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Cecil Sharp in Somerset: some reflections on the work of David Harker
C.J. BearmanAbstract
David Harker's criticism of Cecil Sharp's work has been called the "beginning of serious critical work" on the early folk music movement, and it has become an orthodoxy which later commentary has accepted without question, taking its accuracy and the validity of its research base on trust. This article shows that the trust has been misplaced. It uses a fresh, more complete and more rigorous analysis of the Sharp MSS to show that Harker's criticism is inaccurate, innumerate, flawed in its methods, and unjustified in its assumptions. It forces a reassessment both of Sharp's work and of Harker's, and renders untenable many of the assumptions upon which modern interpretations of the early folk music movement in Britain are based.
Introduction
This article is about Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), the dominant figure of the early twentieth-century folk music movement, and the way he has been dealt with by modern criticism. Sharp was a London music teacher who, between 1899 and 1903, discovered the existence of a surviving oral tradition, and who devoted the rest of his life to a campaign of collection, publication, organisation and publicity. [1] Sharp was by no means the only significant collector of English folk music or the first in the field. His predecessors in the 1880s and 1890s had included Sabine Baring-Gould, W. A. Barrett, Lucy Broadwood, Frank Kidson and Kate Lee; several published collections of folk songs had appeared between 1878 and 1895; and the Folk Song Society was founded in 1898 (Bearman 2001, 38-43). Sharp owed something to all these predecessors--most of all to Baring-Gould--but he rose to predominance because he was a different kind of collector who brought together and embodied a number of trends which distinguished the post-1903 revival from the movement of the 1880s and 1890s.
Sharp brought to folk music collection an intensive, professional approach which meant that he collected and published far more than his predecessors or any of his contemporaries. He made his name as collector and analyst with the five volumes of Folk Songs from Somerset (1904-9), spending 330 days collecting between 1903 and 1907, interviewing more than 300 singers, and amassing nearly 1,500 tunes (Fox Strangways and Karpeles 1933, 63). His Somerset work formed the research base for his theoretical book, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions (Sharp 1907). By the end of his life, Sharp had collected nearly 5,000 tunes and published some seventy volumes, most of them in collaboration (Fox Strangways and Karpeles 1933, 221-3). At the same time, his work was more thorough and more scholarly in its presentation than anything which had gone before. Sharp was among the pioneers of "collection in depth," visiting singers time and again to explore their repertoires fully and to examine variations in their singing; the first publication of his Somerset material in the Folk Song Society's Journal in 1905 set new standards in the presentation of folk music. Partly because Sharp depended on music for his livelihood and could not afford the attitudes of the gentleman amateur, he had no aversion to publicity. Others, such as Lucy Broadwood and Frank Kidson, were more representative of the Folk Song Society's membership in regarding folk music as something for the private enjoyment of consenting adults: as a thing for the study, the salon party, or the chamber concert. Sharp regarded it as a lost heritage which could and should be restored to the nation at large, beginning with schoolchildren. In English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, he harnessed folk music to the educational preoccupations of the time, and these--overwhelmingly nationalistic and patriotic as they were--gave the material a definite cultural value and a political stance.
The movement of 1903-14--the so-called "first revival"--was in many ways a freak, a sport of nature which depended on a particular and unrepeatable combination of political attitudes, public taste, and technological development. Although the movement attracted official support from the educational authorities after 1919 and enjoyed its highest levels of membership and participation in the early 1920s, it never recovered the momentum or the fashionable status it had before 1914. Sharp died in 1924 and with his passing the movement seemed to suffer a general failure of nerve. The organisation he founded--the English Folk Dance Society--lost whatever radicalism and dynamism it had ever possessed, and it and its successor, the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EDFSS), continued into the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in a genteel sort of way, accepting folk music's place as a minority interest rather than as a mass movement. Sharp's reputation underwent a similar transformation. During his lifetime he had been a controversial figure, often regarded as the bull in the Folk Song Society's china shop. With strong opinions, no great fund of tolerance, an appetite for controversy, and a tongue to match his name, Sharp was not on good terms with the contemporary music establishment or with many of his colleagues in the folk music movement. He was most popular with those younger than himself--the musicians of the next generation such as Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), Gustav Hoist (1874-1934), and George Butterworth (1885-1916)--and with the members of the English Folk Dance Society, the great majority of whom were young women (Bearman 2001, 99). But as the controversies of the past were forgotten, Sharp came to be regarded as a conservative, rather authoritarian, figure.
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.
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.
The effect on Sharp's reputation has been catastrophic, and in academic circles it has been accepted not only that Sharp interfered with the material in an unscholarly way, but that he did so consciously, in pursuit of ideological objectives. The comments of Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw (who footnote their passage to Harker) are typical, and they link Harker's criticism to yet another favourite concept of the Left--that of the "Invented Tradition" (see Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983):
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the English folk-song was invented by Cecil Sharp. Of course the songs were collected from singers who were supposed to have learned them through an organic and continuous tradition. But Sharp's selectivity and editing were such a powerful filter that the neutral and scholarly act of collecting became instead the establishment of a canon. Not only were lyrics of dubious sexual propriety bowdlerised, but Sharp also rejected melodies that were not modal and did not therefore fit his theories about the evolution of scales. This unscholarly interference is explained by Sharp's ulterior motive ... (Shaw and Chase 1989, 13).
The substance of Harker's article has reappeared three times since 1972, most recently in chapter 8 of his book, Fakesong (1985), and has become a well-established orthodoxy upon which much modern scholarship is based. Vic Gammon has called it "the beginning of serious critical work" on the early folk song movement, and as having taken on "the status of an orthodoxy in some quarters of the British Left" (Gammon 1986, 147). But it has been an orthodoxy established without the slightest attempt to verify the accuracy of Harker's work or to assess the validity of its research base. The only published study has been Gammon's, and he made no attempt to assess Harker's critique of Sharp, concentrating instead on the more modern and more political aspects of the Harker opus. Other commentators have evaded the issue completely: in 1990, Michael Pickering published what purported to be a critical review of modern folk music scholarship, in which he severely handled some work such as the literary scholarship of Roger deV Renwick, but he noticed Harker's publications only to provide uncritical gush about Fakesong as "The best example of this kind of work to date ... Harker has provided a firm foundation for future work" (Pickering 1990, 54).
In my article, "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers" (Bearman 2000), I tested the validity of Harker's assumptions about the social position of the Somerset people from whom Sharp collected. This article is an attempt to assess Harker's more generalised allegations that Sharp misrepresented his sources, and thereby to test modern critical judgement about Sharp and his work. To avoid the reproach of criticising earlier and possibly superseded work, I have taken my examples, wherever possible, from the most recent appearance of Harker's critique, in Fakesong.
Harker's Methods
As Sharp was a different kind of collector to his predecessors, so Harker was a different kind of critic. Lloyd had described his own book as one for "beginners not specialists" and it was clearly intended for a general audience, but Harker's criticism had the appearance of rigour and was aimed at academics. Where Lloyd offered opinions based on examples, Harker provided statistics: indeed, much of his authority seems to rest on the statistical evidence he offers. Statistics, however, are notoriously open to abuse. For this reason, it is usual for statisticians to offer some evidence about their method, but Harker fails to do this. We are repeatedly given figures and percentages without knowing the base on which they are calculated, and without having any means of checking their accuracy.
Harker does not define what he means by his comparative terms. When it is alleged that "Sharp skewed his selection of texts for publication so as to favour songs taken from small villages rather than larger, and from both in preference to towns" (Harker 1985, 195), a great deal must depend on what is being defined as a "small village," or a "large village," or a "town." Because Harker does not do this, let us turn to the 1901 Census. [3] He calls Langport a "small town," but it had 813 people, just over a hundred more than its neighbour, Huish Episcopi, which to Harker is a "large village," and substantially less than the 1,021 of Cannington, another "large village." "Haselbury"--presumably, Haselbury Plucknett--is also called a "large village" despite having a population of 470, less than half Cannington's; and High Ham, which Harker calls "tiny," had 898 people--more than the "small town" of Langport. Not only are we not told what Harker means by his terms, it is doubtful whether he himself knows. Table 1 provides some comparative figures.
Much of Harker's argument depends on statistical balance: on counting the songs Sharp collected in particular areas and comparing these numbers with the numbers published. In particular, Harker claimed to have found a gross imbalance between songs published from rural areas and those published from towns. But Harker's methods create a statistical imbalance in themselves, because he did not analyse all five volumes (or, as Sharp called them, "Series") of Folk Songs from Somerset, and failed to take account of the fact that they were published piecemeal over a period of four and a half years while collecting was in progress. Harker studied Sharp's work up to the end of August 1907, which was the approximate date for the completion of English Folk Song: Some Conclusions and the compilation of Series Four of Folk Songs from Somerset. [4] This was convenient for him in more ways than one, since by missing out Series Five he ensured the maximum possible statistical imbalance between the material collected in the "rural" Hambridge area--where Sharp began his work--and that collected elsewhere; it thereby distorted Sharp's record of "urban" as compared with "rural" publication. When Series One was compiled--all the songs were collected before the end of August 1904--Sharp had barely begun to emerge from Hambridge where he began. He did not begin collecting in Bridgwater (pop. 15,209), for example, until August 1905. Out of the twenty-seven songs published in Series One, fifteen were from Hambridge, but in Series Three, only one song came from there and in Series Four and Five none at all. But Sharp was continuing to publish material collected in Bridgwater. Four songs from that town appeared in Series Five, together with three from other towns such as Minehead and Wells. The omission of these helps Harker's argument, but does nothing to illustrate the realities of Sharp's publication policy.
If Harker's argument is a simple matter of arithmetic--that Sharp tried to present a more "rural" image by publishing more songs attributed to villages than to towns--these points illustrate the ignorance, false assumptions, and doubtful methods which lie behind his statistics. But we cannot even trust Harker's arithmetic. Here is a passage from Fakesong:
In the first four parts of Folk Songs from Somerset, Sharp and Marson published 20% of the 146 songs collected in the village of Hambridge, but only 9% of the 129 from the town of Bridgwater. They used 10% of the songs collected in Somerton, but the only piece found in tiny High Ham. From the large village of Cannington they used 5% of the 43 pieces they had collected, while from the smaller East Harptree they used 17% of the 40 items they found ... Sharp and Marson published 25% of Louie and Lucy's [i.e. Lucy White's and Louisa Hooper's] 100 songs ... Five of William King's 11 songs went into print ... (Harker 1985, 195).
By twenty per cent of 146, Harker presumably means 29. Twenty-four songs and one tune from Hambridge were published in the four parts of Folk Songs from Somerset he analysed. Nineteen of these songs and the one tune were attributed to Louisa Hooper and Lucy White, not the 25 which Harker's figure suggests. By seventeen per cent of 40, Harker presumably means seven. Only four songs and one set of words were attributed to East Harptree. William King sang these four songs, not five, and the set of words came from another singer. To get four sets of figures wrong in the same half-paragraph must be some sort of record. It is also an interesting variety of mistake which so consistently produces errors in favour of the argument being presented. [5]
Harker's analysis is not only unsound in its methods and inaccurate in its figures and statistics, it also demonstrates a fundamental ignorance about the nature of the material being analysed. Harker changed Sharp's emphasis on the number of tunes he collected into his own emphasis on the number of songs because he wanted, for his own reasons, to discuss the songs in terms of their texts. But he never considered the implications for his analysis. Harker says that Sharp collected 1,099 songs (Harker 1985, 189-90) but there were not 1,099 separate texts. What he overlooked was the fact that some songs were more popular than others, and were collected more than once. Sharp collected the most popular time and again, from many singers and in many different places. Amongst other things, this means that the analysis Harker offered of districts and of "urban" against "rural" publication is meaningless. For example, Sharp collected "The Outlandish Knight" fourteen times in twelve locations across the length and breadth of Somerset--at Curry Rivel, Langport, West Harptree, Holford, Haselbury Plucknett, Priddy, Bridgwater, Huish Episcopi, North Petherton, Ubley, Chew Stoke, and Axbridge. He published the version collected in Bridgwater, but it would be ridiculous to say that "The Outlandish Knight"--a version of a folk tale found right across Europe--came from Bridgwater and therefore in some way reflected "urban" rather than "rural" or "industrial" values. If the supposed "urban" and "industrial" districts of Somerset had been producing a different type of song from the "rural" districts, and if Sharp had neglected these, Harker's analysis would have some point. In the same way, if Sharp had selected song A, which was unique to village X, in preference to song B, which was unique to town Y, Harker's allegations of ruralist bias would be justified. But if both song A and song B are found in both village X and in town Y--and, for good measure, in hamlet Z as well--it hardly matters where the published version comes from.
Publication Policy
If Sharp's actual publication policy is to be assessed, the popularity of different songs must be taken into account, as must be the number of texts which Sharp could consider for publication. In giving figures of my own, I have to explain that I analysed all five volumes of Folk Songs from Somerset, and so examined Sharp's collecting up to 6 January 1909 when the last material was collected. By then, Sharp had collected 2,046 tunes, perhaps 1,500 of these in Somerset. The number of texts, however, is approximately 590. Heavy emphasis must be laid on approximately, because it is doubtful whether any two people would agree on an exact figure. My methodology is explained in Appendix A.
Of Sharp's 590 song texts, 345 were collected once, 95 twice, 52 three times, 40 four times, 15 five times, and 43 six times and more. Sharp published 130 songs in Folk Songs from Somerset, but since several songs were published twice with different tunes, there were only 123 actual titles. So he published some twenty-one per cent of what he collected. This is the average figure against which all others must be compared. Table 2 shows how many songs were published from each group.
It will be seen that the percentage published rises in accordance with the number of times each song was collected.
Table 3 gives an analysis by district on the territorial lines suggested by Harker. The first part of the table analyses the number of songs published from those unique to one district. It will be seen that Sharp actually published a higher proportion of songs unique to the North Mendip and Bridgwater areas than to Hambridge. "To avoid the reproach of having selected areas to fit my analysis, I have provided figures for a fourth area, the "rest of Somerset." The second part of the table demonstrates that the majority of songs published were collected in more than one of the areas specified. The methodology employed is explained in Appendix B.
These figures and tables show that Sharp did indeed skew his publication policy, but he did not skew it in the way Harker suggests. He gave preference to songs collected from more than one singer, in more than one place, and in more than one district, doing to a remarkable degree what the Introduction to Series Two of Folk Songs from Somerset promised in providing "the best and most representative" songs (1905, xi). This is all the more surprising when it is remembered that Folk Songs from Somerset was not a scholarly monograph but a published collection intended to be saleable and popular with the music-buying public. Its contents had to be accessible, singable and enjoyable, and it had to avoid too much duplication of what had appeared in other folk song collections.
Turning to Harker's discussion of bowdlerisation and the treatment of texts, there are three aspects which deserve critical consideration. The first test is the basic one of accuracy: checking that Harker's criticisms fit what was actually published in Folk Songs from Somerset. Harker fails even at this level. Take, for example, his comments on "Geordie," a song collected from Emma Overd and published in the first series of Folk Songs from Somerset (1904, 5). Here are Harker's comments on the changes, which, he says, Sharp and Marson made to the text:
The editors claimed that the songs were "presented to the public as nearly as possible just as ... taken down from the lips of the singers," but certain unexplained shifts take place in the texts ... In Mrs Overd's version of Geordie, for example, it is the judge who looks down unpityingly on the horse-thief he is about to condemn, but in the published text it is "the people" who take this attitude and are implicated in the condemnation made by the "public" agent. "Bohenny" is rendered as "Bohemia," and her "London" as "Newcastle" ... (Harker 1985, 1961).
The text as published is given in Figure 1. Whichever text it was that Harker analysed in such detail, it cannot have been this one, since the alleged changes are not present there.
Figure 1 Photocopy of the tune and text of "Geordie" published in Series 1 of Folk Songs from Somerset, courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London.
II. GEORDIE. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1 COME, bridle me my milk-white steed, Come, bridle me my pony, That I may ride to fair London town To plead for my Geordie. 2 And when she entered in the hall There were lords and ladies plenty. Down on her knee she then did fall To plead for the life of Geordie. 3 Then Geordie look-ed round the court, And saw his dearest Polly: He said: My dear you've come too late, For I'm condemned already ? 4 Then the judge he look-ed down on him And said: I'm sorry for thee. 'Tis thine own confession hath hang-ed thee, May the Lord have mercy upon thee." 5 O Geordie stole no cow nor calf And he never murdered any, [steeds But he stole sixteen of the king's white And sold them in Bohenny. 6 Let Geordie hang in golden chains, His crimes were never many, Because he came from the royal blood And courted a virtuous lady. 7 I wish I was in yonder grove, Where times I have been many, With my broad sword and pistol too, I'd fight for the life of Geordie.
Another of the examples Harker provided of gross and socially motivated editorial intervention was "The Wraggle-Taggle Gipsies" (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 1, 1904, 37). He alleged that:
In the published text ... Sharp and Marson reduce the heroes of the title to mere "ragged ragged rags," and de-lyricize "Spanish livery" to "hose of leather." When Mrs Overd sang of the wife who was wholeheartedly sick of her lord and all his possessions, the editors convert her (with their customary masculinist bias) to a kind of unthinking, shameless hussy, particularly by the subtle change to "I'll follow" from "I'm off" when she decides to go with her chosen partner (Harker 1985, 196).
The text as published is given in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Photocopy of the text of "The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies, Oh!" published in Series 1 of Folk Songs from Somerset, courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London.
THE WRAGGLE TAGGLE GIPSIES, O ! 1 THERE were three gipsies a-come to my door, And downstairs ran this a-lady, O ! One sang high and another sang low And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O ! 2 Then she pulled off her silk finished gown And put on hose of leather, O ! The ragged, ragged rags about our door-- She's gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ! 3 It was late last night, when my lord came home, Enquiring for his a-lady, O ! The servants said, on every hand: She's gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ! 4 O saddle to me my milk-white steed, Go and fetch me my pony, O ! That I may ride and seek my bride, Who is gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ! 5 O he rode high and he rode low, He rode through woods and copses too, Until he came to an open field, And there he espied his a-lady, O ! 6 What makes you leave your house and land ? What makes you leave your money, O ? What makes you leave your new wedded lord ? To go with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ? 7 What care I for my house and my land ? What care I for my money, O ? What care I for my new wedded lord ? I'm off with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ! 8 Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed, With the sheet turned down so bravely, O, And to-night you'll sleep in a cold open field, Along with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O ! 9 What care I for a goose-feather bed, With the sheet turned down so bravely, O ? For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field, Along with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O !
In this instance, Harker's comments were more justified because what the textual editor (Marson) did was to collate two versions--those provided by Emma Overd and Anna Pond--while attributing the song solely to Emma Overd. [6] But the lines Harker attributes to editorial intervention--"ragged ragged rags" and "hose of leather"--are actually given verbatim as they appear in Anna Pond's text. And once again, the text Harker criticised was not the one Sharp and Marson provided, because "I'm off" is actually what is printed. Further, this phrase does not appear either in Emma Overd's text or in Anna Pond's. [7] So, far from demonstrating any "customary masculinist bias" or denigrating the heroine of the song, the textual editor actually invented the reading which Harker prefers.
The second aspect of Harker's comments on the treatment of texts was his implicit allegation that the gross socially or politically motivated changes he detected in the songs were typical of Sharp's practice in the whole of Folk Songs from Somerset. He claimed, "Not one text in Part 1 of Folk Songs from Somerset went unaltered, and in Part 2 that the editors admitted that `The words in this series have been rather more freely dealt with'" (Harker 1985, 196). In Fakesong, Harker gave few indications of what he thought had actually been done to the texts or what the overall effect of these changes might be: the only specific instances he gives refer to bowdlerisation; elsewhere he vaguely refers to "hundreds of alterations, additions and omissions" (Harker, 1985, 196-7). But his 1972 article was more forthcoming and the peroration at the end claimed that:
folk song as mediated by Cecil Sharp [was] to be imposed on town and country alike ... not in its original form, but ... made the basis of nationalistic sentiments and bourgeois values (Harker 1972, 240). [8]
It is this allegation of wide-ranging and general change which has stuck and has been repeated by Harker's followers. Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw have already been quoted. Elsewhere, Georgina Boyes has claimed that the "cultural products of the rural working class were taken from them and daintily and selectively re-worked" (Boyes 1993, 47).
So, the question is to what extent Harker's generalised allegations were justified, and some qualifications have to be made here. As has already been observed, Folk Songs from Somerset was a songbook for the general public, published in an age in which amateur music-making was the norm. With the best will in the world, some changes are inevitable in such circumstances. Folklorists and other scholars may be fascinated by dialect words and incomplete or incomprehensible texts, but amateur singers are not. The challenge faced by Sharp and Charles Marson--a challenge faced by every other editor of material from oral tradition--was how to present the songs in a popular form without doing too much damage to their integrity. It is not enough to make vague allegations about "hundreds of alterations, additions and omissions." Some distinction must be made between minor changes for the sake of comprehension, instances in which words were augmented, and cases of major alteration which completely changed the character of the song.
To provide a comparative table, I have chosen to analyse Series Four of Folk Songs from Somerset. The first three Series were jointly edited by Sharp as Musical Editor and Marson as Textual Editor, but in 1906 the two men quarrelled and the last two were edited by Sharp alone. In order to discuss Sharp's editing practice, and to avoid fruitless speculation about where Sharp's influence began and Marson's ended, I have analysed Series Four, the first volume which Sharp produced on his own. The only texts which Harker discussed in any detail appeared in Series One and Two, although the scope of his survey included the first four Series of Folk Songs from Somerset. By analysing Series Four, it is possible to discuss Sharp's editing practice while remaining within the scope of Harker's critique. [9] Series Four contained twenty-five songs, which can be classified as shown in Table 4.
In my Ph.D. thesis, I have provided copies of these texts as published and as collected, so far as this can conveniently be established (Bearman 2001, 241-303). Two songs were compilations given for the sake of general interest ("Jack Hall") or because of a splendid tune ("John Barleycorn"): in these cases, the Somerset singer had provided only the tune and the first stanza of the song. The rest came either from a printed source or from singers outside Somerset. The remaining twenty-three songs came substantially from single sources in that the tune and at least half the words had been collected from one person.
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]
Sharp admitted considerable editorial intervention in four instances. In one case, the changes were made for the purposes of comprehensibility. Betsy Holland may have understood what she was singing about in her "Execution Song" (printed as "James Macdonald") but it is doubtful whether anyone else would have done. The need for rewriting here cannot be disputed, if the song was to be published at all. Sharp said of the words that "I have done my best to put them in a singable form without altering them more than was absolutely necessary" (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 4 1908, 87).
Bowdlerisation presented the greatest difficulties. Sharp admitted to having made considerable changes in three cases: "Gently Johnny my Jingalo," "O No, John," and "Sweet Lovely Joan." These three songs have one thing in common: they are songs of actual or attempted seduction which Sharp converted into songs of courtship and marriage. The greatest violence was done to "Gently Johnny my Jingalo" in which Sharp's text gives an intention to the encounter which is completely different to that of the original and reaches a conclusion which is entirely Sharp's own. The same is true of "O No John." "Sweet Lovely Joan" was very substantially augmented--five stanzas were added, doubling the number which James Proll sang to Sharp--but in this case greater faith was kept with the spirit of the original and a slightly risque atmosphere was preserved through Joan's successful deception of the amorous knight.
The only justification which can be advanced for such bowdlerisation is undeniable necessity, and this leads on to the third and last aspect of Harker's critique. In his discussion of bowdlerisation, Harker, together with Sharp's other critics, displays a disregard for context and practicality. It cannot seriously be argued that the publication of uncensored material of a sexual or scatological nature was possible in early twentieth-century Britain--not, at least, if it was aimed at the respectable music-buying public. Material intended to be sung in the family circle had to conform to the same standards as contemporary literature. It is as ridiculous to censure Sharp on this score as it would be to reprove Thomas Hardy for being less than frank in his novels, and Sharp--like Hardy--pushed at the limits of what was permissible in his time. Further, this question is discussed as though censorship had ended c. 1965, and without any acknowledgement of the universal truth that one person's censorship is another's principled good taste. One wonders whether the modern critics of Sharp's publication policy would be prepared to print some of the material which was included in Folk Songs from Somerset, such as "Little Sir Hugh" (which repeats the "blood libel" about Jews killing a Christian child) or the wife-beating song, "Ruggleton's Daughter of Iero." These songs were both popular and widespread: Sharp collected "Little Sir Hugh" three times in Somerset. Twenty-seven per cent of this group of songs were published, and, as a version of an ancient and well-known ballad, it had a strong claim for inclusion. Wife-beating songs are (or were) common in folk song right across Britain: according to Ronald Blythe, one version was still being sung in Suffolk pubs in the 1960s (Blythe 1972, 58-9). Then there are the songs about war or hunting. If the aim is to represent the sources accurately, songs like these would have to be included in popular collections. One wonders how many of Sharp's critics today would be prepared to sink their own prejudices and defy political correctness in order to do so.
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.
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).
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]
This evidence of oral tradition is scattered across Sharp's Field Note Books, his written-up books of "Folk Tunes," the typed collections Maud Karpeles made of "Folk Words," Sharp's lecture notes, press cuttings, and the published notes to Folk Songs from Somerset. Whichever source Harker used, he cannot have avoided seeing it. It is Harker, not Sharp, who deliberately ignored the significance of the singers' testimony when it conflicted with his own values and assumptions, and who suppressed the overwhelming body of evidence which did not favour his thesis.
Closely associated with the broadside question is that of the age and traditional nature of the songs. Harker asserts that "to ask for old songs from old people in the early 1900s would necessarily result in the collection of items widely popular in a commercial context before 1850" (Harker 1985, 193). He claimed that Sharp's notebooks are "full of songs about Boney and the French, Turpin, war at sea or on land, press-gangs, prostitutes, and women in love with sailors," and implied that all these should be dated to the period of near-continuous war between 1793 and 1815 (Harker 1985, 193). The argument, then, is that most of the songs Sharp collected were of recent origin and had not been in circulation for longer than one or two generations. Consequently, they could not be regarded as "traditional."
Even if we assume for the moment that Harker's claim about Sharp's notebooks being "full" of these songs was correct, and ignore the odd chronology which lumps in Dick Turpin (hanged in 1739) with the events of 1793-1815, it is ludicrous to assume that all the songs with military or naval themes must date from that period. Firstly, war by land and sea had in fact been going on fairly continuously since 1688, and more or less continuously for centuries before that. Secondly, it is untrue to say that Sharp's notebooks are "full" of these songs: Harker's assessments and his numeracy are no sounder here than elsewhere. Even under such a catch-all category as "Boney and the French, Turpin, war at sea or on land, press-gangs, prostitutes, and women in love with sailors," it is still difficult to ascribe more than about 75-80 texts out of 590 to these themes. [19] That number includes songs which, theoretically at least, refer to earlier conflicts, such as "Admiral Benbow" and "The Duke of Marlborough," besides others such as "A Sailor's Life" (or "Sweet William"), which have only the most tenuous connection with any historical period. It would be just as reasonable to point to material such as "Little Sir Hugh" (theoretically, set in thirteenth-century Lincoln), or Robert Parish's "The Beggar," better known as "Back and Side Go Bare," which was first printed in the play Gammer Gurton's Needle in 1566. Even a song like "The Coasts of High Barbary," which at first sight looks eighteenth or nineteenth century, can be traced back to a snatch quoted in a seventeenth-century play (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 4 1908, 19; Potter 1997, 235).
The test of tradition is, surely, what sort of material survives and enters into wide circulation? If Harker's assumptions are correct, and singers only remembered and repeated the most recent songs, these ought to be the most popular and widespread. At this point, we may refer back to Table 2 and look again at the relative popularity of songs. Which were the most popular and in widest circulation? Table 6 gives a list of the 43 songs collected six times and more. There is nineteenth-century material on this list--"The Bonny Bunch of Roses" is about the ambitions of Napoleon, and "All Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough" is not above suspicion of recent broadside origin. There are songs here which concern war by land and sea, press gangs, and women in love with sailors. But they do not predominate, and it is necessary to go a fair way down the list to find them. The songs most popular with Somerset singers were archetypal "folk songs"--"The Seeds of Love," "The Outlandish Knight," "John Barleycorn," "The Wraggle-Taggle Gipsies." Most of these were in print and available as broadsides, but that is not the point here: they were "traditional" in the sense of having been in circulation time out of mind, and had not been made up by ballad-mongers between 1800 and 1850.
Neither were these songs the preserve of a small group of singers. Some 155 people contributed versions of these 43 songs, nearly half the total of 311 singers. I have to say here that the number of these most popular songs, and of the people who sang them, are actually under-represented by Sharp's methods and by my own. I have defined a "song" as a tune with at least some words, but there were many occasions on which Sharp did not collect the words to the most popular songs. As we have seen, he collected "The Outlandish Knight" fourteen times. He collected only a tune another thirteen times. Again, he said that nearly every singer he encountered could give him part of "Lord Bateman," though very few could provide a full text (Folk Songs from Somerset, Series 3, 1906, 75). Neither do these lists and tables include the many songs of proven traditionality which were collected less than six times. Although Harker's methods may not have revealed it, and although the apostles of the "invented tradition" may not want to acknowledge it, the evidence is that there was widespread knowledge of a considerable body of traditional song in early twentieth-century Somerset.
Conclusions
This article has concentrated on one aspect of Harker's attack on Sharp: the allegation that he misrepresented his findings. But even in this limited field, readers may be left with some feelings of bewilderment--the same sort of feelings which came over me when I first tested the accuracy of Harker's work. How can material with such glaring factual flaws be accepted and repeated in serious academic enquiry? Most of the points made in this survey--including the most striking ones--do not depend on extensive research, or, indeed, on any knowledge of folk music. They could have been made by anyone who bothered to apply common sense and a few elementary tests to Harker's arguments and statistics. Yet, so far as I know, this is the first time that anyone has stripped his work of its rhetoric and shown that this particular emperor has no clothes. This is a remarkable and lamentable failure of modern scholarship, and it exposes some surprising and unacceptable things about modern academic practice. Since a version of this article was given in public (at the "Folksong: Tradition and Revival" conference at Sheffield in July 1998), the comment most frequently made to me is that Harker's work was valuable to begin with but that he "went too far," as though inaccuracy was something which crept up on him between 1971 and 1985. That is not the case. All the points to which I have given attention were present in his original articles in 1971 and 1972, and indeed, there is much else which I have ignored in order to concentrate on Fakesong. What can only be called a particularly flagrant inaccuracy occurred in Harker's very first publication, in his "Introduction" to Rhymes of Northern Bards (Harker 1971, 1). He alleged that Sharp's theories (in English Folk Song: Some Conclusions) "rested complacently on his trips to a few people of particular ages and occupations, living in one small corner of Somerset." If Harker had actually read English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, he would have seen Sharp's statement that he had met "upwards of 350 singers and instrumentalists" (Sharp 1907, ix), and no one who studies Folk Songs from Somerset and the Sharp MSS (as Harker claimed to have done) can remain unimpressed by the geographical area covered by a middle-aged man, in poor general health, whose transport was his bicycle and the railways.
Nevertheless, for the past thirty years these errors and mistakes have been repeated in publication after publication and have gone unchallenged by people who, supposedly, are in their positions because of their knowledge of source material and the acuity and independence of their critical judgment. Neither have they taken account of political extremism. To his credit, Harker has never concealed his political allegiances--he is or was a Trotskyite adherent of the Socialist Workers' Party (Harker 1985, 256-8)--but at the same time, it must be maintained that his is an extreme political position. To accept without question the opinion of a Trotskyite about Sharp and his work is rather like taking one's view of the Communist Manifesto from a member of the British National Party. But the caution and reservations which might appear natural in such circumstances were never observed or expressed by those who rushed to condemn Sharp in Harker's wake. Any attempt to restore Sharp's reputation has been derided as hagiography, and we have been told that we must concentrate on "the issues"--whatever they may be. Surely the issue here is that Sharp's work ought to be judged on the evidence and on sound methods of assessment, and not on the basis of a farrago of false statements, misconceptions, misunderstandings, suppression of the evidence, statistics that have no base, and numbers that do not add up, with its faults compounded by political prejudice and personal dislike. Harker's work is a blunt instrument intended to bludgeon Cecil Sharp to death. As a tool of critical enquiry, it is worse than useless. It is time to put this nonsense where it belongs, and to begin again with the patient examination of the evidence.
Appendix A: General Methodology
This analysis employs a number of card indices compiled from Cecil Sharp's books of "Folk Tunes" held in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. (These are copies of originals held in Clare College Library, Cambridge.) The books are written-up material the source of which is Sharp's Field Note Books. The books give the tune of the song, plus the first stanza or other significant words. My card index is arranged by song title and records the number of times Sharp collected each song in date order. The chief difficulty was to attribute to one text or another the variants of several similar songs. The texts of "The Seeds of Love" and "The Sprig of Thyme" were so similar that Sharp collected them all under the former title, though he published them as separate songs. "The Keys of Heaven" and "No Sir No" present a similar difficulty. In such cases, I have relied on Sharp's attribution and on my own knowledge of the songs. This cannot be an exact science and I have emphasised the approximate nature of my figures. For the purposes of this analysis, I have recorded only the material contributory to Folk Songs from Somerset; that is, material collected in the geographical county between September 1903 (the earliest date recorded in "Folk Tunes") and 6 January 1909. Sharp was also collecting regularly in North Devon during this period, and from March 1907, he was spending an increasing amount of time in Gloucestershire.
Appendix B: Methodology Employed in Selecting Areas for Analysis
Because Harker (Fakesong, p. 195) does not define what he means by the "industrial district of North Mendip," the "predominantly urban district of Bridgwater," and the "mainly agricultural area which included Hambridge and Kingsbury," I have been obliged to do so myself. My areas are:
1. Hambridge. Within a ten kilometre (6.2 mile) radius of Hambridge.
2. North Mendip. The area east of Shipham and north of the present B3134/3135 which runs roughly north-west to south-east along the Mendip ridge.
3. Bridgwater. Bridgwater itself, with the villages of Cannington and Puriton and the small town of North Petherton.
Arbitrary decisions are inevitable when boundaries are drawn, so to avoid the reproach of having selected areas to fit my analysis, I have provided figures for a fourth area, the rest of Somerset.
Table 1 Selected villages and towns in Somerset at the 1901 Census.
Harker's description
Cannington 1,021 a "large village"
East Harptree 595 a "large village"
Haselbury [Plucknett] 470 a "large village"
High Ham 898 "tiny"
Huish Episcopi 706 a "large village"
Langport 813 "a small town"
Wiveliscombe UDC 1,417 [the smallest UDC in Somerset in
1901]
Bridgwater 15,209
Source: 1901 Census of England and Wales, as given in Accounts and
Papers (London: HMSO, 1902).
Table 2 Popularity of songs compared with numbers published.
Number of Number of
texts time texts Number Percentage
collected collected published published
345 Once 40 11.6
95 Twice 19 20.0
52 Three times 14 26.9
40 Four times 16 40.0
15 Five times 4 28.6
43 Six times and more 30 69.7
590 Total 123 21.0
Source: card index based on Cecil Sharp, "Folk Tunes" (copies of
unpublished MSS held in Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil
Sharp House, London).
Table 3 Geographical origins of songs collected by Cecil Sharp in
Somerset.
Songs unique to one district
North The rest
Hambridge Mendip Bridgwater of Somerset
129 39 63 162
Number 9 5 8 26
pub-
lished
Percen-
tage 7 13 12.5 16
Songs unique to one district
Overall
total
393
Total % of
published songs
songs pub-
in one lished
district
Number 48
pub-
lished
Percen-
tage 12
Songs collected in two or more districts
2 3 4
128 56 13
Number 31 29 9
pub-
lished
Percen-
tage 29 52 69
Overall
total
197
Total % of
published songs
songs from pub-
2 or more lished
districts
Number 75
pub-
lished
Percen-
tage 38
Total 590
Overall 123
Overall 21
percen-
tage
Source: card index based on Cecil Sharp, "Folk Tunes."
Table 4 Textual analysis of Folk Songs from Somerset Series Four (25
songs).
Text unchanged or minor alterations
Nos 81 "Death and the Lady"; 83 "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter"; 11
87 "The Dilly Song"; 88 "Come All You Worthy Christian Men";
91 "The Sheep Shearing"; 93 "The Tree in the Wood";
96 "Searching for Lambs"; 97 "Ruggleton's Daughter of Iero";
98 "The Cruel Mother"; 102 "The Bonny Lighter Boy";
104 "Green Broom."
Words augmented
From other singer or singers Nos 84 "The Outlandish 5
Knight"; 92 "The Saucy
Sailor"; 99 "Arise, Arise";
100 "Bridgwater Dair"; 101
"The Brisk Young Batchelor."
From printed material Nos 80 "The Rambling Sailor"; 3
82 "The Beggar"; 85 "The
Coasts of High Barbary."
8
Major changes to text
For sake of comprehensibility No. 103 "James Macdonald." 1
Through bowdlerisation Nos 89 "Gently Johnny My 3
Jingalo"; 94 "O No John";
95 "Sweet Lovely Joan."
4
Compilations Nos 86 "Jack Hall"; 90 "John 2
Barleycorn."
Total 25
Table 5 Provenance of songs collected by Sharp in
Somerset, 1904-09 (number of singers = 311, of whom 60
provided evidence of the provenance of 77 songs).
Oral sources Number of songs
Parents 32
Grandparents 8
Other relations 5
Friends and chance encounters 16
General comments 12
Total oral sources 73
Literary sources
Broadsides 1
"Langport paper" 1
"Old book" 1
"Old ballet seller" 1
Total literary sources 4
Source: card index based on Sharp's publications and
MSS.
Table 6 Songs collected six times and more.
Song title Times noted
The Seeds of Love 17
The Outlandish Knight 14
John Barleycorn 12
Barbara Allen 13
Lord Randal 13
The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies 12
Dabbling in the Dew 11
As I Walked Through the Meadows 10
The Bold Fishermen 10
Forty Long Miles 10
Henry Martin 10
Seventeen Come Sunday 10
The Broomfield Wager 9
Jealousy 9
The Twelve Days of Christmas 9
William Taylor 9
All Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough 8
The Banks of Green Willow 8
The Cuckoo 8
Geordie 8
The Golden Vanity 8
High Germany 8
The Bold Grenadier 7
The Dilly Song 7
The Foggy Dew 7
Hares on the Mountains 7
The Hearty Good Fellow 7
Lord Bateman 7
The Maid and her Box 7
Rosemary Lane 7
Sweet William (A Sailor's Life) 7
The Trees they do Grow High 7
The Unquiet Grave 7
Blow Away the Morning Dew 6
The Bonny Bunch of Roses 6
The Constant Farmer's Son 6
The Irish Girl 6
The Keys of Heaven 6
No Sir No Sir 6
Poor Old Horse 6
The Saucy Sailor 6
The Shoemaker (The Blacksmith) 6
Wassail Song 6
Song title Location
The Seeds of Love 16
The Outlandish Knight 12
John Barleycorn 13
Barbara Allen 12
Lord Randal 12
The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies 11
Dabbling in the Dew 11
As I Walked Through the Meadows 7
The Bold Fishermen 9
Forty Long Miles 10
Henry Martin 7
Seventeen Come Sunday 10
The Broomfield Wager 8
Jealousy 8
The Twelve Days of Christmas 9
William Taylor 8
All Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough 8
The Banks of Green Willow 7
The Cuckoo 8
Geordie 8
The Golden Vanity 8
High Germany 7
The Bold Grenadier 7
The Dilly Song 6
The Foggy Dew 6
Hares on the Mountains 7
The Hearty Good Fellow 6
Lord Bateman 6
The Maid and her Box 5
Rosemary Lane 6
Sweet William (A Sailor's Life) 6
The Trees they do Grow High 7
The Unquiet Grave 7
Blow Away the Morning Dew 6
The Bonny Bunch of Roses 6
The Constant Farmer's Son 5
The Irish Girl 4
The Keys of Heaven 6
No Sir No Sir 6
Poor Old Horse 6
The Saucy Sailor 6
The Shoemaker (The Blacksmith) 6
Wassail Song 6
Song title District
The Seeds of Love HMBR
The Outlandish Knight HMBR
John Barleycorn HMBR
Barbara Allen HBR
Lord Randal HMBR
The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies HMBR
Dabbling in the Dew HMR
As I Walked Through the Meadows HR
The Bold Fishermen HBR
Forty Long Miles HMBR
Henry Martin HBR
Seventeen Come Sunday HBR
The Broomfield Wager HBR
Jealousy HMBR
The Twelve Days of Christmas HMBR
William Taylor HMBR
All Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough HR
The Banks of Green Willow HR
The Cuckoo HBR
Geordie HBR
The Golden Vanity MBR
High Germany HMB
The Bold Grenadier HMR
The Dilly Song HMR
The Foggy Dew HMR
Hares on the Mountains HMR
The Hearty Good Fellow HBR
Lord Bateman HBR
The Maid and her Box HBR
Rosemary Lane HMBR
Sweet William (A Sailor's Life) HBR
The Trees they do Grow High HMBR
The Unquiet Grave HBR
Blow Away the Morning Dew HMR
The Bonny Bunch of Roses HMBR
The Constant Farmer's Son HMR
The Irish Girl HR
The Keys of Heaven HBR
No Sir No Sir HMR
Poor Old Horse HR
The Saucy Sailor HR
The Shoemaker (The Blacksmith) BR
Wassail Song HR
Districts: Hambridge = H; North Mendip = M; Bridgwater = B; Rest of
Somerset = R.
Acknowledgements
The inspiration for this article came from a visit to the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, and I would like to thank Professor J. D. A. Widdowson and Robin Wiltshire. My academic supervisor, Dr Douglas Reid, helped shape the article through many drafts and devised the tables, and I am indebted to Dr Gillian Bennett, Chris Heppa and Lewis Jones for their help in preparing it for publication. The research was done while I was in receipt of a postgraduate scholarship from the University of Hull.
Notes
[1] The standard biography is Strangways and Karpeles 1933, which went to a second edition in 1955. Later, Maud Karpeles rewrote the book and published it under her own name alone (Karpeles 1967).
[2] Harker's first degree, taken in 1969, was in the English Tripos.
[3] This passage also appeared in Bearman 2000, 761-2. I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission to reuse it.
[4] Harker (1972, 224 note 11) says that his analysis has been conducted "up to 31 August 1907." But in Fakesong, p. 189, he claims to have studied Sharp's collecting "up to the end of 1907." The latter statement is not true.
[5] Most of Harker's other figures are not easily checkable, but there is at least one other mistake on p. 191 of Fakesong. Harker says that "Louie Hooper alone contributed one-seventeenth" (i.e. of Sharp's 1,099 songs). One-seventeenth of 1,099 is 65. By herself, Louisa Hooper gave Sharp 27 tunes, though she sang a further 33 in company with her sister Lucy White. Source: computer database, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML).
[6] For the texts, see "Folk Words" vols 3-4 (361-727). For Emma Overd's version, nos 373-4 (p. 64). For Anna Pond's, no. 407 (pp. 300-1). The volumes of "Folk Words" are transcriptions from Sharp's Field Note Books held in the VWML.
[7] Overd sang, "I'11 follow the draggletail gipsies" and Pond, "I'm going with the wriggle taggle gipsy O."
[8] At the end of his 1972 article, Harker confused the issue by running his condemnation of Sharp's work in Somerset into a denunciation of Sharp and Baring-Gould's English Folk-Songs for Schools (1906), which had little to do with the Somerset collecting, and he may have intended this passage to refer to the school versions. Nevertheless, the title of his article was "Cecil Sharp in Somerset" and it must be taken as referring equally to Folk Songs from Somerset.
[9] Harker 1972, 234, claims to have analysed the "first four parts" of Folk Songs from Somerset.
[10] Version from Bill Bailey, "Folk Words" 5-6 (729-1086), nos 1018-19, p. 974.
[11] In 1914, Sharp negotiated the deposit of his written-up manuscripts with Clare College, Cambridge (see correspondence with Mr Mollison, May-July 1914, Sharp Correspondence Box 1 Miscellaneous, VWML). This was long before Cecil Sharp House was thought of, and in the event, the VWML has Sharp's working notebooks (the Field Note Books) besides copies of the written-up MSS.
[12] See the letter from Reeves in Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (Reeves 1960), which expresses his surprise that in the centenary number devoted to Sharp's work no tribute had been paid to his importance as a preserver of traditional verse.
[13] In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels congratulate capitalism for one achievement at least--that of having delivered at least some of the proletariat from "the idiocy of rural life." See Marx and Engels 1983, 208; more generally, see Mitrany 1951.
[14] Public Record Office, copies of Census Enumerators' Books, Hambridge, RG12/1890.
[15] These figures are based on an analysis of Cecil Sharp's Field Note Books, the "Tune Books," the collections of "Folk Words" made by Maud Karpeles, the published notes to the second (1911-19) edition of Folk Songs from Somerset, press cuttings, and material in the David Bland MSS. All this material has been studied in the originals or copies kept in the VWML. The one singer who specifically attributed a song to a broadside was Fred Crossman. The song was "As I Walked through the Meadows." Crossman said, "Learned this off a ballet at Bridgwater Fair when I was about 12": Field Note Books (Tunes) 13-18 April 1904.
[16] For Elizabeth Lock, see Field Note Books (words) 4 April-16 April 1904 (131-214). For Emma Glover, see Field Note Books (Words) 22 December 1904-12 January 1905 (440-496). For William Davies, see Field Note Books (Tunes) 6 September 1906-?
[17] Miss Doveton Brown of Clevedon. See Field Note Books (Tunes) 13 September 1904 + 16 April-4 May 1905 (420-440 + 497-517).
[18] John Holt of Haselbury Plucknett. Field Note Books (Words) 18 April-24 August 1905 (597-674).
[19] Number calculated from card index compiled from Cecil Sharp "Folk Tunes."
References Cited
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Boyes, Georgina. The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology, and the English Folk Revival. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
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Folk Songs from Somerset. Gathered and edited ... with introductions and notes. First, second and third series by C. J. Sharp and Charles L. Marson. Fourth and fifth series by C. J. Sharp. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1904-09.
Gammon, Vic. "`Two for the Show': David Harker, Politics, and Popular Song." History Workshop Journal 21 (1986):147-56.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith. London: Laurence and Wishart, 1971.
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Karpeles, Maud. "Folk Words." Unpublished TSS in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London.
Lloyd, A. L. Folk Song in England. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto." In The Portable Karl Marx, ed. Eugene Kamenka. 203-41. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
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Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. London: Simpkin, Novello/Taunton: Barnicott and Pearce, 1907.
Sharp, Cecil J. Field Notebooks. Unpublished MSS in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London.
Sharp, Cecil J. Sharp Correspondence. Unpublished MSS collection held in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London.
Sharp, Cecil J. and Sabine Baring-Gould. English Folk-Songs for Schools. London: Curwen and Co., n.d. [1906].
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Shaw, Christopher and Malcolm Chase. "The Dimensions of Nostalgia." In The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, ed. Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase. 1-17. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.
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C. J. Bearman left school at sixteen and for more than twenty-five years worked in clerical employments and in light industry. He entered Hull University in 1991, and in 2001 completed his Ph.D. thesis, "The English Folk Music Movement 1898-1914." His most important publications to date are "Kate Lee and the Foundation of the Folk Song Society" (Folk Music Journal 1999) and "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers" (Historical Journal 2000).
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