Show of Hands are Waking the Union Quiz

Answer: Seth

The brothers Sam, Sean and Seth Lakeman are all active in 21st century UK folk music. They originally played together as a trio with the startlingly unoriginal name of "The Lakeman Brothers". Up until the Covid-19 lockdown Seth was touring as a solo artist whilst Sean and Sam toured with their respective partners. Geoff Lakeman is the father of this talented trio and is also a renowned folk musician, notably playing a Crane System Duet Concertina.

Answer: Shepherds

This song could be a way of describing the financial crises of the early twenty-first century. It can be seen as suggesting that "getting out while the going is good" is the best option in times of trouble.
Lines such as "The books have been cooked and the chairs rearranged" and "Wolves in the night been circling the flock. Shepherds are honing their knives on the block" all follow this theme.
For me it is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett's Igors, departing the castle via the back door as the mob storms the front gates.

Answer: The moon on the moors is all yours

The verses all end with "They're yours forever if you come back to me" (or a variation thereof) and a refrain of "Now you know" three times followed by "Will you come back to me". This is a theme in folk songs (and maybe other genres) of declaring various offerings to a lost love, that they can have all these things if only they will return.
This song is written by Steve Knightley but for a traditional song along the same lines consider "The Keys of Canterbury", a version of which appears on the Show of Hands album "Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed".

Answer: Meteorologists

The couplet that the question refers to is:
"Don't put your trust in leaders, engineers and fools
They built the levees, drained the swamps and broke all nature's rules"

This seems a bit different from these days of Covid-19 lockdowns where we are being exhorted to put our faith in scientists, still that is song writing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. This song was written by West Country singer songwriter Chris Hoban, whose songs Show of Hands have included on other albums.

The song itself follows the singer losing their love to hurricane Katrina's surging water, "the day Katrina took my love from me".

Answer: Cecil Sharp

The song is set around an imagined experience of Cecil Sharp on his trip to America in the early part of the twentieth century. In the song "Aunt Maria" is trying not to be singled out, saying that there are lots more people like her to listen to.
Both Sabine Baring-Gould and Lucy Broadwood were collecting folk songs from rural parts of England in the Victorian era. Steve Roud is much more recent and has compiled a database of folk songs that bears his name, the Roud Folk Song Index.

Answer: Cutting and pasting

The whole song refers to various ills of the modern computerised society. Starting with ripped off music, carrying on to cc e-mails, facebook and twitter. Finally, the song moves on to student life, and the only usage in song of the word "plagiarisation" that I have encountered.
The relevant lyrics are:
"Plagiarisation dissertation, I take another essay from the net.
I've been three years wasting cutting and pasting.
Now I'm £30,000 in debt."
Things have changed since my time at college, drinking it up would have been appropriate then. Tweaking Facebook is also referred to in the song but not with that particular phrase.
The oxymoron "peace riot", is taken from a song by Fred Wedlock.

Answer: And a thousand reflections

It isn't stated anywhere in the song that this is about a museum, although it can be inferred from the lyrics. Further research brings me to the website of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, which has the motto "home to a million thoughts". Deeper investigation of the website reveals that this song, by Steve Knightley, was written "especially for the museum's re-opening in December 2011".
This might be interesting to some but none of this information is required to answer the question.
Each verse ends in the same fashion "Home to a million thoughts, and a thousand reflections". The wrong answers are all derived from other lines in the song's lyrics.

Answer: Desert sand

Idealistic and optimistic but a good tune. The verses detail various things that would be changed if the singer was king of the world. Amongst other ideas are the ending of religion; "No...hell-fire preacher peddling hate, no holy book to desecrate" and of weaponry; "No arrow tipped, no missile primed". Sadly, without omniscience and unconditional power to force people to comply I see it as pure dreaming. The lyrics that relate to the question are at the start of the song.

The first verse runs as follows, "Give me a lever and place to stand. I'll move the mountains, raise the land. Hold back the sea and the desert sand. If I was king of the world".

Answer: Silence

In arguments sometimes it is better to hold back and say nothing; this is one of the main themes of this song. This is reflected in the couplet "Who gets to feel good. Who gets to win.", from where the title of the song is taken. The lyrics suggest that in this case there is no reconciliation but also that bitterness is pointless. Of the other options some poetry clearly is a sin, such as that of William Topaz McGonagall who is frequently described as the worst poet in the English language. Douglas Adams, in his work "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" claims that the worst poetry in the universe was from the pen of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

Answer: Reunion Hill

"Reunion Hill" was written by American singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. The song is set in the American Civil war and was notably recorded by Joan Baez.
"No Man's Land" and "Cruel River" are songs by Steve Knightley, the latter is also the title track of Steve Knightley's first solo album.
The closing song of the album "Thanks", also known as "Thanks for Coming", was co-written by Steve Knightley and Tom Gilbert. Tom Gilbert is a nom de plume of Ian Brown. He is also credited as writer of the song "No Hopers, Jokers and Rogues" notably recorded by Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends.