it over to them.”
However, he quickly rolled back on the idea of Simon having stolen from him, realising that he was angered about something that he had no right to take ownership of. “It’s a fucking folk song,” he declared. “Everybody owns it, and that includes Paul Simon. It’s mine, but it’s also yours,” adding, “He didn’t rip me off, the arrangement he had was a tribute, it wasn’t the same as what I played, and what a lovely compliment to pay.”
The even more surprising thing about Carthy’s insistence that Simon had stolen his arrangement was that Carthy’s version is, in itself, adapted from the version collected by Ewan MacColl as early as 1947. When it comes to ownership of traditional folk songs, nobody can really lay claim to them except the communities who originally conceived of them, and that’s the true beauty of the genre. They’re the songs of the people, and Carthy and Simon, above all, have both spent their careers recognising the importance of this.
