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Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker
Folklore, April, 2002 by C.J. Bearman
To these attitudes, the broadside collection in Cambridge University Library came as a gift. Harker employed it to argue that broadsides were widespread; that Sharp was ignorant about the trade (and therefore, of course, about "worker's song-culture"); that he suppressed evidence which did not support his theories; and to assert that the singers' material was transitory, literary and urban-based. To this he added-some assumptions of his own, made on no evidence whatsoever. Because one of Henry Larcombe's songs was almost identical to a broadside printed in Devonport, he stated that "Sharp's star singer, Henry Larcombe, felt that a broadside text was good enough for him" (Harker 1985, 194). Broadsides would have presented some difficulties for Larcombe, who was blind. To explain the number and quality of the songs sung by Lucy White and Louisa Hooper, Harker assumed that Sarah England, their mother, was a professional ballad-seller. He introduced her with the comment, "Chances are, this woman was a travelling singer ..." A few pages later, chance had become the certainty that she was "one of the many singers who attended fairs, merry-makings, markets, weddings, races, and dances," and Harker proceeded to wax lyrical about her "selling broadsides and spreading words and tunes like seed-corn in the countryside" (Harker 1985, 191). But in the 1891 Census, Sarah England appears as the sixty-six year-old wife of an agricultural labourer, living in the parish of her birth, with three children still at home. She died the following year. [14] There are few traces of a career as a travelling singer and ballad-seller. Neither do the comments made by Louisa Hooper--published and available to Harker--support this speculation (Newall 1943, 26-7).
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Harker treated oral tradition by ignoring it. He laid heavy emphasis on printed material and quoted examples of singers learning songs from broadsides, alleging that Sharp "deliberately ignored the significance of their testimony, especially if it conflicted with his own values and assumptions" (Harker 1985, 194). Unfortunately, Sharp did not routinely ask singers the provenance of their songs, but he did record anything they volunteered to him. Of 311 singers, we have this evidence from sixty people with regard to seventy-seven songs. Table 5 gives this available evidence.
It will be seen that the overwhelming majority of these sixty people claimed to have received their songs from oral tradition. Only one singer, with regard to one song, actually said that he learned it from a broadside. [15] Most learned from parents, a smaller proportion from grandparents and other relatives, and a rather larger one from friends or chance encounters. Elizabeth Lock learned "Lisbon" "as a little girl from her sister-in-law." "The True Lover's Farewell" was sung to Emma Glover "by an old man" when she was a child, and William Davies said that his version of "Hares on the Mountains" was "Lam at East Luccombe." [16] Several singers claimed links with oral tradition over two or three generations: one traced her version of "Lord Randal" to her great-grandmother, born in 1784. [17] One singer specifically denied broadside influence: he told Sharp that his song "The Cuckoo" "never had no ballet to it." [18]
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