Volume 12 Number 3 (2023) contains the following pieces
Articles
Mary Emmett Defining and Reclaiming Hunting Songs for the Twenty-First Century
It could be easy to assume that there is no longer a place for hunting songs in the twenty-first century, especially since hunting with dogs was outlawed in the UK in 2005. However, recent work by the author would suggest there remains a large corpus of song material still to be collected. This paper will seek to reconsider the term ‘hunting song’ in light of more recent scholarship, examine these songs’ role and purpose within a contemporary context, and argue that greater attention should be paid to this seemingly often overlooked folk song tradition by both researchers and performers.
Eleanor Rodes Eloise Hubbard Linscott: ‘The People’s Collector’
Eloise Hubbard Linscott was a New England housewife whose largely self-taught and self-funded fieldwork throughout the 1930s–50s has been under-appreciated. This article presents a biographical overview of Linscott’s life as a traditional music participant, collector, author, and advocate. It considers the impacts of her unique perspectives and purposes on her work and her communities. And it underlines her pioneering contributions to broadly representational and community-oriented practices in ethnomusicology.
Polly Paulusma Distilling the Essence: Angela Carter and the Folk Song Collectors
Angela Carter, one of the greatest British post-war novelists, is already well known for her modern treatment of traditional folk and fairy tales. A new private archive, containing notebooks, LPs, books, and recordings, has recently come to light in Bristol which proves beyond doubt that Carter played an active role in the traditional folk scene in Bristol during the 1960s as a singer, a player, and a scholar, alongside her first husband, producer and field recordist Paul Carter. As part of a wider study of the influence of folk singing on Carter’s literary works, this article examines how Carter the editor and curator learned from folk song collectors how to repurpose traditional material, and in particular from A. L. Lloyd, who performed as a guest at the Carters’ Bristol folk club.
Amanda MacLean Dropping Stones and Opening Doors on to ‘Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie’
Some Traveller variants of the old Scots ballad ‘Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie’, or ‘Andrew Lammie’ (Child 233, Roud 98) have an inexplicable discrepancy in wording from other variants, substituting ‘temple stane’ for ‘hall door’. A version of the ballad unique to Colin Douglas, learned from an elderly Traveller in the mid-twentieth century, contains wording that holds a key to the origins of this conundrum, which can be corroborated from other sources to add to the rich tradition surrounding the ballad.
Martin Graebe Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Lecture: Cotswold Arts and Crafts and Folk Music
The nineteenth century was a time of great social change in Britain. At its beginning 80 per cent of our citizens lived and worked in the country, with only 20 per cent living in a town or city. At its end the percentages had been reversed as industry ended agriculture’s dominance of our economy. It saw the emergence of a middle class that had benefitted financially from these changes, but many of whom started to wonder if something had been lost along the way. Thinkers like John Ruskin, William Morris, and Edward Carpenter gathered followers who coalesced around particular cultural themes which have been categorized as ‘Romantic Socialism’. Three of those are central to this paper: ‘Arts and Crafts’, ‘Back to the Land’, and the ‘Folk Song and Dance Revival’.
Notes
The Corbridge ‘Full Plough’ Gordon Ridgewell
Reviews – Books
The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames: Folk Songs from the Alfred Williams Collection (ed. Graebe) Rosie Upton
The John Rook Manuscript (ed. Say) Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne
Complete Dance Music from the Sharp Collection: Volume 1 – Tunes for Social Dance and Step-Dance (ed. Townsend) Chloe Middleton-Metcalfe
Shakespeare’s Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture (Pikli) Michael Heaney
Morris Dancers and Rose Queens, Volume 4: An Anthology of Reported Carnivals and Galas in West Lancashire, 1920 to 1929 (Haslett) Peter Bearon
Researching Secular Music and Dance in the Early United States: Extending the Legacy of Kate Van Winkle Keller (ed. Lohman) Anne Daye
Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records (Russell) Pete Cooper
Sword Dancing in Handsworth and Woodhouse (Davison) Stephen D. Corrsin
The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England: Moving Media, Tactical Publics (Fumerton) David Atkinson
From Mummers to Madness: A Social History of Popular Music, c.1770s to c.1970s (Taylor) Michael Pickering
The Forde Collection: Irish Traditional Music from the William Forde Manuscripts (ed. Carolan and Uí Éigeartaígh) Desi Wilkinson
Scots Folk Singers and their Sources: A Study of Two Major Scottish Song Collections (Macafee) Eilidh Whiteford
Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-Copia (Hagmann) Kate Neale
Stars and Ribbons: Winter Wassailing in Wales (Ifans) Peter Harrop
A Notorious Chaunter in B Flat and Other Characters in Street Literature (ed. Atkinson and Roud) Jenni Hyde
Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture (Grant) David Francis
The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary (Samuelian) Theresa Jill Buckland
Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition (Church) Fay Hield
Geordie Hanna: The Man and the Songs (McGuinness) Grace Toland
Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland (ed. Cheeseman and Hart) Sue Allan
An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century (ed. Cohen, Cohen, and Dhu McLucas) Steve Roud
All Step Up: The History of the Manley Morris Dancers (Schofield) Michael Heaney
The Captain’s Apprentice: Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of a Folk Song (Davison) Malcolm Taylor
Unfolding Creativity: British Pioneers in Arts Education from 1890 to 1950 (ed. Howlett and Palmer) Derek Schofield
The Book of Sea Shanties: Wellerman and Other Songs from the Seven Seas (Evans) Sea Shanties: The Lyrics and History of Sailor Songs (Dolby) Old Salem at Sea in Ballad and Song (Strom) Bygone Ballads of Maine, Volume I: Songs of Ships & Sailors (Lane and Gosbee) Bob Walser
The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (Cole) Brian Peters
A Secret Stream: Folk Songs Collected from English Gypsies (Dow) Paul Burgess
Reviews – CDs
The New Demesne: Field Recordings Made by Alan Lomax in Ireland, 1951 Kara Shea O’Brien
Taisce Luachmhar (Valuable Treasure) – The Piping Album and The Fiddle Album Reg Hall
My True Love He Dwells on the Mountain: Traditional Music from the West of Ireland – Field Recordings Made in the Early 1970s Matt Cranitch
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Folk Songs, vols 1–4 Julian Onderdonk
Obituaries
Anthony Grant Barrand Elaine Bradtke
Gwilym Davies Stephen Rowley
John Arthur Howson Derek Schofield
Robert Samuel (Robin) Morton John Moulden
Cover illustration: Cecil and Joan Sharp with Maud Karpeles, Cirencester, 1923. Courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
Editor: David Atkinson
