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Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker
Folklore, April, 2002 by C.J. Bearman
The so-called "second revival," which began in the 1950s and gathered pace in the 1960s, came from a very different world from that of Sharp and the pre-1914 revival. The first revival was predominantly middle class in its character and personnel; the second was demotic, with little time for genteel sensibilities. The first revival took place against a background of almost universal patriotism and nationalism; the second came at a time when these values were being questioned as never before, and it was radical and "agin the government" in a left-wing, but otherwise vague and undefined, way. The first revival was part of a rediscovery of English cultural tradition; the second had its roots in American popular music and accepted "protest songs" and others composed in a vaguely defined "folk idiom" alongside traditional music, and it owed little or nothing to the EFDSS. The prophet of the second revival was A. L. Lloyd, and his book, Folk Song in England (Lloyd 1967), resurrected a subject in which scholarship had become moribund. Although there had been some preliminary rumblings, Lloyd was effectively the first to offer public criticism of Sharp and of the first revival generally. This critique was from a Marxist perspective: Lloyd (1908-82) had associated himself with the Communist Party since the 1930s (Arthur 1983, 436-9). However, he was always more pragmatic than doctrinaire, and he combined criticism of Sharp's philosophy and methods with high and unreserved praise for his motivation and the epic scale of his achievement. Until the early 1970s, the prevailing view of Sharp was one of reverence or respect tinged with moderate criticism.
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The late 1960s and early 1970s were exciting times for the political Left in the UK, when it seemed that a general radicalisation of society might be within reach, and when new aspects of Marxism and new conceptual tools were coming to hand. Lloyd's critique had disappointed some on the Left who wanted a more radical approach and a thoroughgoing demolition of EFDSS orthodoxy, using Marxist cultural theory (particularly Gramsci's theory of "hegemony"), the technique of "deconstruction" borrowed from literary criticism, and the concept of "mediation" developed by Peter Burke (see Gramsci 1971; Burke 1978). David Harker was a Cambridge postgraduate with a background in English literature, and he was able and willing to use these techniques and theories. [2]
Harker published his first attack on Sharp in 1971 (Harker 1971). He was at that time engaged on a study of Sharp's work in Somerset, and this was published as "Cecil Sharp in Somerset: Some Conclusions" (Harker 1972). Harker concentrated on the heart of Sharp's work--the published collections of Folk Songs from Somerset and English Folk Song: Some Conclusions--and argued that he had misrepresented both his sources and their culture. Harker asserted that the people Sharp identified as "the remnants of the peasantry" did not exist, and that a "rural working class" or "rural proletariat" had taken their place. He asserted that Sharp distorted their culture by refusing to collect what did not fit his preconceptions and further misrepresented it in his publications to favour rural areas and smaller communities. Harker accused Sharp of generalisation on an inadequate base and asserted that he had covered a very small geographical area, even in Somerset. He drew on collections of printed broadsides to argue that what Sharp accepted as orally transmitted folk songs were, in fact, the descendants of recent printed ballads, attacked the way in which Sharp and his collaborator, Revd Charles Marson, had dealt with the words of the songs they published, and concluded that the working class of early twentieth-century Somerset had been seriously misrepresented for what, ultimately, were political and imperialist ends.
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