Folk Music Journal: Volume 11 Number 4

Volume 11 Number 4 (2019) contains the following pieces 

Articles

Rebecca E. Dellow  ‘Who Were the Folk?’ The Compilers of Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Tunebooks 

The remnants of a past English musical practice exist in handwritten manuscripts, sometimes known as ‘fiddlers’ tunebooks’, which beautifully preserve and document a largely amateur, monophonic instrumental practice. These manuscript sources are vastly under-explored academically, reflecting a wider omission in scholarship on instrumental music of the ‘ordinary’ people in the nineteenth century.

This article focuses on the human element of mid- to late nineteenth-century manuscripts, aiming to reveal the type of person involved in their creation. Using the compilers of three case-study manuscripts from the west of England alongside a wider sample of music manuscripts, I draw out key characteristics which define the compilers as young, married, working-class men from a rural environment. The demographic traits are considered and ideas put forward as to how and why the profile is thus shaped, and what elements were advantageous to music manuscript production.

Matthew Baalham ‘I think it is best to keep out of the way’: The Benbow Ballads Lying Low at Longleat 

Admiral John Benbow’s eventful naval career ended in 1702, following a courageous and much celebrated sea-fight against a French squadron in Caribbean waters, which led to his death. Due to a well-publicized trial of the admiral’s seditious captains, Richard Kirkby and Cooper Wade, the episode became firmly established in the English public imagination and the tale was told and retold in song.
Biographers of Benbow often encourage the idea that popular Benbow ballads were first sung immediately after his death in 1702, though well-known examples from today have only been traced in hard copy to the late eighteenth century.           However, a rare publication has recently come to light at Longleat House, Wiltshire, which contains two examples of Benbow ballads printed at the time of his death, independent of the later documented ballads. Together, they reflect contemporary interest in the actions of captains Kirkby and Wade, as well as Benbow’s bravery.

This article, which includes a complete transcription of the ballad texts, aims to anchor the tradition of the Benbow ballad firmly in the earliest period following his death, to an extent that has not been possible before. It raises the question what other examples may have once existed, or are still to be discovered in as yet uncatalogued collections of street literature.

Tom Pettitt and Peter Meredith The Later Bassingham Plough Play: Con-Textualizing a New Text 

The ploughboys’ play from the Lincolnshire village of Bassingham has long been accessible in two distinct versions: an earlier version, recorded in ‘Men’s Play’ and ‘Children’s Play’ variants, in a British Library manuscript of 1823 and published by Charles Read Baskervill in 1924; a later version, first published by Ethel Rudkin in 1952 on the basis of a manuscript now in the North Lincolnshire Museum. A second variant of the later version became available with the online publication of the James Madison Carpenter Collection in early 2018, and almost concurrently a third variant, in a document previously belonging to the late Geoffrey Axworthy, was made available to the authors. Uniquely, the Axworthy text is accompanied by marginal sketches illustrating the characters, one of which demonstrates that this text, like the other two, was originally obtained from Dr Osborne Johnson of Bassingham. This paper provides a transcript of the Axworthy text collated with the Rudkin and Carpenter texts, prefaced by a review of their respective manuscript sources.

Paul Cowdell  ‘I have believed in spirits from that day unto this’: ‘The Ghostly Crew’, Ghostlore, and Traditional Song

When the Charles Haskell sank the Andrew Jackson in the Gulf of Maine in 1866 with the loss of all hands, it produced a local narrative of a ‘ghost ship’ that was adapted into a song still in the oral tradition. This lecture uses the ‘The Ghostly Crew’ to explore the folklore of ghosts, its representation in traditional song, and the relationship between oral and literary narratives, through collected songs and accounts from fieldwork into contemporary ghost beliefs. This is an adapted version of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Lecture presented on 21 March 2018, and I should extend my gratitude for the invitation to give the lecture.

Notes

Jane Bliss The ‘Boat of Love’ in a Medieval Women’s Dance Song

Michael Heaney Early Texts of the ‘Hal-an-Tow’
 

Reviews — Books

Brian Peters As I Walked Out: Sabine Baring-Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall (Graebe) 

Chris Metherell The Histories of the Morris in Britain (ed. Heaney)

David Atkinson The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (McDowell)

Fintan Vallely Call to the Dance (Wilkinson)

Steve Roud Really Beautiful Company: Traditional Singers and Musicians of Gloucestershire (Davies); A Bowl of the Best: Gloucestershire Songs for Community and School Choirs (arr. Norman, Macbeth, and Lowe) 

Christopher Heppa Vaughan Williams in Norfolk, Volume 2: The 1908–11 Collections (CD-ROM) (Helsdon) 

Sue Allan Music in the West Country (Banfield) 

Oskar Cox Jensen Rhythms of Revolt: European Traditions and Memories of Social Conflict in Oral Culture (ed. Guillorel, Hopkin, and Pooley) 

Tom Pettitt The Ballad and its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory (Atkinson) 

Tom Pettitt Morris Dancers and Rose Queens, Volume 3 (Haslett) Derek Schofield

Sandra Kerr First Time Ever: A Memoir (Seeger) 

Mark Porter Singing the Gospel along Scotland’s North-East Coast, 1859–2009 (Wilkins)

Fintan Vallely Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Ó hAllmhuráin) 

David Atkinson Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture (ed. van der Poel, Grijp, and Anrooij) 

Vic Gammon Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism (Herder/Bohlman) 

David Atkinson Singing the News: Ballads in Mid-Tudor England (Hyde) 

Steve Roud Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture (ed. Cox Jensen, Kennedy, and Newman)

Jude Murphy The Gallowgate Lad: Joe Wilson’s Life and Songs (Harker) 

Chris Wright Street Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century: Producers, Sellers, Consumers (ed. Atkinson and Roud) 

Derek Schofield Selling Folk Music: An Illustrated History (Cohen and Bonner) 

Dave Townsend Good Singing Still: A Handbook on West Gallery Music (Woods) 

Kate Neale Hark! The Glad Sound of Cornish Carols (Coleman and Burley) 

Clare Button All in the Downs (Collins); The Ballad of Shirley Collins

Reviews – CDs 

Peta Webb Jauling the Green Tober (Viv Legg and Thomas McCarthy)

Malcolm Taylor The Two Bobs’ Worth (Bob Lewis and Bob Copper)

Paul Burgess Garvan Hill – The Fiddle Music of Mickey Doherty

Emily Portman Leafield Lass (Freda Palmer)
 

Obituaries

Jennifer Gall Hugh McDonald Anderson

Stephen Winick Alan Jabbour

John Cowley Paul Hereford Oliver

Vic Gammon Alun Howkins

Cover illustration Devil sketch by Dr Osborne Johnson (Courtesy of the Editor of the Witham Staple)

Editor: David Atkinson