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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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The major and overall question in assessing Sharp's editorial practice is whether the integrity of the material was preserved, and, if not, to what degree Harker's comments, or others based on them, are justified. Did Folk Songs from Somerset present material "not in its original state," or "daintily and selectively re-worked"? Those comments may be justified with regard to "Gently Johnny my Jingalo," "O No John," and "Sweet Lovely Joan," in which Sharp was obliged to alter not only specific words but the complete intention of the texts. But they are less justified with regard to songs like "Bridgwater Fair," in which Sharp cut out the specific reference to drunkenness, and they are not justified at all with regard to some twenty of the twenty-five songs printed--eighty per cent of the whole. Further, in the notes to the songs, Sharp admitted what had been done, and he arranged for the deposit of his manuscripts so that the original words would be recoverable and precise identification of changes would be possible. [11] James Reeves printed some of the original texts and paid a generous tribute to Sharp's integrity and to the value of his work in the preservation of folk poetry. [12]

The Oral vs Print Tradition

Harker changed Sharp's emphasis on the number of tunes he had collected into his own emphasis on the number of songs because he wanted to analyse the songs in terms of their texts and to emphasise their relationship with printed material. When dealing with his treatment of broadsides, it must be remembered that he has strong prejudices in this area. He believes the printed tradition to be the true popular one, announcing in 1971 that "the chief criterion for popularity, as regards songs for working people from 1800 onwards, was repeated printing" (Harker 1971, li). Given Harker's political views, it is one of the greater curiosities of his position that he should see material produced and disseminated by capitalist enterprise as the genuine workers' culture: in Fakesong, he identifies "pre-1850 south-west workers' culture" with broadsides (Harker 1985, 183). The reasons why he takes these attitudes can be found in a passage present in his original 1972 article, but which he wisely omitted from later versions:

   But when these starling-singers [referring to a metaphor Sharp used in
   English Folk Song: Some Conclusions; see Sharp 1907, 30] had recourse to
   print, to the fairground, market-place, music-hall, professional status,
   then they became town-birds, with minds of their own-individuals: complex,
   unique, wilful--to be organised, feared, "educated," bullied, resisted by
   the upholders of the "pure" culture of the minority (Harker 1972, 233-4).

The implication of this passage is, of course, that country people without access to urban culture do not have minds of their own and are not individuals. Harker's evident scorn for rural life and rural values reflects the contempt which doctrinaire Marxists have always expressed for the countryside and its inhabitants, from the time of Marx himself. [13] So, to redeem the "rural proletariat" from "the idiocy of rural life," it was necessary for Harker to integrate them into urban-based culture via the broadside.

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

Folklore, April, 2002 by C.J. Bearman

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