SRFN Miscellany: Sabine Baring Gould: Essay on English Folk-Music, 1895: 4

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SRFN: Miscellany:
Sabine Baring Gould:
Essay on English Folk-Music (4)

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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON ENGLISH FOLK-MUSIC

In Gay's "The what d'ye call it," the heroine, Kitty Carrol, when she finds that her sweetheart is pressed, exclaims—

"I can bear sultry days and frosty weather;
Yes, yes, my Thomas, we will go together.
Beyond the seas together we will go,
In camps together, as at harvest glow.
This arm shall be a bolster for thy head,
I'll fetch clean straw to make my soldier's bed;
There, while thou sleeps, my apron o'er thee hold,
Or with it patch thy tent against the cold.
Pigs in hard rains I've watched, and shall I do
That for the pigs I would not do for you?"

On this theme a hundred ballads have been founded, and they never fail to awake enthusiasm. As Mr. Sheppard says of one of these, "High Germany," given in "The Garland," "The aim of the song is clear, and delightful in its utter impracticability: the sentiments, expressions, and imagery are genuine and appropriate, and the girl in male attire

stands, as she ever does, on one of the three high peaks of rural romance. To this day the song is received by village audiences with rapturous applause, testifying at once its thorough accordance with their tastes, impressions, and sympathies." It must be admitted that a very large percentage of the ballads and songs have a breadth and frankness in them in dealing with certain topics, which render it impossible to give them verbatim. It is not that the songs are licentious, far from it; they are moral in their aim, but they enter into particulars with undesirable minuteness, and treat of matters to which we prefer to shut our eyes.

There is an old Cornishman with the face of a hawk, snow white hair and beard, and dark, piercing eyes — a man who heals wounds by blessing them, and "strikes" tumours, from whom I have had many songs. One day he said to me, "Now what I say, say I about thickey modern songs is, there's neither sense nor gude in 'em. Some o' our old songs — it does anyone gude to 'ear 'em. I mane, gude to their morals. Now, do y' know the ballad o' the 'Young Butcher and the Chambermaid'? I had heard it, and it did not sin on the side of reticence. I did not press him to sing it. He said to me, "There now, that's a song as is improving, won'nerful. It teaches a lesson better nor does a pas'son's sermon."

	INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON ENGLISH FOLK-MUSIC	xiii
I have entered into what to some may seem unnecessary detail as to the method adopted, and the experiences undergone, in song collecting. It is very easy for a critic to sneer at such work, because he is himself wholly unacquainted with our English peasant class; but if this rapidly perishing music is to be saved, it must be done at once, and it must be done by some one with enthusiastic love for old music, and who is familiar with the twists and turns of the mind of the agricultural labourer. Much might be done by ladies; I have by no means worked among old women singers as I have among men. But women love old songs even more than do men. Miss Bidder, daughter of the eminent mathematician, wrote to me a few years ago, that there were female singers near Dartmouth, and she asked me to visit her and seek them out. I did so, and with her assistance obtained some perfectly delightful songs, and very fresh and quaint airs. I have included some of them in "The Garland." It is to Miss Bidder that I owe an introduction to an old lame fiddler, homeless, who wanders over the south of Devon, with his fiddle, and works at mending saddles in the farms. I have employed him to collect folk-melodies for me. But a collector must be furnished with infinite patience, and put up with much disappointment. He will often have to go on a long journey, spend a good deal of money, and expend much valuable time, and return with nothing. Three times did I go, once alone, once with Mr. Sheppard, and once with Mr. Bussell, to Menhenniot, in Cornwall, to tap its music of the past. We entertained a dozen singers, but got nothing worth our pains, only songs we had had before, and of these some very corrupt versions. But then the man there, whom we wanted, was stubborn, and would not allow himself to be drawn. We made an excursion to Grampound and Tregony, and came back, after a fruitless week, with empty purse and blank music book. So it must be; nevertheless, now and then something well worth the search rewards the searcher, and relieves his discouragement. It is a most unfortunate thing that no one has thought of gathering together the folk-airs till quite recently, when they are trembling on the verge of oblivion. Davies Gilbert did, indeed, collect the "Christmas Carols" in Cornwall in 1822, and in his second edition included two ballads and a couple of other folk-airs. In 1798, Edward Jones issued his "Popular Cheshire Melodies," but it contained only one song, "The Cheshire Cheese;" the rest are rounds and

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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON ENGLISH FOLK-MUSIC

marches. The first serious collector of folk-airs was the late Rev. J. Broadwood, of Lyne, in Sussex, who, in 1843, printed for distribution among his friends a small collection he had been some years in making. Some of these were also published in the Sussex Archæological Journal.

Nothing further was done in this direction till, in 1877, Miss Mason published "Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs." Mr. Stokoe and Dr. Collingwood Bruce issued "Northumbrian Minstrelsy" in 1882. Mr. H. Sumner published a few in an illustrated collection of "Sussex Songs" in 1890. We had, in the meantime, begun our issue of the "Songs of the West" (Methuen & Co.), which appeared in four parts between 1889 and 1892, and in 1895 we issued "A Garland of Country Song," containing a supplement of songs not certainly belonging to Devon and Cornwall. Mr. Frank Kidson, of Leeds, had been for some time gathering in Yorkshire, and the results appeared in "Traditional Tunes," published in 1891. Then came Miss Broadwood's excellent work, "English County Songs," 1893. I doubt if there be any man in England better acquainted with old English songs than Mr. Kidson, and I gratefully tender him my thanks for much advice and help generously rendered me. In 1891, Messrs. Novello gave to the world an issue of fifty-four folk-airs to broadside ballads, edited by the late Dr. W. A. Barrett. Most of his collection was made in Sussex, at Shoreham, from an old shepherd on the South Downs.

But Mr. William Chappell had taken in some folk-airs into his "Popular Music of the Olden Times," 1855-56, not many, but eighteen, and on this supply compilers have drawn unreservedly since, without trouble to go further afield. Mr. Chappell's recent editor has cut out all the traditional airs, and confined himself to such as are printed.

For sailors' songs there is a collection of "Forty Sailor Songs or Chanties," by Mr. Ferris Tozer, published by Boosey, n.d., but about 1888. Miss L. A. Smith's "Music of the Waters," 1888, adds little or nothing to what was not already accessible.

It will be seen that certain portions of England, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Sussex, Devon, and Cornwall, have been explored for traditional melodies, but nothing has been done for the other counties. Miss Broadwood, in a recent work, "English County Songs," divides the collection according to counties, but this is arbitrary, and we are still left to lament that opportunities have been let slip, never to be recovered, of collecting in other counties of England, where, however, it is perfectly certain that folk-music did exist. That of Somersetshire is of a particularly rugged nature, whereas that of Cornwall and Devon is soft, fluent, and eminently melodious, resembling Irish music more than any other.

At the conclusion of his "Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries," Professor Lanciani writes mournfully of the manner in which the splendid relics of classic antiquity were neglected, despised, pillaged till the beginning of this century. Much the same way has English music — especially that of the people — been treated. It has been ignored, disregarded, but here and there by an ingenious musician an air appropriated, and what he has taken dressed up and passed off as original, and spoiled in the process.

And now we are fain to sit and sigh over the ruins of our folk-music, and wish that men in England had been as patriotic as those of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in preserving, when they had but to put out their hands and gather as much as they could hold; but the wild flower has not been appreciated in England as has been the cultivated, and what is home-bred is not valued beside what is exotic.

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Introduction