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Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker

Folklore, April, 2002 by C.J. Bearman

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Eleven of these twenty-three songs were published with texts unchanged or with minor alterations. Only one text appears to have been published absolutely as collected, and that was "The Dilly Song," but in most other cases the changes were minimal and made for the sake of comprehensibility or singability: in "The Bonny Lighter Boy," the singer had been unable to remember half of the first stanza; in "Ruggleton's Daughter of Iero," the collected words were printed almost verbatim except for the change in the third line of the second stanza from: "He said: Good wife is my dinner ready now?" to: "Ho! is my dinner ready now?" The only questionable instance of editorial intervention in this section relates to one of the best-known songs in the whole of Folk Songs from Somerset: "Searching for Lambs" from Eliza Sweet of Somerton. Sharp claimed that "the Somerton version needed only a little rearrangement to be quite complete" (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 4 1908, 84). But comparison of the collected and published texts shows that Sharp inserted a complete stanza (stanza 4). This has to be attributed to an "improving" spirit which is hardly in tune with Sharp's claim of minimal intervention, but it cannot be taken as having changed the character of the song. The stanza which Sharp inserted is the most pedestrian in the text: the phrases which one would readily attribute to an "improving" hand--such as, "Your pretty little feet they tread so sweet" (in stanza 2)--were printed exactly as collected.

Substantial collation of words was undertaken in a total of eight instances. In three cases, words were added from broadsides or other printed sources. In "The Rambling Sailor," one stanza was added and the rest of the words printed almost verbatim as George Wyatt had sung them, but "The Beggar" and "The Coasts of High Barbary" were in effect reconstructions from grossly incomplete or garbled texts. In texts augmented from other Somerset singers, there are two distinct methods of collation. Sharp's best practice is shown in "The Outlandish Knight," in which two incomplete texts were skilfully blended with minor additions from a third to tell a complete story and to cut out repetition. Further, Sharp's notes spelled out what had been done. He stated that:

   although very few singers could "go through" the whole of the ballad, I
   have recovered two or three very complete sets of words. Mr Laver [to whom
   the ballad was attributed] sang me ten, and Mr Vincent of Priddy sixteen
   stanzas. The words of the text have been compiled from these two copies,
   with the exception of two verses ... which I obtained from Mrs. Parish at
   Exford (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 4 1908, 75).

This was also the method used in "Arise, Arise." But in "Bridgwater Fair," Sharp has effectively collated and rewritten two texts and cut out such dubious but enjoyable lines as "You'll get so drunk now I'll be bound/You'll roll and tumble on the ground." [10]

Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker

Folklore, April, 2002 by C.J. Bearman

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