Hark! The Village Wait
album by Steeleye Span
Hark! The Village Wait is the debut album by the British folk rock band Steeleye Span, first released in 1970. It is the only album to feature the original lineup of the band, as they broke up and reformed with an altered membership immediately after its release, without ever having performed live. Therefore, it is one of only two Steeleye Span studio albums to feature two female vocalists (Maddy Prior and Gay Woods), the other being Time (1996). A similar sound was apparent years later when Prior teamed up with June Tabor to form Silly Sisters. Overall, the album's sound is essentially folk music with rock drumming and bass guitar added to some of the songs. The banjo features prominently on several tracks, including "Blackleg Miner", "Lowlands of Holland" and "One Night as I Lay on My Bed".
The album's title refers not to the act of waiting, but to a wait, a small body of wind instrumentalists employed by a town at public charge from Tudor times until the early 19th century. A village, however, would likely be too small to employ such a troupe, so the wait referred to here was most probably the later Christmas Waits, as mentioned in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Over the years, the band has returned to the material on this album several times.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hark! The Village Wait” as album by Steeleye Span. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as album by Steeleye Span. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5658106. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970 and 1996.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hark! The Village Wait” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.